Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison told lawmakers on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s immigration surge in the state had hurt its people, its law enforcement efforts and its economy.
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was unapologetic.
“The Democrat party is very concerned with illegal aliens in this country,” Noem said. “I will tell you as Secretary of Homeland Security it is my job to get up every day to be concerned for American citizens.”
Noem testified before the House Judiciary Committee, following Tuesday’s hearing in the Senate over her handling of immigration, disaster relief and other DHS-related matters. The congressional hearings were her first since the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by federal immigration agents in Minnesota earlier this year.
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Meanwhile, Walz and Ellison testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to answer questions about allegations of mishandling welfare fraud in their state. But the immigration enforcement operations came up repeatedly, with the two Minnesotans and Democratic committee members arguing that the Trump administration derailed state efforts to root out fraud in favor of a punitive immigration crackdown.
“As a result of Metro Surge, federal prosecutor’s efforts to fight fraud in Minnesota have suffered a major setback,” Ellison said, pointing to resignations in the U.S. attorney’s office over the handling of Good’s shooting. “The remaining staff should be spending their time prosecuting fraudsters and criminals. Instead, they are drowning in immigration-related petitions resulting from Operation Metro Surge.”
The administration ended Operation Metro Surge on Feb. 12, but Walz and Ellison said Minnesotans are still picking up the pieces.
“The image of this brutal campaign are seared into our collective memory: the fragile innocence of the 5-year-old boy in a bunny hat being led away from his family, the maddening cruelty of a barely clothed man, a U.S. citizen, being dragged from his house in the dead of winter, the sheer devastation we feel of seeing the lifeless bodies of Renee Good and Alex Pretti,” Walz told the committee.
At Noem’s hearing, Democrats asked if she would take back comments she made following the shootings, claiming that Good and Pretti had engaged in acts of domestic terrorism.
“You celebrate the murder of American citizens with the same enthusiasm that you showed when you killed your own puppy,” Illinois Rep. Chuy Garcia, whose district was heavily targeted by federal immigration operations in his state, said to Noem. “You symbolize the cruelty, the corruption, and incompetence of this administration and the Republican go-alongs. Your thugs at DHS brutalize the American people and you lie and smear victims to cover up these crimes.”
Noem repeatedly refused to apologize for her comments about Good and Pretti. Instead, she restated the line she had used on Tuesday, offering condolences to their families.
“What happened in Minnesota in those two incidents was an absolute tragedy,” Noem said when the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin, asked her if she would still label Pretti and Good domestic terrorists. “I offer my condolences to those families because I know that their lives will never be the same.”
When Raskin pushed her, Noem said that there was an “ongoing investigation.” Pressed further on why she didn’t wait for the results of the pending investigation “to proclaim them domestic terrorists,” Noem answered: “And you didn’t wait to attack our law enforcement officers.”
Throughout the hearing, Democratic lawmakers played videos for Noem of immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota and other states, with California Rep. Zoe Lofgren showing a clip of a disabled woman who was going to a doctor’s appointment being dragged from her car and another ofa Minnesota man being arrested in freezing temperatures wearing only his underwear.
“What is the policy about taking an old man in his underwear out of a house in subfreezing temperatures,” Lofgren asked Noem. “Do you train agents not to do that? Or are they trained to do that?”
“All of our law enforcement officers go through extensive training,” Noem replied. “Our ICE officers go through 56 days of training. They have 28 of those on the job, but beyond that they are trained in constitutional law.”
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