Vice President JD Vance conceded Thursday that federal law enforcement officers have not been perfect in their handling of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. But in his visit to the city, Vance's main message was that the best way to reduce clashes around ICE operations would be for Democrats to just cooperate with the Trump administration's agenda.
"Look, I don't need Tim Walz or Jacob Frey or anybody else to come out and say that they agree with JD Vance or Donald Trump on immigration," Vance said, referring to the Democratic governor and mayor of Minneapolis. "I just don't need that. What I do need them to do is empower their local officials to help our federal officials out in a way where this can be a little bit less chaotic and it can be a little bit more targeted."
Vance spoke to the media after a roundtable discussion in Minneapolis with business leaders and law enforcement officials.
Tensions peaked this month after a federal officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, 37, during a confrontation on Jan. 7. President Donald Trump, Vance and other administration officials have, without offering conclusive evidence, said Good was connected to left-wing protesters and a threat to officers as they approached her car and she began to drive.
Earlier Thursday, at an event in Toledo, Ohio, Vance also reiterated his message that the Trump administration needs more cooperation from Democrats in Minnesota if people want fewer confrontations. Responding to a question from NBC News, Vance agreed with recent comments by Trump that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will "make some mistakes sometimes."
“My thought on that is, well, of course there have been mistakes made, because you’re always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement,” said Vance, adding that “99% of our police officers, probably more than that, are doing everything right.”
He also used coarse language to reinforce Trump’s position that Democrats there are impeding ICE operations and have created an environment that breeds unruly protests.
“If you disagree ... fine, make that argument,” Vance said in response to a question from a reporter. “But make that argument at the ballot box. Write an op-ed in the newspaper; argue about it on social media. Don’t go to the streets and start assaulting federal law enforcement officers because you disagree with the policies of our administration. It’s cowardly bulls---, and it’s got to stop.”
Speaking in Minneapolis in the afternoon, Vance similarly acknowledged there are "occasionally videos out there that suggest that these guys, or at least some of the people who work for them, are not doing everything right."
He added however, that he sympathized with the federal officers who "are under an incredible amount of stress" and facing harassment because of "a very few far-left agitators."
"Protest me. Protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully," he said. "If you assault a law enforcement officer, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."
After he told reporters this month that Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who fatally shot Good, was protected by “absolute immunity,” Vance said Thursday that he “didn’t say, and I don’t think any other official within the Trump administration said, that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity.”
“That’s absurd,” Vance said. “What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into. ... Of course we’re investigating the Renee Good shooting, but we’re investigating them in a way that respects people’s rights and then ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they’re going to face disciplinary action, but we’re not going to judge them in the court of public opinion.”
Vance added that he believes the best way to "lower the temperature" in Minneapolis "would be for state and local officials to cooperate" with the administration. Vance said he had not spoken with Walz on his trip to Minneapolis.
"I believe our chief of staff spoke to the governor and has been in constant contact with his staff," Vance said. "Over the past week, we’ve been, in my office, in constant contact with people here on the ground in Minneapolis. There were certainly people at a roundtable with opposing views. ... If Gov. Walz wants to call me, we’ll absolutely continue talking."
Democrats have disputed the administration’s assertions about its broader immigration operation and about the ICE encounter with Good. They also have found themselves pulled into a federal investigation into whether state officials conspired to impede law enforcement in the administration’s immigration operations. The Justice Department recently sent subpoenas to the offices of Walz, Frey and other state leaders, according to a document reviewed by NBC News and a person familiar with the investigation.
Both Walz and Frey have called for residents to refrain from violence in protesting the federal immigration enforcement efforts.
“It sounds like JD Vance is taking a whole lot of my talking points, but not all of them,” Frey said during a Thursday press conference following Vance’s remarks. “He said ‘Come out and protest, but do it peacefully.’ That sounds like exactly what I’ve been saying since the very first moments following the shooting of Renee Good.”
“Peace is not spraying irritants and chemicals at peaceful protesters, it’s not detaining a 5-year-old, it’s not dragging a pregnant woman through the streets,” he added.
In a post on X Thursday afternoon, Walz replied to Vance: "I’m glad the Vice President agrees the temperature needs to be turned down, but actions speak louder than words."
"We don’t need 3,000 ice agents in our streets — more than every local police department combined," he added. "Take the show of force off the streets and partner with the state on targeted enforcement of violent offenders instead of random, aggressive confrontation."
Trump, meanwhile, has expressed frustration with how his administration's immigration enforcement efforts have been received by the general public, as his approval numbers on immigration have taken a slight hit following Good's death.
In a series of posts to his Truth Social platform in recent days, Trump wrote that ICE was getting “too much media attention” in comparison with federal fraud allegations surrounding Minnesota's Somali community. He added that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE "must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system."
Vance emphasized several times during his stop in Minneapolis and at the earlier appearance in Toledo that ICE has been stymied repeatedly in trying to arrest and deport sex offenders, though he did not offer names.
Taking questions from reporters, Vance was asked about a local police chief’s claims that his own off-duty officers who are Black or brown were "targeted" by immigration officials and asked to show their paperwork. Vance said the Trump administration takes such accusations "very seriously" and will "certainly look into them as they come up."
"The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not," he said. "And then, if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation."
Vance also addressed reported instances of ICE agents’ detaining young children, as a public school district north of Minneapolis said immigration officials detained four of its students in recent weeks, one of them 5 years old.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that ICE agents were targeting the boy’s father, Conejo Arias, and that during the arrest, Arias “fled on foot — abandoning his child. For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child” while agents apprehended the father.
Vance said that he was initially shocked to see initial reports of ICE’s detaining a young child but that upon further research there was more to the story.
"What I find is that the 5-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien," Vance said. "And then they went, when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old? Well, what are they supposed to do?"
Vance also batted down concerns over a newly reported internal ICE memo that showed the agency told its officers that they can forcibly enter homes of people subject to deportation without warrants signed by judges. The memo, dated May 12, which reads that it was written by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, was shared with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., by two whistleblowers.
The memo instructs ICE personnel that they can forcibly enter a person's home using an administrative warrant if a judge has issued a “final order of removal.” Those warrants are different from judicial warrants, which judges or magistrates sign allowing entry into homes, and Lyons acknowledged the policy was a change from past procedures.
Vance said: "Our understanding is that you can enforce the immigration laws of the country under an administrative order if you have an administrative one. That’s what we think. That’s our understanding the law; that’s our best-faith attempt to understand the law."
Vance acknowledged the massive federal law enforcement presence was less than ideal, going as far as to say he does "not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis right now." But he again turned the discussion back to local officials, saying the large force would not be necessary "if we had a little bit more cooperation from the Minneapolis Police Department."
"This is a beautiful city," Vance said. "I’ve only been here a few times. I love it, even in this weather. I love Minneapolis. ... The directive that I got from the president of the United States is meet these guys halfway, work with them, so that we can make these immigration enforcement operations successful without endangering our ICE officers and so that we can turn down the chaos a little bit, at least, I think a lot, actually. But for us to do that, we need some help from the state and local officials."
Allan Smith reported from New York and Henry Gomez from Toledo, Ohio.
