Vice President JD Vance visited Minneapolis Thursday amid heightened tensions and clashes between federal agents and groups of protesters.
Vice President JD Vance, visiting Minneapolis on Thursday amid growing clashes between federal agents and anti-ICE protesters, said President Donald Trump had given him a „directive“ to „meet these guys halfway“ on reducing tensions, referring to local officials.
He said Trump had told him „work with them so that we can make these immigration enforcement operations successful without endangering our ICE officers, and so that we can turn down the chaos a little bit, at least, I think a lot, actually.”
Local and state officials have strongly opposed how the immigration enforcement surge in the city was being carried out.
While he repeated calls to all involved to „turn down the temperature“ — even conceding that federal agents had made „mistakes“ — Vance appeared to blame local and state leaders for not doing enough and called on city police to work with federal officials on immigration policy enforcement.
Speaking in front of federal agents, Vance said, „That’s what would work in any normal situation that’s what happens in nearly every jurisdiction, red or blue, in the United States of America. The reason it hasn’t happened here is because the local authorities have been told stand down, do not help ICE, promote the agitation but don’t do anything to lower the temperature and lower the chaos. That’s a problem.“
„If the ICE officer is being assaulted by a far left agitators, you should help them“, Vance said.
„And there are a lot of things all of us could do better to lower the temperature but the number one thing I learned today is that the best way to facilitate reasonable enforcement of the law, but also to lower the chaos in Minneapolis, would be for state and local officials to cooperate“, he added.
„One of the things that I want to send a message to is, yes, come out and protest. Protest me, protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully“, Vance added.
„If you assault a law-enforcement officer, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. And I wanted to show some support for these guys who frankly are operating in a very very tough environment“, he added.
