Washington — Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey criticized the administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota’s largest city on Sunday, calling the surge of federal agents an “occupying force that has quite literally invaded our city.”
“You can go through whatever rhetorical flourish you want, but when you have 3,000 ICE agents and border control come to the city, when you’ve got this supposed threat of 1,500 military coming to the city, yeah, that’s very much what it feels like,” Frey said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The administration has sent thousands of federal law enforcement agents to Minnesota in recent weeks to implement the latest phase of its immigration crackdown and investigate fraud. And about 1,500 active-duty soldiers are on standby in Alaska for possible deployment to Minneapolis, amid heightened tensions and protests following the deadly shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer earlier this month.
Frey said the thousands of federal agents that have been sent to Minneapolis in recent weeks are “not making our city safer.”
“If the goal were safety, this is not how you get there,” Frey said, adding that the “antidote to some of the violence that we’re seeing is to have them leave.”
Meanwhile, the Minnesota National Guard was mobilized Saturday by the state, though forces have not yet been deployed. Asked whether the city needs the National Guard presence, Frey said “we are doing the work to keep people safe in our city,” and that “it is our local police officers, it is the state of Minnesota and our governor.”
“We are doing everything possible to keep the peace,” Frey said.
Frey said local leaders have worked with the federal government to drive down crime and get violent criminals off the street, saying “nobody’s against that.”
“But that is not this,” he said. “This is not about safety. What this is about is coming into our city by the thousands and terrorizing people simply because they’re Latino or Somali. And yeah, people in Minneapolis are speaking up. They’re speaking up peacefully.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who also appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday, said she hoped Frey would announce an intention to “start working with us to bring safety to the streets.”
“If he would set up a peaceful protest zone so that these individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights and do so peacefully, we would love that, because then we could work together to make sure we’re getting criminals to justice and letting people still express their First Amendment rights,” Noem said.
Frey responded, saying that “First Amendment speech is not limited to one park or one section of the city.”
“We’ve got tens of thousands of people in Minneapolis that are grinning down the bear, that are peacefully expressing their First Amendment rights,” Frey said. “So no, you can’t have just one section of a city. That’s not the way First Amendment works.”
The Trump administration has accused local officials who have criticized the Minneapolis operation of stoking chaos. CBS News reported on Friday that Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are both under federal investigation for an alleged conspiracy to impede immigration agents. Frey said on “Face the Nation” that he had not received official documentation concerning an investigation.
“This whole dynamic is deeply concerning, because supposedly they would be coming for me and targeting me for something that is core and critical to my job as mayor, and that is speaking for my residents and my constituents,” Frey said. “That we are at a place right now where the Department of Justice or the federal government could be coming after senators and governors and mayors simply for speaking for their respective constituencies and disagreeing with this federal administration, I mean, this kind of thing happens in other countries. This cannot happen in America.”
