Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

Opinion|Minneapolis May Be Trump’s Gettysburg

It was clear after the killing of Renee Good on Jan. 7 that “Operation Metro Surge” — the Trump administration’s pretextual immigration crackdown in Minnesota — was a failure. Far from cowing the people of Minneapolis, Good’s death at the hand of an ICE officer stiffened their resolve and led even more Minnesotans to join the fight against the president’s masked paramilitaries.

A less fanatical White House might have used that moment to stage a tactical withdrawal, to pull back on the assault and recalibrate in the face of stiff resistance. But in the actually existing Trump administration, immigration policy is dictated by rigid ideologues. They met Good’s death with insults, slander and the promise of further repression.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that Good was engaged in “domestic terrorism.” The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Good a “deranged lunatic.” Vice President JD Vance said that her actions were “an attack on law and order” and “an attack on the American people.” He also said that the officer who shot Good was protected by “absolute immunity.” (He later backtracked from this claim, insisting instead that he said the opposite, video evidence notwithstanding.)

We know what happened next. On Saturday, officers with Customs and Border Protection detained, beat, shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old I.C.U. nurse who had been observing and filming ICE and C.B.P. operations. Like Good’s death, Pretti’s was caught on camera, and like Good’s death, it was egregious. Images and video of Pretti’s killing exploded on social media. Before the White House could even respond there were protests on the ground, demands for accountability, calls to abolish ICE and palpable discontent from across the political spectrum. And when the administration did address the killing, it returned to the same lies and distortions it used to try to discredit Good.

“This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that,” Noem said, as if video of the confrontation did not exist. Similarly, Stephen Miller, the president’s homeland security adviser, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and accused Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota of “flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

By Sunday, officials in the Trump administration had begun to backpedal. By Monday, they were doing everything they could to appease the public’s anger. First, administration officials announced that they would remove Gregory Bovino, the highly visible field commander for Customs and Border Protection, from the area. Homeland Security said it would remove some C.B.P. agents from Minnesota, and President Trump said that he would withdraw ICE officers as well. “At some point, we will leave,” he said. “We’ve done, they’ve done, a phenomenal job.”