Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) clashed sharply with Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins over the Biden administrations border failures and Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) surge operations in his city during a tense Wednesday interview.
According to Mediaite, Frey appeared on Fox News to discuss a massive fraud investigation in Minnesota that could involve billions of dollars, as well as protests in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother Renee Good by an ICE agent last week. The mayor, who has long positioned himself as a progressive critic of federal immigration enforcement, has become a central figure in the backlash after he infamously told ICE to get the f*ck out of Minneapolis in the wake of Goods death.
Frey used the segment to argue that federal immigration authorities are unfairly targeting Democrat-led jurisdictions while giving Republican strongholds a pass. He claimed that ICE has focused its operations on blue cities rather than red states such as Florida and Texas, even as Minneapolis pursues a lawsuit against the Trump administration over ICEs presence in the city.
Jenkins, however, pressed the mayor on the consequences of those sanctuary-style policies, tying the crisis in Minneapolis directly to the Biden administrations border agenda. Would you agree, Mr. Mayor, you ask ICE to get the F out of your city, heres the little secret: ICE, Im sure, would like to not have to be doing the surge operations. But because of four years under the President Biden administration, you had an unprecedented number of illegal migrants coming across the border. Many of them turned out to be criminal, illegal aliens, Jenkins said.
To underscore his point, Jenkins displayed the cases of six illegal immigrants detained in Minnesota, each either convicted of child sex crimes or murder. He then confronted Frey with the public-safety implications of refusing to cooperate with federal immigration holds, known as detainers, which many conservative critics argue is a hallmark of progressive, soft-on-crime governance.
These individuals were roaming free in your city because your policies do not cooperate with detainers, and so ICE is then going to get these people off the street. You would agree that the streets are safer without these individuals on your streets? Jenkins asked Frey. The question cut to the heart of the debate: whether ideological resistance to federal immigration enforcement is worth the cost to community safety.
Frey responded with a lengthy defense of his administrations record on crime while attempting to separate immigration enforcement from violent-crime cooperation. Look, in Minneapolis and in Minnesota we are anti-murder, we are anti-crime, we are for improving the safety where we can and by the way we have worked with administrations, both present and past, to drive down crime, he said, insisting that the city collaborates with federal agencies when it comes to serious offenses.
He continued by highlighting joint efforts with federal law enforcement, even as he resists ICEs broader mission. Weve worked with the DEA, the ATF, the FBI to prosecute and charge violent crime. Weve worked to get perpetrators of violent gun crime off the street, narcotics off the street. In fact, the work that was conducted was so successful, it resulted in the lowest number of shootings on record on, for instance, the north side, Frey argued, portraying Minneapolis as committed to public safety despite its defiance of ICE.
Frey then pivoted back to immigration, claiming the current ICE surge is politically motivated rather than driven by crime concerns. We are willing to work with people when its about murder and when it is about crime. But the truth is that this aint about that, he said, before questioning why the largest immigration enforcement action on record in the United States is happening in a city he says does not have a particularly large illegal population.
He pressed the point further, suggesting conservative-led states should be the focus if the goal were truly enforcement. If this were about that, wed have many important areas where there would be areas where we could work together. This, however, is the largest immigration enforcement action on record in the United States, Frey said, adding that it would actually make more sense to conduct such operations in Texas or Florida or Utah, where you do actually have those large numbers of undocumented immigrants.
Frey insisted that Minneapolis continues to cooperate with Washington when it comes to violent offenders, even as he dismissed the ICE surge as something else entirely. But again, if the issue is murder or crime, the answer is, we do work with the federal government. In fact, were presently doing that. Were present. The truth is, its not about murder or crime, it is not, he maintained, framing the dispute as a broader ideological clash over immigration rather than a straightforward law-and-order question.
Jenkins was unmoved, pointing to neighboring red states as examples of how cooperation with ICE can proceed without the kind of unrest now roiling Minneapolis. You mentioned Texas and Florida. You just had a surge in Louisiana, and you didnt see any of the commotion that you are seeing now in your city because all of those states fully cooperate with ICE detainers, Jenkins shot back, underscoring the conservative argument that when local leaders respect federal law, communities are safer and political theatrics give way to enforcement.
The exchange, aired on Fox News and circulated widely online, crystallizes a broader national divide: progressive mayors resisting federal immigration enforcement even as crime and border insecurity remain top concerns for voters, and conservative critics arguing that sanctuary-style policies put ideology ahead of public safety. Watch above via Fox News.
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