Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says he won’t cooperate with the Trump administration on their mass deportation program.
Frey, a liberal who was slammed by both conservatives and the left for his handling of the 2020 George Floyd riots and his progressive policies, announced he’s running for a third term this week.
In an attempt to polish his left-wing credentials in the heavily Democrat city, Frey appears to be picking a battle with Trump, who previously called the mayor ‘weak and lousy’ in a 2019 speech.
During a speech Tuesday, flanked by Minnesota Congresswoman and ‘Squad’ leftist Ilhan Omar, he announced he would not cooperate with federal authorities on deporting illegal migrants.
‘I want to speak to the undocumented. We love you, we care about you and the city of Minneapolis, we will stand up for you and we will do anything in our power to help,’ he said.
He added that the migrants are ‘not an alien in our city, you’re a neighbor’.
Frey added: ‘Now, in Minneapolis we have what is called a separation ordinance and that separation ordinance states clearly that our city officials will not be gathering information, showing who is and who is not documented.’
The ordinance means that they have no knowledge of who is an illegal migrant and therefore cannot arrest anyone for such reasons.
‘Our police officers will not be cooperating with federal immigration law. We enforce state and local laws in Minneapolis and we will do so to the best of our ability.’
He concluded: ‘But as for cooperation with ICE? The answer is no.’
Last week, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told Fox 9 that the deportation are ‘a matter for the federal government to deal with; that’s not our job’.
He added that it would make it harder for the Minneapolis Police Department to solve crimes if they were forced to help out.
ICE arrests have begun in the area already, according to WCCO, with at least one man detained from Minneapolis’ ‘twin city’ of St. Paul.
Trump’s order to conduct the largest deportation in history is off to a quick start as authorities are now arresting over a thousand illegal migrants per day.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been working at a break-neck pace since the president was sworn in nine days ago and deportation flights have been taking off daily ever since.
In the president’s first nine days they have arrested over 7,500 aliens, a senior Trump administration official revealed to DailyMail.com.
Nationwide on Tuesday ICE made 1,016 arrests, many of whom were violent criminals charged with a slew of charges from child pornography to attempted murder. Among these were at least 16 Tren de Aragua members, the official shared.
Trump noted Wednesday evening that he is still not satisfied with the number of daily alien arrests.
He said he wants the daily number to be around 1,800 per day and rising.
ICE, which falls under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purview, appears poised to ramp up operations.
And the idea is popular, a majority of Americans support deporting immigrants in the country illegally. That support rises even further if the illegal migrant has a criminal record.
Border Czar Tom Homan has also indicated he plans on scaling up deportation efforts too, which have been assisted with U.S. military planes provided by Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth.
Among those arrested Tuesday was a Mexican national charged in New York for attempted murder, assault and possession of a weapon.
ICE Detroit/Cincinnati arrested a Honduran national with a firearm that had a sight and a suppressor. The agents filed a detainer and the suspect remains in custody.
Nearby in Columbus, Ohio, ICE arrested a twice deported El Salvadorian man that is known to be a local leader of the notorious MS-13 cartel and is now being prosecuted.
Democrats, meanwhile, decry the deportation push as damaging.
‘I’m aware of reports of the illegal detainment of American citizens by ICE in Milwaukee. This is what Trump wants — to sow fear amongst communities who have certain names, certain complexions or speak certain languages,’ Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) posted on X.
New Mexico Democrat Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández wrote ‘ICE agents are harassing and threatening Native Americans.’
‘Trump said you can tell bad immigrants by what they ‘look’ like. Tribal members look like the first Americans. Stop harassing them,’ she wrote online.
But Trump doubled-down further Wednesday announcing the reopening of a 30,000 bed facility in Guantanamo Bay to be used for migrant housing.
‘Today, I’m also signing an Executive Order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,’ Trump said at a White House ceremony.
Trump added: ‘We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back.
‘So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo Bay. This will double our capacity immediately, and tough. That’s a tough – that’s a tough place to get out of.’
The George W. Bush administration opened the facility in 2002 to detain ‘illegal enemy combatants’ during the ‘War on Terror.’
Ultimately, successive administrations have negotiated a series of arrangements to transfer prisoners out of the facility since then, amid public and congressional pressure to close it.