By Marissa Payne, Des Moines Register
Gov. Kim Reynolds said federal officials have offered a “reasonable” new path on immigration enforcement in Minnesota and she hopes “everybody turns down the rhetoric” after public outcry over the Trump administration’s tactics following the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Reynolds applauded White House border czar Tom Homan’s announcement on Thursday, Jan. 29 of a shift in direction on the immigration operation in Minnesota. He conceded it needed to be “fixed” and said the Trump administration would “draw down” the federal presence in Minnesota.
“I hope everybody turns down the rhetoric,” Reynolds told reporters after an event at Great Oaks High School and Career Center, a charter school in Des Moines, on Thursday, Jan. 29. “Law enforcement has a job to do, but I think they provided a path. If the conversations go — as Tom Homan indicated they were — the direction that they were headed, I think that is a solution that will hopefully turn things around.”
Homan said there would be “massive changes occurring” in Minneapolis, including fewer agents in the streets as federal authorities gain more access to local jails and target undocumented immigrants with criminal records. That was something he said the Minneapolis operation had strayed from.
It’s a significant change in the operation there since federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis this month, fueling nationwide protests and mounting dissatisfaction with the administration’s immigration enforcement.
Reynolds said Trump has “put a path forward that is reasonable.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Reynolds said. “It would really, I think, provide safety for the communities, for the law enforcement officers and really for the illegal alien criminals that they’re trying to really remove from the community.
“If we can just have the prisons and jails release the offenders there to ICE and not let them be released into the community and re-offend, because when they release them into the community, then not only do you have your core agents, but then you have 16 other(s) that have to support them being out in the community, then that’s where issues start to happen.”
Asked if there are any ICE operations underway in Iowa, Reynolds said she is not involved in coordinating the federal operations but “you don’t see what’s happening in Minneapolis happening in the state of Iowa.”
A 2018 Iowa law targets so-called sanctuary communities, allowing state funding from cities and counties that intentionally violate federal immigration law to be revoked.
“We’re not a sanctuary state,” Reynolds said. “Our law enforcement is working with ICE.”
Another government shutdown looms as national Democrats have aired discontent over ICE and are pushing for major changes before approving Department of Homeland Security funding.
By Thursday evening, Senate Democrats struck a deal with Republicans to fund a large portion of the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year. The deal also includes a stopgap measure to fund DHS for two weeks while talks continue about guardrails on immigration agents.
Should the deal gain a majority of the Senate’s support, the House would still have to pass it.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, had told CNN she was “not at all” satisfied with Homan’s comments.
“I’m looking for information about when troops are leaving,” Smith said. “I think ICE needs to get out of Minnesota. I think it is dangerous when they are there.”
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