“To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country … would be nothing less, than to admit the Grecian Horse into the Citadel of our Liberty and Sovereignty.” —Alexander Hamilton (1802)

There was great news for America this week. The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released its annual crime rate report for 40 large American cities, finding that last year, the homicide rate dropped by a whopping 21%. Indeed, the murder rate has dropped to a historic low not seen since 1900. Apparently, supporting law enforcement gets results. Notably, this drop occurred in a year when legal gun ownership continues to trend upward.

Furthermore, as our Thomas Gallatin noted, other crime rates have dropped as well: carjackings are down 61% since 2023, resident burglaries are down 17%, and shoplifting is down 10%.

This is yet another check in Donald Trump’s success column during his exceptional first year of his second term.

Unfortunately, crime is up in Minneapolis, the epicenter of the Left’s anti-ICE thuggery. The “Resistance Movement” in that once-fair city has erupted into violent confrontations between mostly federal officers and well-trained, well-organized, and well-funded combatants.

Over the last three weeks, those confrontations resulted in the shooting deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which triggered nationwide protests against the ICE operations in Minneapolis.

The confrontation with Pretti, who suffered injuries in another violent confrontation last week, occurred as ICE agents were attempting to arrest Jose Huerta-Chuma, an Ecuadorian illegal immigrant with a violent record.

Federal agents confronting Pretti repeatedly yelled “He’s got a gun!” before two agents fired on Pretti.

As a former law enforcement officer, my perspective on officer-involved shootings is tempered by an understanding of split-second decisions in confrontations for which the Leftmedia’s armchair talkingheads and scribes have no context. As for Pretti, I will wait on body camera evaluation, but this is indisputable: Had both Good and Pretti complied with lawful orders instead of taking aggressive actions against LEOs, both would still be alive.

President Trump initially responded: “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric! Instead, these sanctimonious political fools should be looking for the Billions of Dollars that has been stolen from the people of Minnesota, and the United States of America. LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!”

He is right about “insurrection.”

He later declared: “I’m looking at that whole situation. I love everybody. I love all of our people. I love [Alex Pretti’s] family. And it’s a very sad situation.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated the obvious: “Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets.”

However, I can tell you that, before I had seen the first video of the Renee Good incident, I strongly objected to the characterization of Good’s actions by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as “an act of domestic terrorism” before there was any evaluation of the incident.

And she did it again right after the deadly confrontation between ICE and Pretti, asserting, “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” At the time, that was completely baseless, and there is no evidence since then to affirm that assessment. She then doubled down: “This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That’s the facts.”

For Noem to brand these protesters as “domestic terrorists” is just hyperbolic accelerant, which serves no good purpose.

On Monday, recognizing Noem’s deficiencies, Trump deployed seasoned Border Czar Tom Homan to de-escalate the violent confrontations. He then met with Noem to plan a reset.

Trump also initiated calls with Minnesota’s perennially petulant governor, Tim Walz, and Minneapolis’s adolescent boy-wonder mayor, Jacob Frey. He asked that they cooperate with ICE and turn over criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated, along with illegal aliens with active warrants or known criminal histories.

Homan also met with Walz and Frey, characterizing those meetings as “productive.”

Frey wasted no time asserting that Minneapolis “will not enforce federal immigration laws.”

The Trump administration has poorly played its hand in Minneapolis, and now that the resistance movement has the momentum, even the leading mainstream media outlets on both the Left and Right agree that immediate de-escalation is required.

There needs to be a louder and more effective campaign regarding ICE operations — the fact that those operations are focused on ridding our communities of the “worst of the worst” illegal immigrants with violent criminal records.

In early December, I wrote in “The ICE Ops Optics Problem” that the ICE focus must clearly be on violent criminal illegal aliens, the “worst of the worst,” as Trump repeatedly promised, and if that mission was not clear, the political implications would be staggering, not to mention the hemorrhage of Trump’s Hispanic voter constituency.

As I noted then, Trump delivered on his promise to end Joe Biden’s open border crisis, having largely succeeded in shutting down illegal immigration across our southern border and implementing a zero-release policy.

But the optics of the administration’s ICE operations since September have been a public relations disaster as the Left has weaponized immigration. As Border Czar Homan insisted last year, the focus all along should have been arresting and deporting the “worst of the worst.”

Clearly, the public is behind deporting criminal illegal aliens.

According to CNN’s data guru Harry Enten, a majority of Americans now support deportation of all illegal immigrants.

But to the point, according to the reputable Pew Research Center, “Nearly all (97%) support deporting those who have committed violent crimes.”

And DHS reports that “70% of the illegal aliens that the Trump Administration has arrested in the last year have either pending criminal charges or prior criminal convictions.” Additionally, most of the remaining 30% of those arrests were of illegal immigrants swept up in the company of those offenders. But there is a wide gulf between public support for deportation based on a misdemeanor criminal charge versus felony charges and convictions for child molestation, rape, and murder — again, the “worst of the worst.”

ICE must narrow its focus and limited resources to the deportation of violent offenders and make that mission abundantly clear moving forward to offset the terrible optics.

At this juncture, as pressure mounts from all sides, I think that Trump and Homan can accomplish a reduction of force by citing the safety of our law enforcement officers on the ground, though Trump denies that it is a “pullback.”

We will see how that de-escalation plays out.

However, the administration will have to more cautiously choose ICE operation locations moving forward because the now-empowered resistance will show up in greater force. As political analyst Byron York notes, “Keep in mind the activists’ goal: They don’t want ICE to deport illegal immigrants in a safe, smooth, and efficient way. They want to stop the deportations.”

Meanwhile, this debacle has given Tim Walz diversionary cover from the federal investigation of billions of dollars of fraud, which could ensnare Walz and Frey. A good indication of how much trouble Walz is in would be his withdrawal from his reelection bid.

But that has not stopped his propensity for absurd inflammatory rhetoric. Law professor Jonathan Turley notes this week: “After previously calling ICE ‘Gestapo,’ Walz just compared removals pursuant to federal law to capturing people to carry out genocide. … Walz is using this reckless rhetoric as signs appeared in Minneapolis over the weekend calling for people to ‘Kill Nazis.’”

His latest assertion compared ICE operations to the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews: “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank.”

In response, the U.S. Holocaust Museum issued this statement: “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”

Predictably, given the Demos’ momentum on anti-ICE propaganda, they are now insisting on defunding DHS or else they will force another government shutdown, despite the public relations failure of their last shutdown over healthcare. Apparently, they are not aware that defunding DHS will cut funding for TSA and FEMA — but ICE is already funded through 2029.

And a footnote: Rather than referring to Alex Pretti as a “violent protester,” Leftmedia outlets repeatedly label him an “ICU nurse.” For the record, there were no leftist protests in support of another nurse, Laken Riley, after her brutal sexual assault and murder by an illegal immigrant.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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