Tom Homan Eases Tensions in Restive Minneapolis with Focus on Cooperation

White House border czar Tom Homan showed up in Minneapolis late last month intent on lowering the temperature — while continuing to rigorously execute President Trump's hardline immigration agenda.

Caught between hard-left agitators enraged by the shooting deaths of two of their comrades and Trump supporters who might view any change in enforcement practices as a concession to their political enemies, Homan had a difficult balance to strike.

But the former cop and Border Patrol agent appears to be finding that middle ground — at least for now. Homan announced on Wednesday that the administration is pulling 700 federal immigration-enforcement personnel out of Minneapolis, effective immediately. The drawdown, Homan stressed, is due to the "unprecedented cooperation" ICE began receiving from state and local officials.

An "unprecedented" number of Minnesota county jails, Homan said, are now informing ICE when they have immigration targets in custody, allowing a smaller team of agents to arrest that individual in the safety of the jail, rather than in the chaos of the street. That change, blessed by Attorney General Keith Ellison after a meeting with Homan, allows ICE to operate with fewer agents — and it eliminates the opportunity for left-wing agitators to create the kind of volatile situations that led to the death of Alex Pretti and Renee Good last month.

"Homan is a consensus builder with a solid law enforcement reputation," a source close to the administration told NR. "Tom gets sh** done the right way and he is widely respected for that."

As sources close to the White House see it, Homan's targeted, criminal-first deportation strategy represents a shift from the maximalist, numbers-focused approach championed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Whereas Homan is seen as more of a process hardliner whose methodical internal removal strategy revolves around prioritizing illegal aliens with federal criminal warrants, Noem and Miller have spent the first year of Trump's second term prioritizing flashier roundups and higher deportation numbers, no matter the illegal alien's federal warrant status or criminal history. Miller announced on Fox News in May of last year that the administration would shoot for 3,000 illegal alien arrests per day. (A Department of Justice lawyer later told judges that Miller's quota did not reflect actual administration policy).

Wednesday's federal agent drawdown was seen by people close to the administration as another strike against the numbers-focused strategy that has historically been preferred by the latter camp. The White House, meanwhile, insists that the rift between the "hardliner" Noem and the "moderate" Homan is a media invention.

"The idea that Tom Homan is someone who is 'moderate' on mass deportations is absolutely laughable," a White House official told National Review. "This is not something that the media or anyone would have ever suggested until now, when they're trying to drive a wedge or create false narratives."

The emphasis on targeting hardened criminals is intended to reassure a restless public, but the White House remains sensitive to attacks from immigration hawks on the right — hence Homan's repeated insistence that run-of-the-mill illegal immigrants are still on the table.

What does this mean in practice? "If immigration enforcement operation officers are conducting an operation and they’re going after someone who has a criminal conviction for assault, and in the process, they find he's with three other people who are here illegally but don't have any additional criminal convictions, those people will be arrested as well," a White House official told National Review.

Fundamentally, the White House must choose between prioritizing sheer deportation numbers, in which case they'll sweep up many otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants and inflame the left, and hardened criminals, in which case they risk being perceived as soft by their base.

This dynamic is further complicated by the ongoing negotiations over DHS funding in which Democrats are demanding a major overhaul to the department's immigration-enforcement agencies. Without an agreement, federal funding for DHS – which oversees FEMA, the TSA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service — will lapse. Congressional Republicans and White House officials maintain that congressional Democratic leaders' demands for new federal immigration officer protocol changes are unrealistic and demonstrative of their refusal to negotiate in good faith.

The administration has made at least one concession this week in mandating that all federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis begin wearing body cameras. The body camera program will be "expanded nationwide" as "funding is available," Noem said.

While Noem and Miller have spent much of the past year largely aligned on deportation strategy, sources close to the White House insist they have spent recent days knifing each other behind the scenes as tensions over the administration's deportation strategy have grown more heightened in the wake of the Pretti and Good shootings.

Both parties dispute this narrative. A White House official maintained to NR that the president's entire immigration and law and order team is on the same page in working to implement Trump's agenda.

Pressed for comment, Noem told National Review that Miller has been "instrumental" in delivering the president's agenda. "There's no question Stephen has been a lynchpin in President Trump's historic success to secure the border and more than 3 million illegal aliens exiting the country," Noem said in a statement. "Stephen's passion, patriotism and persistence helps fuel this administration in our efforts to carry out the largest deportation of criminal illegal aliens in the history of our republic."