MINNEAPOLIS — After weeks of clashes, at times violent and deadly, Vice President JD Vance had a message for local lawmakers in the North Star State: cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop the chaos.
“We can do a good job of enforcing our immigration laws without the chaos, but it actually requires the cooperation of state and local officials,” Vance said on Thursday while speaking at the Royalston Square event venue.
The comments came after Vance held a closed-door meeting with ICE officers, local law enforcement, business owners, and others before speaking to the crowd.
Hours before, at least three people had been arrested for their alleged roles in an attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Vance said he’d heard of ICE officers that were threatened or physically assaulted by protesters and when they called local law enforcement back up, those officers were told to stand down.
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“Why not just have the mayor or the local officials tell the police officers, you know what, if an ICE officer is being assaulted by a far-left agitator, you are invited. You should actually help them,” Vance said. “That’s what would work out in any normal situation, and that’s what happens in nearly every jurisdiction, red or blue in the United States of America.”
Yet despite the pressure of local leaders, Vance did sound hopeful about the future of the besieged city and state.
“I actually think that there’s some hope, some reason to think that there’s going to be better cooperation in the weeks and months to come,” Vance said.
“I think that, because I’ve talked to some of the local officials here, I think there are reasons to believe that these people are going to step up and actually ask the cops to protect our ICE officers when they’re being assaulted,” he said.
The vice president defended ICE even as protesters have denounced the agency in light of the fatal shooting of Minnesota mother Renee Good.
“The tragedy here is multilayered. The tragedy is there was a misunderstanding,” he said. “The tragedy is that Renee Good lost her life. The tragedy is that you have ICE officers who are going into communities where they’re worried that if they call 911, no one’s going to come to help them.”
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The comments differ from those Vance made earlier this month to the press during a White House briefing. At the time, Vance claimed Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making” and called her “brainwashed” in fiery comments.
In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner Thursday, Vance said the Trump administration will take disciplinary action “when justified” against ICE officers who make “mistakes” in effectuating President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.
