By Emmanuel Bobby
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration may need to adopt “a softer touch” in immigration enforcement operations following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents last month in Minneapolis.
“I learned that maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough,” Trump said in an Oval Office interview. “We’re dealing with really hard criminals. But look, I’ve called the people. I’ve called the governor. I’ve called the mayor. Spoke to ’em. Had great conversations with them. And then I see them ranting and raving out there — literally as though a call wasn’t made.”
Trump has been locked in a weeks-long feud with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats who have sharply criticized his immigration crackdown in the city and condemned the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, in separate incidents. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other senior administration officials initially blamed the shootings on the victims, at times characterizing them without evidence as domestic terrorists.
Video footage of the encounters later contradicted some early claims made by administration officials suggesting the shootings were justified.
Trump’s comments Wednesday marked a continued shift in tone as national outrage over the deaths has grown. At a Jan. 20 White House briefing, he said federal agents “make mistakes sometimes.”
Earlier Wednesday, U.S. border czar Tom Homan announced that 700 federal immigration agents were being withdrawn from Minnesota. Asked whether that decision came from him, Trump said it did.
“But it didn’t come from me because I just wanted to do it,” Trump added. “We are waiting for them to release prisoners, give us the murderers that they’re holding and all of the bad people, drug dealers, all of the bad people. We allowed in our country, I say, 25 million people with an open-border policy for four years under [President Joe] Biden — that group, the autopen group, I call them. We allowed to come into our country people the likes of which no country would accept. And we’re getting ’em out.”
Trump’s repeated claim that 25 million undocumented immigrants entered the U.S. under the Biden administration is inaccurate. According to Customs and Border Protection data, about 7.4 million undocumented immigrants crossed the border outside legal ports of entry during that period.
Original article
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