President Trump said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called him Monday and is happy border czar Tom Homan is headed to the state to deal with the escalating standoffs between protesters and ICE agents.
“Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I!,” the president added.
The two men have traded verbal blows after the president ordered ICE agents to the state to arrest illegal immigrants last month.
But Trump sounded positive about the call and the situation in Minnesota, saying he and Walz will speak again.
“Both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!,” he declared.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the shooting of a 37-year-old anti-ICE protester in Minneapolis
Walz called the conversation “productive,” saying Trump agreed to “look into reducing the number of federal agents” in Minnesota. The governor also said he pushed for Trump to allow a state investigation.
He said he reminded the president that the state Department of Corrections notifies ICE “when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen.”
Trump later announced he had a similar productive call with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“I just had a very good telephone conversation with Mayor Jacob Frey, of Minneapolis,” the president said in a separate Truth Social post after 5 p.m. Monday. “Lots of progress is being made! Tom Homan will be meeting with him tomorrow in order to continue the discussion.”
The tone of the conversation is a notable change in behavior from both Frey and Walz, the latter of whom on Sunday compared Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota to the Nazi regime.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” Walz said at a press conference. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank.”
Minnesota has become ground zero in Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.
A total of 3,000 ICE agents are operating in Minneapolis. A top ICE official told CBS News that federal agents had carried out roughly 3,400 arrests in the area.
But tensions in the city have soared in the wake of a Border Patrol agent’s shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, an ICU nurse, on Saturday.
Footage showed multiple officers pinning Pretti to the ground. There was a shout that he had a gun. A officer is seen removing his 9mm handgun. The gun sliding mechanism appeared to move in the scuffle, meaning the weapon may have fired. Officers then shot Pretti.
Saturday’s shooting took place 17 days after the killing of Renee Good, also 37, after she accelerated her vehicle in the direction of an ICE officer in Minneapolis.
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Protests surged in the aftermath.
Trump announced on Monday he’s sending Homan to oversee the situation on the ground.
“[Homan] has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Tom is tough but fair, and will report directly to me.”
The decision sparked questions about Trump’s faith in Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has portrayed Pretti and Good as domestic terrorists.
But a White House official told The Post the president has full confidence in Noem, adding that Homan “is uniquely positioned to drop everything and focus solely on Minnesota.”
Homan will manage ICE operations on the ground and help “continue arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” while also coordinating with “those leading investigations into the massive, widespread fraud,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Trump, meanwhile, has been just as critical of Walz. Last month he referred to him as “seriously retarded.”
