Trump, seeking damage control, weighs less aggressive approach in Minneapolis

By Nandita Bose and Brad Brooks

WASHINGTON/MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 27 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, met with the Minneapolis mayor and the Minnesota governor on Tuesday in a show of detente, as the White House sought to ease unrest gripping the city after two U.S. citizens were shot dead by federal agents.

Homan was put in charge of the Minneapolis immigration enforcement surge in place of U.S. Border Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino, who sources said was being demoted and reassigned after having overseen most of Trump’s crackdowns in Democratic-led cities.

The move was part of a broader reset by the Republican president – who faces mounting political pressure – to soften his administration’s aggressive deportation tactics.

Some advisers have expressed concern that national outrage over Saturday’s killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, and the administration’s immediate defense of the agents who shot him, could derail Trump’s broader immigration agenda.

As they did after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good earlier this month, some administration officials initially responded to Pretti’s killing by accusing him of “domestic terrorism,” a claim belied by witness video verified by Reuters that showed he posed no threat.

Homan’s job in Minneapolis is to “recalibrate tactics” and improve cooperation with state and local officials, a source with ties to the White House said, adding: “The goal is to scale back, eventually pull out.”

Speaking of the Minnesota situation on Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said his administration was “going to de-escalate a little bit.”

“I don’t think it’s a pullback. It’s a little bit of a change,” the president said. Asked whether he retained confidence in U.S. Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, whose role in the crisis brought calls for her dismissal or impeachment from leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, Trump said: “I do.”

The president met with Noem, at her request, for two hours in the Oval Office on Monday evening, a source briefed on the matter confirmed.

RECALIBRATING THE SURGE

A senior Trump administration official said Homan would move away from the broad, public neighborhood sweeps that Bovino had conducted in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and other cities and adopt a more traditional, targeted approach.

In a statement, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he had reiterated to Homan his request that the enforcement action, known as Operation Metro Surge, “come to an end as quickly as possible,” and that city leaders would remain in touch with Homan. The 30-minute meeting included the city’s police chief.

In a separate meeting with Homan, Governor Tim Walz said he had outlined the state’s priorities, including impartial investigations into the two shootings and a reduction in the 3,000-strong force of federal agents deployed to the city. Homan and Walz agreed to continue working toward those goals, the governor said.

Announcing his plan to send in Homan, the subject of a U.S. Justice Department bribery probe that was abruptly closed last year, Trump on Monday sought to cast his designated “border czar” as a neutral figure in the Minnesota crisis who “knows and likes many of the people there.”

In weekend talks between the president and his advisers, discussions included reducing the number of agents in Minnesota, focusing the mission more narrowly on deportations, and exploring greater coordination with state authorities, according to a White House official.

SUPPORT FOR TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION DRIVE WANES

The killing of Pretti, a veterans hospital intensive care nurse shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents during daytime protests, has turned into a full-blown political crisis for Trump, with even some Republicans in Congress calling for investigations.

Coupled with the January 7 shooting of Good, a mother of three, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Pretti’s death sparked renewed anger over the heavily armed federal agents on the Minneapolis streets.

Late on Monday, Minnesota’s chief federal judge threatened to hold the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, in contempt for his agency’s failures to comply with court orders that some detainees receive bond hearings.

Public support for Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics appeared to be waning both before and after the Pretti shooting, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. The issue has put Republicans on the defensive ahead of November’s midterm elections, when the party’s narrow congressional majorities are at stake.

TRUMP IN DAMAGE CONTROL MODE

The typically combative Trump characterized private conversations with both Walz and Frey on Monday as productive, while the two Democratic leaders offered similarly positive comments, a far cry from the vitriol the sides had previously exchanged. Walz and Frey were among several Democratic state and local officials subpoenaed one week ago in a Justice Department probe into whether their opposition to Operation Metro Surge amounted to a crime.

At the White House on Tuesday, Trump expressed sympathy for Pretti’s family and said he would be “watching over” the investigation into his killing.

While Trump stood by Noem, the three top Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said they would seek to initiate impeachment proceedings against her unless she was fired. Any impeachment would require some level of support from Republicans, who control the House, to move forward.

Privately, Trump has made clear to advisers he did not want to defend the agents’ actions or attack Pretti, after Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller labeled Pretti an “assassin” and Bovino suggested he intended to “massacre” officers.

Widely shared video contradicted those claims, showing Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, as agents wrestled him to the ground.

It also showed officers removing a firearm from his waistband after he was subdued, seconds before they fatally shot him. Pretti was a licensed gun owner who lived half a mile from the scene.

Speaking with reporters in Iowa on Tuesday, Trump said that Pretti “certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun” at the time, comments that put him at odds with gun rights groups and some Republicans.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Brad Brooks in Minneapolis; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Ted Hesson, Steve Holland, Jarrett Renshaw, Andrew Hay and Susan Heavey; Writing by Joseph Ax and Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Deepa Babington, Cynthia Osterman and Edmund Klamann)