President Trump’s border policy adviser, Tom Homan, said Thursday that federal authorities would wind down immigration crackdowns in Minnesota only if agents were given access to jails to seize undocumented immigrants for deportation.

Speaking to reporters publicly for the first time since arriving Minnesota on Monday after Border Patrol agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens during immigration operations, Homan suggested it could be a while before the Trump administration pulls federal agents out of Minneapolis.

“The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation,” Homan said Thursday. “As we see that cooperation happen, then the redeployment will happen.”

Homan, whom Trump deployed to Minnesota this week to bring down the political temperature after Border Patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, said the federal government was not backing down from its aggressive immigration agenda.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all,” he said. “We are not surrendering the president’s mission of immigration enforcement. Let’s make that clear.”

Homan’s focus on jails is not a new position for the Trump administration. He and other senior officials have long argued they would not be targeting immigrants in communities in Democratic-led cities if local officials allowed federal immigration officers access to their jails.

On Saturday, the day federal immigration agents shot Pretti, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz saying he could “bring an end to the chaos” in his state by, among other things, repealing sanctuary city policies and allowing federal agents into local jails.

Data from last year show that Republican-led states, such as Texas and Florida, have higher arrest numbers of immigrants than Democratic-led states, particularly when measured against population. That’s because they have a longer history of working directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are more committed to collaboration.

In red states, local law enforcement officers tend to work with federal agents, either by taking on ICE duties through so-called 287(g) agreements or by identifying undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and letting ICE into their jails and prisons.

While blue states, such as California, do cooperate with federal immigration — sharing information with ICE about undocumented immigrants with serious felonies — they do not allow federal agents access to those who have committed lesser infractions. Red states, however, are more likely to share information about offenses that may not be as severe, such as traffic infractions.

Trump announced Monday he was sending Homan to Minnesota — sidelining Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who had been leading operations in the state, as public outrage swelled over the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse.

Pretti was the second U.S. citizen fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks. On Jan. 7, a federal officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.

“I’m not here because the federal government has carried out this mission perfectly,” Homan said Thursday. “Nothing’s ever perfect, and anything can be improved on. And what we’ve been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient, by the book.”

Homan added: “President Trump wants this fixed, and I’m going to fix it.”

Since Homan arrived in Minnesota, he has met with a range of Democratic officials, including Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and and Minnesota Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison.

“Bottom line is you can’t fix problems if you don’t have discussions,” Homan said. “I came here to seek solutions, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Homan said that Ellison had agreed that county jails “may notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risks” so ICE can take them into custody. If local officials agreed to allow ICE access to jails, Homan said, the Trump administration would deploy fewer agents in communities.

“More agents in the jail means less agents in the street,” Homan said. “This is common-sense cooperation that allows us to draw down on the number of people we have here.”

But Ellison disputed Homan’s account of their conversation, saying in a statement he did not “negotiate … come to any agreement, or offer any compromise on the goal of keeping Minnesotans safe.”

Ellison said he stressed to Homan that existing Minnesota law requires state and local authorities to share information with federal immigration authorities regarding non-citizens convicted of felonies.

“I also explained that county sheriffs, not the attorney general, run county jails and are also covered by the same state law,” Ellison said. “I did not make, and could not have made, any agreement with him about how sheriffs share with ICE information about people in their county jails.

“While Mr. Homan and I agree no Minnesotan wants actual violent criminals on our streets, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status,” Ellison statement’s continued, “I firmly expressed to him that right now, Minnesotans’ foremost concern for their and their neighbors’ safety is the overwhelming presence and brutal tactics of federal immigration agents on those streets that are disrupting everyday life in our communities and doing harm to our neighbors.”

A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Homan’s remarks a “stale and tired distraction to hold American cities hostage while they continue to terrorize our neighbors, families and businesses.”

“California cooperates with federal authorities when there are serious, violent crimes involved,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. “What we don’t do is turn state or local police into an extension of a political agenda that undermines trust in our communities and actually makes everyone less safe.”

ICE has long conducted targeted operations of criminals. However, in the first year of Trump’s second term, federal agents began to broaden their focus, conducting sprawling raids that picked up non-English speakers and brown people in parking lots of Home Depots and car washes, or operating vendor cards on the streets.

Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Trump officials’ backs were against the wall as some Republicans had joined Democrats in opposing funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

“This isn’t their usual posture, which is to double down in the face of criticism,” Kerlikowske said. “So even to go as far as they’re going right now is a step in the right direction, but there’s still a lot more to do.

“The Border Patrol should not be involved in going into cities and trying to do law enforcement when they don’t have any training, experience, knowledge and the right leadership to do that.”

While attempting to position himself as a moderate on Thursday, Homan, a former acting ICE director under Trump, blamed the escalation in confrontations on demonstrators, saying he had begged for months for de-escalation.

“I said in March, if the rhetoric didn’t stop, there’s going to be bloodshed, and there has been,” Homan said. “I wish I wasn’t right. I don’t want to see anybody die — not officers, not members of the community and not the targets of our operations.”

Despite presenting himself as a leader in restraint who can calm tensions, the 64-year-old career immigration official has historically been at the forefront of many of the Trump administration’s most contentious policies.

During Trump’s first term, Homan threatened to prosecute politicians who adopt sanctuary city policies and warned that undocumented immigrants “should be afraid.”

He was a key proponent of Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy that separated migrant families at the border, put children in caged lockups and prosecuted the parents. The policy was criticized on both sides of the aisle, but Homan defended the stricter policy as a necessary step to deter illegal immigration.

In 2024, as Trump ran for a second term, Homan vowed: “I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

In recent days, the Trump administration has faced harsh rebuke from top judges in Minnesota, who have accused federal immigration agencies of repeatedly violating court orders.

On Wednesday, Patrick J. Schiltz, the chief federal judge in Minnesota and a George W. Bush appointee, accused ICE of defying more court directives over the last month than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” He presented the agency’s acting director, Todd Lyons, with a list of 96 court orders ICE had ignored and warned Lyons he could be found in contempt unless the agency begins following court decisions.

“ICE is not a law unto itself,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, another federal judge ordered the agency Wednesday to stop its deportation of refugees in Minnesota that had lawful status in the country. The Trump administration has said it would reevaluate thousands of cases of refugees granted legal status under the Biden administration.

“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully,” wrote the Clinton-appointed judge, “and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries.”

On Thursday, Homan said federal immigration officers were performing their duties in a challenging environment and “were trying to do it with professionalism.”

“If they don’t, they’ll be dealt with,” he said. “Like any other federal agency, we have standards of conduct.”

Homan said he had also urged local law enforcement leaders to work with the federal government to keep immigration agents safe.

“The chiefs I’ve talked to are committed to responding to 911 calls when protesters turned violent, agents are in a dangerous situation and there’s assaults,” Homan said. “They have committed to upholding public safety and responding to the needs not to enforce immigration law, but to keep the peace.”

Homan said that people in Minneapolis have threatened and assaulted federal agents. “If you don’t like what ICE is doing, go protest Congress,” he said.

More than 3,000 federal immigration agents have been working in Minnesota under the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement, Operation Metro Surge.

Homan spoke as an internal memo reviewed by Reuters showed ICE officers operating in the state were directed on Wednesday to avoid engaging with “agitators” and target only “aliens with a criminal history.”

“DO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS,” Marcos Charles, a top official in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, instructed officers via email, according to Reuters.

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(Times staff writer Michael Wilner contributed to this report.)

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