Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino will reportedly leave Minnesota immediately as the Trump administration handles fallout from a fatal agent-involved shooting.
Bovino will exit the state along with a portion of Border Patrol agents, according to The Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump has said that he will recall all Border Patrol agents from Minnesota if the state agrees to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that if Minnesota and local authorities change their approach to ICE and agree to assist federal authorities in apprehending illegal aliens, the president would withdraw Border Patrol from the state.
“If Governor [Tim Walz] and Mayor [Jacob Frey] implement these common sense cooperative measures that, I will add, have already been implemented in nearly every single other state across the country, Customs and Border Patrol will not be needed to support ICE on the ground in Minnesota,” said Leavitt. “ICE and local law enforcement can peacefully work together as they are effectively doing in so many other states and jurisdictions.”
Tensions in Minneapolis have exploded after two immigration enforcement-involved shootings this month. On Saturday, a Customs and Border Protection agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital, who was allegedly interfering with immigration operations in the city. Pretti’s death came just weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed in her vehicle after appearing to drive in the direction of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.
As Bovino withdraws from the state, border czar Tom Homan is traveling to Minnesota to take the lead in mediating between state and local authorities and federal immigration authorities, the White House announced on Monday.
“Mr. Homan is the point-person in cooperating with state and local authorities and corresponding with them, again, to achieve this level of cooperation to subdue the chaos on the streets of Minneapolis,” said Leavitt.
The president spoke with Walz and Frey over the phone on Monday and had positive reports about both calls. Of Walz, Trump said that he and the Minnesota governor “seemed to be on a similar wavelength” regarding the future of immigration operations in the state. Of Frey, Trump described the conversation as “very good” and said the mayor would be meeting with Homan on Tuesday.
Rhetoric from state leaders and administration officials flared in the aftermath of the Good and Pretti shootings. On Sunday, Walz suggested that illegal aliens in his state were experiencing a version of the tragedy of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazi regime in an attic for over two years before dying in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist.”
“Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism,” said Noem.
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