Mayor Comments On ICE Operations In City
During Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s The Lead, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey offered a strikingly tense assessment of the situation unfolding in his city, one that revealed both anxiety and contradiction at the heart of local leadership’s response to escalating unrest.
Speaking with host Jake Tapper, Frey said he is “more and more concerned, each and every day” that someone — whether a civilian, a police officer, or an ICE agent — could be “seriously injured or killed” due to the conduct seen on the streets and the growing presence of federal immigration agents.
Tapper framed the question around the Trump administration’s decision to surge additional federal agents into Minneapolis, asking whether Frey feared that protests could further escalate and whether he had a message for Minnesotans to help prevent that outcome.
Frey’s answer was candid in tone, if somewhat revealing in implication. He explained that for more than a month, he and the city’s police chief had privately and publicly warned of “grave concerns” that violence could erupt. According to Frey, those warnings were tragically validated when someone was, in fact, seriously harmed.
Rather than expressing any sense of relief or stabilization, Frey said his concerns have only intensified. Each passing day, he argued, brings greater risk, driven by what he described as dangerous conduct on the streets and what he called a “massive increase” in ICE agents operating in the area.
He emphasized that the Trump administration itself has characterized the operation as the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history, a detail Frey appeared to cite as further justification for his alarm.
Yet within the same conversation, Frey attempted to strike a softer note, insisting that protesters are largely acting peacefully and “doing right by their communities, by and large.” That assertion sits uneasily alongside his repeated warnings about lethal outcomes. If the environment is peaceful, the implication follows that the danger must lie elsewhere. If the danger is truly imminent, then the assurances of calm begin to sound hollow.
What is clear is that Minneapolis remains a flashpoint, with federal, state, and local authorities pulling in different directions. As more agents arrive and protests continue, the stakes rise accordingly.
Frey’s comments underscore that reality, even if they stop short of offering a clear path toward de-escalation. In the end, concern alone is not a strategy, and Minneapolis residents are left watching to see whether warnings turn into action before another tragedy occurs.