A portion of the MAGA base that has long supported mass deportations is worried that the Trump administration will pump the brakes on its immigration enforcement strategy in the wake of mass public outrage over the killing of two Americans by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
"We have to hold the line. There can be no deescalation at all. You don't need to bring down the temperature. Raise the temperature. Put them under pressure," Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, said on his War Room podcast last week.
Commentator Megyn Kelly fumed about the immigration enforcement strategy seeming to shift to target only criminal illegal aliens, rather than anyone in the country illegally.
"I'm sorry, but that's not what we voted for. We actually did vote for all of them to all get out," Kelly said last week. "This is a win for those protesters. It is."
President Trump — facing dipping approval ratings — has taken an uncharacteristically de-escalatory approach to mass uproar over the killings, which even many sitting Republicans have expressed alarm about.
Rather than refuse to admit mistakes and make no concessions, he has reshuffled personnel, had friendly calls with Democratic officials in Minnesota, and bent to Democrats' demands.
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who had been overseeing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota and reportedly answered directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, was relegated back to his job overseeing operations in El Centro, California. Border Czar Tom Homan was sent to Minneapolis to clean up the immigration enforcement crisis.
Back in Washington, the White House negotiated with Senate Democrats and agreed to separate funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a slate of five other appropriations bills — slapping a two-week patch on DHS funding with a promise to negotiate over Democrats' demands
Without committing the MAGA sin of directly criticizing Trump, some MAGA die-hards are signaling that a softer approach is the wrong approach, and worrying it could encourage the rowdy protesters that have clashed with immigration agents in Minneapolis.
The House Freedom Caucus in a letter to Trump last week encouraged Trump to utilize the Insurrection Act — deploying military troops to carry out law enforcement functions — to "maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of the laws of the United States."
"If you blink now in Minneapolis, they're going to send the insurgents to Maine. Then they will follow every single place," MAGA commentator Jack Posobiec said on Bannon's show last week. "You'll never make it to Detroit, to Chicago, to Philadelphia, to Los Angeles, to New York. No. Take the fight here. If they want the fight to be here, you make the fight here and put the insurgency down immediately."
Homan insisted in a press conference last week that "we are not surrendering the president's mission in immigration enforcement."
"The prioritization are going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats and national security threats," Homan said, before adding: "If you're in the country illegally, you're never off the table."
That's making some conservatives frustrated.
"To be clear, I voted for mass deportations. Not just 'rapists and murderers,'" conservative radio host Jesse Kelly said on X last week. "Get every illegal out of my country. I know that won't happen quite yet. But the GOP had better recognize that people who think like me are actually the majority. All of them. Out."
The softer tactics from Trump come as a surprise given the die-hard immigration hawks in his administration like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
But Trump has given plenty of indications that he's not as much of an immigration restrictionist as some believe, or wish, him to be.
Trump told the New York Times in an interview last month that he would "love to have a comprehensive immigration policy"; that he wanted so-called Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children to feel "safe" and that he would "love to be able to do something for them;" and that he would "possibly" support a plan that includes a pathway to citizenship for migrants.
In what appeared to be an acknowledgement of the difficulty of the immigration issue given the immigration restrictionists in his base, Trump said when asked about details: "I don't want to go into that because it's a very ticklish subject."
Further reading: Wall Street Journal, Trump and His Team Have a Well-Worn Crisis Playbook. It Backfired in Minnesota… Washington Examiner, Trump officials work to ease tensions in Minneapolis as secretive negotiations progress.
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