Leavitt says Trump spoke to Walz, demands Minnesota ‘work together peacefully’ with ICE: ‘Let cops be cops’
President Donald Trump spoke directly with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and demanded that state and local law enforcement “work together peacefully” with federal authorities Monday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke about the conversation during her Monday press briefing, saying Trump wants to “let cops be cops.” She condemned Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for encouraging anti-ICE agitators, saying it led to the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by law enforcement this month.
“It is President Trump’s hope and wish and demand for the resistance and chaos to end today. That’s why President Trump spoke to Gov. Walz directly this morning, and he has outlined a clear and simple path to restoring law and order in Minnesota,” Leavitt said.
His first demand is that Walz, Frey and Democratic leaders elsewhere in the state turn over all illegal aliens currently incarcerated, in addition to any illegal aliens with “active warrants or known criminal histories.”
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Trump also demanded that state and local law enforcement be permitted to hand over illegal aliens who are arrested. Finally, Trump is calling for local law enforcement to assist in apprehending and detaining illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes.
“If Governor Walz and Mayor Frey implement these common sense cooperative measures … Customs and Border Patrol will not be needed to support ICE on the ground in Minnesota,” Leavitt said. “ICE and local law enforcement can peacefully work together as they are effectively doing in so many other states.”
“We want to let cops be cops,” she said.
The push comes as Trump is also calling on Congress to pass legislation to ban sanctuary cities, where law enforcement is prohibited from working with federal authorities.
Walz acknowledged his call with Trump in a statement on social media, but it did not appear that the pair came to any agreement.
“I spoke to the President earlier. We had a productive conversation and I explained to him that his staff doesn’t have their facts straight about Minnesota,” Walz wrote.
He shared an accompanying op-ed he wrote for The Wall Street Journal on Monday, in which he argued that federal presence in Minnesota is no longer about immigration, but rather “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of our state.”
“The administration claims that Minnesota jails release ‘the worst of the worst.’ In reality, the Minnesota Department of Corrections honors all federal and local detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen,” Walz wrote. “There is not a single documented case of the department’s releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.”
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