By Alayna Treene, Priscilla Alvarez, Kristen Holmes, CNN
(CNN) — The ongoing protests and images coming out of Minnesota have prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown as Americans grow alarmed by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the state.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration behind closed doors that the immigration messaging is getting lost, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. Trump has sought to take control of the narrative, starting with an impromptu press conference on the anniversary of his first year in office.
The president, at times sounding exasperated, thumbed through mugshots of individuals arrested in his immigration crackdown, highlighting their alleged crimes. His message was clear that while there might be some issues, ICE is necessary to follow through on his agenda — to deport the most dangerous criminals back to their home country.
“He wanted to do that briefing in large part because he himself wanted to bring out the mugshots that we had printed for him,” a senior White House official told CNN. “He wanted to remind the world of why ICE is doing what they’re doing.”
Trump’s advisers have privately discussed the perils of the protests in Minneapolis in recent days, following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent earlier this month, with many acknowledging that the fallout in the city must be contained, the sources said.
As a result, top White House officials have been plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis and instead focus on what they view as ICE’s achievements.
“There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing,” a senior White House official told CNN, adding: “There have not been discussions about toning down the rhetoric. In fact there have been discussions on how to remind people more aggressively of why this happened in the first place.”
Some administration officials believe there is too much focus on the tensions between ICE agents — and therefore the administration — and protesters, and have discussed how to extricate themselves from that narrative, multiple officials tell CNN.
Trump appeared to channel that attitude while addressing reporters on Tuesday: “They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or — you know, they’re dealing with rough people — or they’re going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.”
Vice President JD Vance also acknowledged that ICE had been in the middle of some messy situations in the lead up to and during his visit to Minneapolis on Thursday — a trip he described as intended to “to calm the tensions” in the city.
“Certainly one of my goals is to calm the tensions, to talk to people, to try to understand what we can do better. … Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don’t,” Vance said in Toledo, Ohio before heading to Minnesota.
“If we had a little cooperation from local and federal, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community,” he added, citing conversations that left him optimistic about improved coordination in Minnesota.
Shifting message
That tone was a marked departure from the hardened and, at times, bombastic rhetoric being used by the administration to date amid waning support among Americans over how the president is enforcing his deportation campaign. Just two weeks ago, Vance had furiously castigated the media and what he characterized as “far-left radicals” contributing to a dangerous anti-ICE narrative, periodically shouting from the podium while doing so.
Administration officials cautioned that the tamped-down language is not a sign that the administration’s support for ICE, and their work to carry out the president’s agenda, has waned. And they say the onus is on local leaders, specifically those in Minnesota, to turn down the temperature and cooperate with ICE and federal authorities.
“The Trump Administration’s message hasn’t changed: we will enforce federal immigration law and arrest the worst of the worst,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, adding: “Democrats can turn down the temperature any time by stopping their smears against law enforcement officers and their defense of criminal illegal aliens.”
But Democrats and local officials say the administration is to blame for escalating tensions on the ground. And as the administration doubles down on Minneapolis, they also run the risk of losing control of the situation amid ongoing confrontations between protesters and federal agents that have garnered national attention, one Republican strategist told CNN.
Some Trump officials, many of whom — like the White House — have long viewed the president’s immigration policies as popular and crucial to delivering him a second term, have warned that the clashes in Minnesota could quickly spiral out of control and create a major issue for the administration if not dealt with swiftly, the sources said.
The potential consequences are both political — with the current operations polling badly, and everyone’s eyes trained on the November midterm elections — as well as practical, particularly if the scenes in Minnesota embolden Americans in other cities to interfere with future immigration operations, they said.
The president has seen the negative polls but does not blame the work ICE is doing on his behalf. Instead he has blamed the lack of clear messaging and “promotion” of what he believes are the positives of his immigration crackdown, sources familiar with the conversation said.
A scandal, then a surge
As 2025 was coming to a close, Trump administration officials were leaning toward a strategy of focusing on more targeted, less telegraphed immigration enforcement operations — a departure from their pattern of high-profile sweeps into Democratic-run cities blasted out on social media.
But then a welfare-fraud scandal involving the Somali community in Minnesota started garnering more attention, and the Trump administration targeted the state as a destination to ramp up immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security surged federal agents into the Twin Cities in late December, and again in January.
In a matter of weeks, a woman the administration said was impeding officers was fatally shot by an ICE officer, protesters clashed with federal agents, US citizens were detained (sometimes mistakenly), and more videos surfaced of agents appearing to indiscriminately ask people about their status.
The high-profile clashes have made the situation on the ground grow more politically fraught, even as Americans generally support deporting certain undocumented immigrants, and fueled concern among some Republican allies over the administration’s aggressive approach.
Americans say, 51% to 31%, that ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer; another 18% say there’s been little effect either way, according to a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
“If Republicans want to win the midterms, we have to get that right. … We have to get right with the messaging,” said Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas.
“When you have people protesting in -6 degree weather, they’re incredibly dumb or incredibly motivated — either way it doesn’t matter. They’re doing it for a reason,” he said, adding that his constituents back home are also anxious about the scenes unfolding in Minneapolis.
‘Lawful, targeted and focused’
Trump tried to reframe the narrative from the White House podium this week. Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official who’s been leading the crackdown in cities, also defended the effort.
“Our operations are lawful, targeted and focused… they’re not random and they’re not political. They’re about removing criminals who are actively harming Minneapolis neighborhoods,” Bovino said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies which advocates for limited immigration, told CNN the problem stems in part from the protesters facing agents in operations in cities where coordination with local law enforcement is limited — or altogether banned — for immigration purposes.
“The administration will gain the upper hand in the information war if they say, ‘We’ll take the people off the streets if you let them do their jobs,’” he said.
The situation in Minneapolis had also resurfaced discussions about the use of the Insurrection Act, which allows the deployment of active-duty troops within the US in certain situations, in Minnesota. The law, which hasn’t been invoked since 1992, works in tandem with the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits the use of the military inside the US.
Trump officials they have so far been hesitant to invoke the act, not necessarily because of the legal complications, but because of the political ones. As of now it remains a last resort, according to US officials with knowledge of the discussions.
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