Good afternoon, everybody. How we doing? [Audience responds affirmatively.] Good. So, uh, I wanna thank the, uh, law enforcement officers behind me for, for being here. I'll answer a few questions, but I wanna say just a few things at the outset, just about what I've learned today and what I'm trying to do here.
You know, first of all, I, I wanna give a, a shout-out, uh, to the Annunciation School shooting families because, you know, the last time I was in Minneapolis, it was of course to meet with some of those families. And I understand that a couple of the students have made near miraculous recoveries, and just that was a very special moment for me to be invited, uh, into that community at a time of grief.
And I hope that all of them know, uh, that though I didn't get to see them this, this particular time, I've been thinking about them and their families quite a bit. Now, to talk about what I am, I, I am here to do, which is federal law enforcement to en -- enforce our immigration laws. I wanna say just a few things.
First of all, I wanted to meet with business leaders, with ICE officers, with local law enforcement to try to understand a little bit better what's going on, so that we can tone down the temperature a little bit, reduce the chaos, but still allow us, as a federal government, to enforce the American people's immigration laws.
That is the purpose of my visit. Now, this is, you know, step one or step two of that process. There's gonna be a lotta work that follows through from here. I'm happy to talk about that, but I, I think I learned a few things that were very important. So number one, one of the things I learned is that the guys behind me are doing an incredible job, and frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job that they do every single day.
Now that, it doesn't mean that there aren't occasionally stories out there, there aren't occasionally videos out there that suggest that these guys, or at least some of the people who work for them are not doing everything right. But very often, if you look at the context of what's going on, you understand that these people are under an incredible amount of duress, an incredible amount of chaos, and because of a few very far left agitators, a lot of these guys are unable to do their jobs without being harassed, without being doxxed, and sometimes without being assaulted.
That's totally unacceptable. And that's 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. 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. I heard a lotta stories today about that, that I think drives home just how chaotic the environment on the ground here has already gotten. For example, did you know that within the last, I think, week or so, maybe even more recently than that, you had a couple of ICE officers who were off duty, who had been doxxed online, who were sitting and having a meal at a restaurant in Minneapolis when a bunch of agitators showed up, locked the door, made them feel like they were in danger for their lives.
And then of course, it was federal law enforcement officers who had to come up, lower the temperature on the situation, and actually get those two off duty officers to a point of safety. Now, imagine if you would, your life and, and your perspective on law enforcement, if you can't even go to a restaurant without some agitators locking the door and making you feel like your life is in danger.
That is the environment that has been created, I think, by a lot of very, frankly, far left people, but also by some of the state and local law enforcement officials who could do a much better job in cooperating and working. And by the way, I'm not talking about the cops, who these guys told me on the ground, the cops are very sympathetic to what they're dealing with.
I'm talking about the state and local elected law enforcement officials who could do a lot better job in making their lives a little bit easier. And in the process, they would make the lives of all Minneapolis residents easier, and that's what we want. We wanna be able to enforce the immigration laws on the one hand, while on the other hand, we want to make sure that people in Minneapolis are able to go about their day.
And I want to say w- -- just one last, one last point on this. So I heard from a business leader today who told me a very tough story, and I, I think so much of what's gone wrong in Minneapolis is people not trying to understand the perspective of somebody else. Try to understand what somebody else is experiencing, whether they're a law enforcement officer or anybody in the community here in Minneapolis.
So they told me a story about this manufacturing facility where an illegal immigrant was being arrested, and as these employees are going into the manufacturing facility, all of a sudden an illegal immigrant shows up, they don't know it's an illegal immigrant, and then a bunch of ICE officers descend. Now, these people just want to go to work, they want to go to work safely, and now all of a sudden, there's a major law enforcement operation happening right outside their place of business.
Now, from one perspective, I certainly understand why a business leader or why an employee would say, "Whoa, what's going on?" It's a little scary no matter your position in life if a bunch of cop cars show up and they're arresting somebody. Now, the additional context is that we know that people online have been encouraging illegal immigrants that one way they can evade arrest is by showing up at a legitimate place of business, making it impossible for these guys to actually enforce our immigration laws.
So while I can understand the perspective of somebody who doesn't wanna see an arrest happen at their place of work, I can also understand the perspective of our immigration enforcement officers who have to do their job and can't allow a heckler's veto over our immigration enforcement. And so much of what's gone wrong is the failure to do that.
And, and, and here's, here's the point. We can do a good job of enforcing our immigration laws without the chaos, but it actually requires the cooperation of state and local officials. If you look at blue cities and blue states, red cities and red states, you go to Austin, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee, you go to the state of Texas, obviously a very red state or the state of Tennessee, a very red state, but you've got blue cities within those states, you do not have this level of chaos.
