Mayors from across the country have called on President Trump to put an end to the ICE-induced madness in Minnesota, agreeing that his crime crackdown has gone too far.
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, one of several leaders to speak out against Trump’s policies at a summit in Washington, D.C., said some cities fear they “will be next.”
“It’s roiling the country,” Holt told Politico at the annual gathering of the nonpartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors. “We’re all sort of feeling the angst of our residents and the fear that our city will be next and that chaos is going to inevitably creep across the entire country.”
During the meeting, just blocks from the White House, Mayor Jerry Dyer of Fresno, California ,said that “too much damage has been done” with the heavy-handed crackdown and “the trust in communities has been lost.”
Mayor Elizabeth Kautz, of Burnsville, Minnesota, parroted senior leaders in the state, saying that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents are the ones causing the mayhem that saw protestors Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, shot dead by federal agents this month.
“Our cities are no longer safe,” she warned.
It comes as Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said Thursday that immigration enforcement will reduce the number of officers in Minnesota. However, he suggested during a news conference that it would happen only after “cooperation’ from state officials.”
Dyer, speaking before Homan made these comments, said that federal agencies should only ever operate in communities where they have the cooperation of local leaders.
“I don’t believe that agencies should be deployed into cities against the will of local government and without the cooperation of local law enforcement,” he said. “That’s a recipe for disaster, and I believe that’s somewhat of what we’re seeing today.”
He urged other GOP leaders to speak out against the divisive enforcement operations. “The Republican Party in general cannot rubber-stamp everything a party does or this administration does,” Dyer said. “Too many people today are turning a blind eye when they should be speaking out in opposition.”
Kautz, while broadly agreeing on Trump’s stance on immigration, said she is stunned by the tactics. Trump’s crackdown should be done “through proper channels, the rule of law, due process [and rooted] in the Constitution,” she said. In Minnesota, “that is not our experience.”
Americans, and even Trump voters, seem to agree with this sentiment. A new POLITICO poll found that more than 1 in 3 Trump voters said they agree with him on the need for tighter controls on immigration, but they are perturbed by how his administration is going about achieving his agenda.
