One of the main things that has led to greater difficulty with enforcing federal immigration law in Minnesota is the lack of cooperation from the state and local officials.
What that means is that jails aren't notifying ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) when they are releasing people, so that ICE can pick them up from the safety and security of the jail. They're releasing them back into the community, which then sets up both the difficulty of hunting them down and picking them up with more potential issues.
On top of that, you have to deal with the rabid anti-ICE crazies who may try to obstruct you. In other states, you might have local police assisting in crowd control, so that's less of an issue, but Minnesota largely hasn't given that cooperation. Even when they were storming the Home2Suites for the Hilton hotel, breaking through the doors, even struggling with an MPD officer and security, it took a long time for the police to show up.
All of this isn't sitting well with some of the police, both nationally and in Minnesota.
St. Paul Police Federation President Mark Ross set it out plainly, saying that if they had been allowed to be cooperative with ICE, it could have prevented the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“Since the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul back in 2008, Minnesota law enforcement has undergone extensive training in mobile field force configurations and crowd management for major events. And because of that, I think we’re in the best position to deal with that,” Ross said.
“Unfortunately, our local politicians would not allow us to do that,” he added. [....]
“Had we been allowed just a little bit of coordination – not in terms of what ICE is doing, but if they say, ‘Hey, we need to go to this place to serve a warrant, we’re going to be out there a couple hours. We’re nervous that crowds are going to form and give us trouble. Can you come out and help?’ That’s something we can easily coordinate with a little bit of notice, and sometimes with hardly any notice, we can get out there quickly,” Ross said.
“I believe, had we been able to do that, that there would be no loss of life at this point,” he said. [...]
“We want to be out there. We want to be keeping people safe, and it’s been really tough. We really feel like we’re in the middle of this, obviously, not by choice,” Ross added.
That just blows up the Democratic narrative, laying the fault on ICE. They have cooperation in most of the other states, without the same level of resistance from the state and local officials, and they don't have anywhere near the issues that have happened in Minnesota. So this isn't because of ICE, it's because the Democratic politicians refuse to cooperate.
Here are some of the stats from other states without the violence of Minnesota.
It wasn't just a Minnesota police union official weighing in; the National Police Association weighed in as well, responding to an X post from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Frey said:
The job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce fed immigration laws. I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to MPLS & is from Ecuador. It’s similar to the policy your guy Rudy had in NYC. Everyone should feel safe calling 911.
He's right that they don't "enforce" immigration laws, but the problem is they are fighting against their enforcement.
The job of the police is to keep people safe, and that policy, which can lead to criminal illegal aliens getting away, is not "keeping people safe." And you're not keeping the agitators or federal agents safe when you don't provide police for at least crowd control, as the police union president Mark Ross observed.
The NPA nuked Frey and the Democratic narrative, but good. They even drop the "mostly peaceful" line on him to upbraid him.
ICE agents can't enforce federal law either when they're busy dodging Molotov cocktails and getting swarmed by the same 'mostly peaceful' mobs you prohibit MPD from arresting for local laws like disorderly conduct, assault, arson, property damage...
Bottom line?
These are the guys on the line. They know what the police are supposed to be doing, and they're frustrated that that isn't happening because they actually care about protecting the people. That's all on the Democratic officials - that's what needs to change. That's what the Border Czar Tom Homan is working to change.
It remains to be seen if the state and local officials will comply.