Donald Trump immediately undermined his own border czar’s attempt to calm tensions and ease a lethal immigration crackdown in Minnesota by insisting there will be “no pullback” of federal agents.
On Thursday morning in Minneapolis, Tom Homan, 64, stood at a podium in a federal building and pledged to wind down the unprecedented deployment of roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents to a city with roughly 600 police officers.
Yet within hours, the 79-year-old president was saying—as he so often does—the exact opposite.
Appearing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., ahead of the $40 million Amazon-MGM premiere of Melania Trump’s vanity doc Melania, Trump was asked by a CNN reporter if he envisaged pulling back immigration officers in Minnesota.
He replied: “Not at all. No pullback. Not at all.”
The president’s flat denial was in stark contrast to the message Homan had spent the day selling to a furious state.
Civil rights groups, Minnesota officials, and some law enforcement experts have accused the administration of running an unconstitutional show of force in the Twin Cities.
Their claims have been supported by footage of Border Patrol and ICE agents in military-style gear detaining U.S. citizens, including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, outside their homes.
During his press conference, Homan said his goal was to move away from the street sweeps and show-of-force tactics that led to the deaths of two protesters, unarmed mom Renee Nicole Good and VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, both 37-year-old American citizens, at the hands of federal agents this month.
“I didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines,” Homan told reporters, in a clear swipe at his political rival, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “I came here to seek solutions.”
The former ICE director, installed in the city by Trump this week after Noem, 54, and Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, 55, were blamed internally for the chaos, repeatedly vowed to move back to “targeted enforcement operations.”
“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations...which we have done for decades,” he said. “We are not surrendering our mission at all. We’re just doing it smarter.”
Homan also set out, in unusual detail, what sounded like an exit ramp.
He described new agreements with Minnesota’s Democratic leadership—Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and county sheriffs—to hold more suspected immigration offenders in local jails and hand them to ICE at the point of release, rather than relying on roving street teams.
“As we drilled down on these great agreements we got… we can draw down those resources,” Homan said. “When the violence decreases, we can draw down those resources… So, you’re going to see a drawdown.”
The press conference was widely read as an attempt to convince critics that Trump had learned lessons from a mission which Homan conceded Trump had admitted was not “perfect” and where “improvements could and should be made.”
But if Homan hoped his promise of change would calm Minneapolis, his own boss did not sound like he was on board.
The president’s remark raises questions over whether he was publicly overruling Homan’s de-escalation efforts—or whether the border czar’s “drawdown” would be limited to cosmetic changes while thousands of agents remain on the ground.
Homan’s “drawdown” language had marked a sharp break with the earlier posture of Noem and Bovino. Bovino’s “commander-at-large” media persona, SS-style trench coat, and the aggressive use of his “Green Machine” band of Border Patrol agents in city streets had made him the public face of Trump’s immigration blitz.
As the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, Homan and Noem have been locked in a long-running turf war over who gets to run Trump’s deportation drive, with Bovino cast as Noem’s enforcer.
That decision, which was deeply unpopular with voters, has diminished her position in Trump’s inner circle.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment.
