Hours after a freshly dispatched Tom Homan suggested that the Department of Homeland Security could reduce the number of agents and officers deployed to Minneapolis in the wake of the fatal shooting of nurse Alex Pretti, President Donald Trump appeared to contradict his border czar.
While speaking to reporters outside the premier of his wife’s documentary film, Melania, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Trump was asked if DHS would be withdrawing immigration enforcement personnel out of the Gopher State’s largest city after a weeks-long campaign of roving patrols aimed at arresting anyone suspected of being in the U.S. illegally that has resulted in widespread protests across the city.
Trump replied: “We keep our country safe. We’ll do whatever we can to keep our country safe.”
When pressed to clarify whether he would be “pulling back” agents from Minneapolis, Trump responded: “No, no. Not at all.”
The president’s claim not to be implementing a withdrawal of any of the thousands of agents and officers from Minnesota came less than a day after Homan told reporters at a press conference upon his arrival there that a “drawdown” could happen if Minnesota authorities followed through on what he described as tentative agreements to hand over people without legal status who had been held in state and municipal prisons and jails.
Trump had dispatched Homan to Minnesota earlier this week amid criticism from members of his own party over how DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol ‘acting commander at large’ Greg Bovino had conducted themselves immediately after the shooting of Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
According to DHS, two agents fired as many as 10 shots into Pretti’s back as he lay facedown on the pavement while pinned by other Border Patrol and ICE personnel.
Agents had grabbed and tackled Pretti after he came to the aid of a protester who’d been shoved by one of the agents. While wrestling him to the ground, one agent relieved Pretti of a 9-millimeter pistol he was legally carrying, but others shot him after another agent shouted “gun.”
Noem claimed on Saturday the shooting had been the consequence of “a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement,” even though Pretti never drew his weapon, which he had a permit to carry, and did not confront the agents before he was tackled after trying to help a woman who’d been shoved by a CBP agent.
She also falsely accused him of having “reacted violently” when agents attempted to disarm him — a claim that appears to be contradicted by video of the shooting.
Noem has since defended her false statements by attributing them to talking points provided by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — the main architect of Trump’s mass deportation campaign — while Miller has, in turn, thrown Border Patrol personnel under the bus by claiming in a statement that he got the false information at issue from them.
But Trump’s decision to send Homan, a career ICE and Border Patrol agent who’d headed ICE during the first 18 months of his first term, appeared to be aimed at keeping Noem, her de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski, and her hand-picked Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino from causing more headaches from the administration.
At the same press conference where he’d alluded to the “drawdown” being possible, Homan admitted that “no agency is perfect,” following the two fatal shootings by federal agents, but said he would not be “surrendering the president’s mission.”
