Vice President JD Vance blamed local residents for the immigration-related unrest in Minnesota during a visit to the state Thursday, saying that greater cooperation between local and federal authorities was the only way to ease tensions that have exploded in recent weeks after the killing of U.S. citizen Renee Good by an immigration agent earlier this month.
Following a roundtable discussion with local and federal officials in Minneapolis, Vance held an at-times combative press conference in which he suggested that immigration authorities would not alter their aggressive tactics to appease locals frightened by the draconian crackdown.
“If you understand this in context, this is the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided not to cooperate with immigration enforcement at all,” Vance said before a small crowd of reporters and residents.
“Actually what has happened is that as we’ve enforced the law there’s been this weird reaction, again unique to this city. This is not a common thing across the United States.”
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Thursday’s roundtable was not open to the press and it’s unclear exactly who took part, though Vance said he heard from “some” who opposed ICE’s presence in the city along with several federal immigration-enforcement officers.
Vance appeared in Minneapolis as protests continued to sweep the city in response to the killing of Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident, on Jan. 7. A private autopsy commissioned by Good’s family this week found that she was shot at least three times, including in the head.
The Justice Department last week announced that it would not be investigating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer identified as Good’s shooter.
Vance, on the other hand, suggested that the Trump administration was looking into Good’s shooter for possible disciplinary action.
“Of course we are investigating the Renee Good shooting,” Vance said when asked about the status of an investigation Thursday. “But we’re investigating them in a way that respects people’s rights and then ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they’re going to face disciplinary action, but we aren’t going to try them in the court of public opinion.”
President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act over the Minnesota protests. Though the president stepped back publicly last week from the idea, at least 1,500 active-duty troops in Alaska have been placed on standby for deployment to Minneapolis.
Vance on Thursday addressed the Insurrection Act, saying that the option still remained on the table.
“My understanding of the Insurrection Act is it would allow the federal government to use the military for local law enforcement operations. Right now, we don’t think we need that,” Vance said. “What I do worry about is that the chaos gets worse, if more and more ICE agents start getting assaulted … that would be a problem.”
Vance’s visit came on the heels of a whistleblower complaint Wednesday that claimed an internal ICE memo authorized immigration officers to enter private residences on the basis of an administrative warrant — approved by a federal agency, officer or immigration judge — rather than the traditionally required judicial warrant, which carries the signature of a judge.
Speaking on Thursday, Vance argued that the memo, first reported by The Associated Press, was a simple administrative change that did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
“What DHS has really proposed is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law,” Vance said. “Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant, we’re talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system.”
He also blamed biased reporting for the flood of alarming stories emerging from the recent surge of federal officers into Minnesota, the largest deployment of manpower in DHS history.
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