Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Mayor Jacob Frey: Thanks so much for having me.
Mayor, this is well in advance of the decision to send enormous amounts of federal agents into Minneapolis. And there are no signs ICE took real steps to rein in officers. And, of course, your city paid the price. Your reaction to that?
You’ve got to understand that a lot of these directives are there from the top. It was a decision at some point to bring thousands—tens of thousands—of agents in without a whole lot of training. It was a decision to not ensure that basic constitutional conduct was met. It was a decision to send thousands of ICE agents and Border Patrol into a city like Minneapolis without a clear objective and without tactics that could safely have you arrive at that objective. And so, no, none of this is surprising at all.
Mayor, are you in the city of Minneapolis okay with what Homan is saying to you both publicly and privately and what he’s doing right now? Is he giving you what you hoped for?
So the conduct needed to change; the numbers need to dramatically change. We need ICE out of our city. And so, again, I will believe it when I see it as far as the actual end to Operation Metro Surge, but it is my understanding that we are going in the right direction.
Frey: We can’t provide confirmation on the level of documentation for anybody at this point who has been arrested or detained. That’s just not information that we get on a regular basis. That being said, yeah, over the last 24 hours—at least in Minneapolis, the city where I’m the mayor—the number of ICE actions has gone down.
Frey: You know, it’s somewhat subjective, in that obviously we don’t have access to every single action that has taken place. What I can tell you is that over the last, at least 24 hours, the number of actions in Minneapolis has gone down.
Frey: So, I have heard over the last 24, 48 hours of a number of actions that took place in other cities, surrounding suburbs, and exurbs. And so, again, I can’t speak with intelligence to them. That being said, in Minneapolis, yeah, it has gone down.
Sargent: I’ve heard that federal agents have at times almost stalked people for the “crime” of filming them and monitoring them. There’s been this talk about ICE keeping a database on protesters and all that. I know that this is anecdotal and subjective, but what’s the reality that you guys have been experiencing? Are you getting reports of agents kind of stalking people for simply monitoring them?
The most important facet here is that the things that were happening, you can’t do—not just in Minneapolis, not based exclusively on any sort of, like, ethical obligation—but you can’t do that because it’s against the Constitution of the United States of America. You can’t simply detain somebody because they look like they’re Somali, or they look like they’re Latino or Southeast Asian. You can’t grab somebody only to find out that they’re a United States citizen and then return them hours or days later. That’s not how it works in the United States.
And so, yeah, there were these roaming gangs of ICE agents and Border Patrol that were operating throughout Minneapolis. I mean, you’ve seen this on video. You can believe your own two eyes. Again, are we seeing a decline? It appears to be so. But as far as an end to Operation Metro Surge, we’ll believe it when we see it.
Frey: Yeah, we’ve got contingency plans on contingency plans at this point. We’ve been operating in an emergency-management mode for a couple of months now. We’ve made sure to have what’s called our National Incident Management System in place. We’ve got what’s called our MAC Group, which is the overarching command structure.
And I’ll also mention that we’ve got litigation that is taking place, preemptively and responsively. And if for some reason they decide to stay, we’ve got other options that are before us.
Frey: So I speak for Minneapolis. In Minneapolis: nothing. We haven’t changed any policy. We had a separation ordinance when this whole operation began. We have a separation ordinance now, which says that our cops—our public officials—do not enforce federal immigration law, and we don’t coordinate with agencies as they are doing that.
Sargent: Yeah. That’s what I was going to ask you about. You must be in touch with the people who control the policies on the jails as well. Is it your understanding that there’s been any change in policy?
Sargent: Yeah. So a person might wonder whether Tom Homan is kind of “declaring victory and going home,” if that makes sense.
You want to catch murderers and rapists? You want to arrest, prosecute, and charge people that have made our city less safe? Yeah, by all means. But why does the focus have to be on where you’re from? Why can’t it be on the crime that you committed?
And so, yeah, by all means, we do partner when it makes sense. But no, certainly, we do not want to be engaging in the kind of conduct that we have seen over these last couple of months from this federal administration.
And so one big question, I guess—and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this—is whether ICE will now actually go after criminals and not after non-criminals. What’s your anticipation there? How important is that to you?
What we’ve seen over the last couple of months is something wildly different that has terrorized a city, that has led to the detention of United States citizens, and that has ripped apart families. And we’re talking about dragging a pregnant woman through the street and detaining a five-year-old kid who has done nothing—not to mention the extraordinary economic impact: $203 million worth of economic impact in January alone.
Sargent: My understanding is the stuff you just said is based on fresh data assessing the impact of the ICE invasion of Minneapolis. Is that right?
Sargent: This is new information. What’s the full range of the info? Is there any other info you can share?
More than 75,000 additional people are facing some form of food insecurity. Thousands of schoolchildren are in need of support services. The city alone has spent about $6 million, mostly in overtime for police. So the impact here is staggering. The impact is very real; it’s tangible; it’s monetary. And countless people throughout our city are feeling that impact.
If you are looking to help those incredible people out—if you’re looking to stand with Minneapolis—come here. We want to have you. Go shop at some of these awesome Latino-owned businesses. It’s like the easiest ask I could possibly make: Go buy some tamales and eat them. Go buy a beautiful dress; go buy some insurance. I mean, all from some of these Latino-, Somali-, and Southeast Asian-owned businesses...they need your help and they need your support.
Sargent: Well, I’ve been up there, and I can attest to its beauty and its way of life as well. All of us here on this show and tons and tons of people nationally have been enormously inspired by what regular people did in that city and what they accomplished in bonding together against this invasion.
Frey: Yeah, that’s our City of Minneapolis emergency-management study, I believe.
Can you talk a little bit more about what you think the damage is and how long it’s going to last? And what have you, kind of, concluded about what really happened here?
The city, again, before this Operation Metro Surge, was on a massive comeback. Crime was down in virtually every neighborhood, in virtually every category of the city. Business was up. You know, we had a whole lot of great stuff going on. I know that we’re going to get back to that in the immediacy—the very short aftermath following this end to Operation Metro Surge.
Sargent: Mayor, speaking of justice, there was an effort by local officials—you included—to sort of get brought into the investigation into what happened with Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Can you update us on that? What’s going on with those investigations? Is the city getting to be a part of that? What’s the status of all that?
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at the state level is a very reputable group of experts—legal and law enforcement. This is not like some radical, “way out there” group. This is a group of lawyers and cops, largely. And they have done this work before. They have conducted investigations that have both led to a charge and a lack thereof. So they’re the ones that should be conducting this investigation.
Sargent: Is it your sense that the Trump administration simply can’t be trusted to do a fair investigation of this? I mean, after all, they did rush out at the very outset—right after both of these murders—to say that the agents had essentially operated impeccably. Is there any ground, from your point of view, for confidence in any federal government investigation into these shootings?
I’m not saying that I should be running the investigation. I certainly have an opinion on what happened and why, because I’ve got two eyes—I saw a bunch of videos, you know, I have an opinion, obviously. I have tried not to dictate a conclusion myself. But when you’ve got the entity that is doing the investigation dictating a conclusion? Yeah, that certainly calls it into question.
Frey: I’ve not talked to President Trump recently. We had a good and productive conversation back a couple of weeks ago when we did speak. I’ve talked with Border Czar Homan on several occasions, also productive.
Sargent: Mayor Frey, we all wish your city the best. Thank you so much for coming on with us.
Frey: Thanks so much for having me.
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