Walz Can’t Be Trusted To ‘Cooperate’ On Immigration Enforcement

President Donald Trump announced Monday morning that he had a productive call with Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., who signaled “cooperation” regarding the ongoing chaos and lawlessness in Minneapolis caused by left-wing agitators obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote on social media. “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”

In a Monday briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt detailed three requests from Trump to Walz that would help restore order in Minnesota. As Trump wrote, the first pillar would require Walz, Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, “and all Democrat leaders” to “turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated in their prisons and jails to federal authorities, along with any illegal aliens with active warrants or known criminal histories, for immediate deportation,” Leavitt said.

The second pillar requires state and local law enforcement to “turn over all illegal aliens” they arrest, and the third dictates that local police be required to “assist federal law enforcement in apprehending and detaining illegal aliens who are wanted for crimes, especially violent crimes.”

The administration apparently aims to pull some Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents out of Minnesota because they would no longer be needed if state and local police were there to support ICE. Initial reports suggest that such a drawdown is already happening.

In the same press briefing, however, Leavitt noted that Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who rammed her car into a law enforcement officer, would probably still be alive were it not for Walz and Frey fanning the flames of anti-ICE sentiment.

“This tragedy occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota. For weeks, Gov. Walz and the mayor, Jacob Frey, and other elected Democrats were spreading lies about federal law enforcement officers, who are risking their lives daily to remove the worst criminal illegal aliens from our streets: murderers, rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, and gang members,” Leavitt said. “Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey have shamefully blocked local and state police from cooperating with ICE, actively inhibiting efforts to arrest violent criminals. They have also used their platforms to encourage left-wing agitators to stalk, record, confront, and obstruct federal officers who are just trying to lawfully perform their duties, which has created dangerous situations threatening both these officers and the general public.”

As Trump himself rightly pointed out on Saturday, in the hours after Pretti was shot, much of the chaos encouraged by Walz and Frey functions as a distraction from the massive amount of welfare fraud in Minnesota. There is no good faith “cooperation” coming from Walz and Frey, and neither can be trusted to work with federal law enforcement.

Walz’s own response coming off the call with Trump was misleading, as Fox News’s Bill Melugin pointed out. While Walz maintained that the “Minnesota Department of Corrections already honors federal detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen,” they only do so in transferring convicted criminals after their sentence is served. City and county jails do not do the same, according to Melugin.

Walz quickly went from demanding Trump “turn down the temperature” in conducting lawful enforcement in his state to deploying the Minnesota National Guard to give hot chocolate, coffee, and doughnuts to the very same agitators creating chaos in Minnesota. Further, politicians in Minnesota have allegedly been caught in a group chat aimed at obstructing and doxxing ICE agents. Leavitt confirmed the federal government is investigating these allegations.

[READ: [READ: Trump Has A Real Insurrection On His Hands In Minnesota]

Despite Walz apparently wanting to coordinate with Trump, at a Jan. 15 press briefing Leavitt wondered if Walz was being disingenuous given his past actions in inciting and encouraging obstruction. Walz has done nothing to gain the trust of the administration, and there is not sufficient public evidence that he will actually support federal law enforcement instead of seeking to undermine it. Additionally, the contents of the “productive” call remain unclear.

The administration has delayed a federal crackdown in Minnesota for far too long at this point. America can little afford further inaction from the federal government, which appears to be betting on the word of anti-ICE fraud kingpins.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.