The reason why things have gotten so out of hand is because of failure of cooperation between the state and local authorities and what these guys are trying to do. We have a ton of resources, a ton of ICE agents in this city right now that I would rather us not have. I'd love to send those guys home. They're not even doing targeted immigration enforcement.
They are trying to protect ICE officers who are doing immigration enforcement. Because, when a crowd surrounds them and these guys call 911, the local officials, the local cops have been told to stand down. So we have people here who aren't even doing immigration enforcement. They're doing force protection so that if a rioter tries to ruin the life or assault an ICE officer, they're actually protected.
Now, why doesn't it make more sense for the local cops to get involved in that situation? Why not just have the mayor or the local officials tell the police officers, "You know what? If an ICE officer is being assaulted by a far left agitator, you are invited. You should actually help them." That's what would work out in any normal situation, and 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 violence, promote the agitation, but don't do anything to lower the temperature and lower the chaos." That's a problem. Here's another example of how the lack of cooperation between state and local officials makes it harder for us to do our job and turns up the temperature.
Let's say, for example, we have a criminal migrant who is a sex offender. And let's say that we've got to go and arrest that person. Who, Democrat or Republican, wants a sex offender living in their community? I would assume, I would hope that most people don't. But because they're an illegal alien, we don't know their last address.
We may have known their address three years ago, but we don't know their address now. What we'd like to do is talk to local officials and say, "You know what? According to the Medicaid rolls, where was the last person this pers -- or where was the last address this person was domiciled?" Or according to a SNAP application, a food stamps application, maybe that could give us insight to where this person is today.
Or maybe they had some local court trouble. We could go to the local courthouse or even the local jail and try to find where this criminal sex offender is today. The local authorities have been told, "Do not cooperate." So these guys are trying to go out and enforce the law. They're trying to arrest sex offenders, but they're trying to do it in an environment where local officials have been told, "Do not help them, do not provide intelligence about where these sex offenders might be." This is disgraceful.
And there are a lot of things that all of us could do better to lower the temperature, but the number one thing that 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. Now, I will say, on, on one final positive note, I actually think that there's some hope, some reason to think that there's gonna be better cooperation in the weeks and months to come.
I think that because I've talked to some of the local officials here, I think there are reasons to believe that these people are gonna step up and actually ask the cops to protect our ICE officers when they're being assaulted. They are gonna ask the local courts to cooperate with getting criminal sex offenders out of our community.
That's a good thing. That's the good news, and that's something I'm gonna work on when I get back to Washington. But please, if you're a local official, if you're the mayor of this town, if you have any influence over those people, just tell them to cooperate. Because, we could have immigration enforcement operate as smoothly and without the chaos that we see in Austin, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee, or even rural parts of the state of Minnesota, all we need is a little cooperation.
I guarantee we're gonna do the best to be professional, to respect people's rights, to not do anything that we don't have to do in order to enforce immigration laws, but it would make our lives a lot easier. It would make our officers a lot safer, and it would make Minneapolis much less chaotic if we had a little bit of cooperation from the state and local officials.
With that, I'll shut up and take some questions. Thank you guys.
Vice President Vance. A local school district here is alleging ICE agents detained a five-year-old after preschool on Tuesday. We've also seen multiple American citizens detained, uh, by ICE, harassed by ICE, in the last six weeks. Are you proud of how your administration is conducting this immigration crash down here in Minnesota right now?
Well, I'm proud of the fact that we're standing behind law enforcement, and I'm proud of the fact that we're enforcing the country's laws. But, you know, you asked a question about this five-year-old kid. I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis. We just left Toledo, Ohio this morning for an economic messaging event.
And I see this story, and I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy. And I think to myself, "Oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old?" Well, I do a little bit more follow-up research. And what I find, is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien, and then they went, when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.
So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America? If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is gonna be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement.
That doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense. Now, you, you know, there are so many of these cases like that where if you just understand the context, there have been a number of situations that I've looked into personally where I say, "Wait a second, we don't want ICE in, arresting American citizens.
They're supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws against illegal aliens. So then I look into it and I find out that the American citizen who was arrested took a swing at an ICE officer. You can't have that happen. And of course they have to defend themselves and of course they have the right to detain somebody who assaults a law enforcement officer.
Now, this is my point. Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don't. These guys want at least of all, but if we had a little cooperation from local and federal, or excuse me, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.
Vice President.
Go ahead.
Uh, after the Renee Good shooting, sir, uh, the administration seemed to say --
Yeah, well you can go next.
Oh no, I'm sorry. I thought you pointed at me.
No, that's fine. You, you, I'll take both.
After the Renee Good shooting, sir, the administration seems to, after the Renee Good shooting, the administration seemed to suggest that ICE officers enjoyed near complete immunity. But today you told the Washington Examiner that when appropriate, the administration might take disciplinary actions against ICE agents.
So is that a change in opinion? And if so, why the change in tone?
No, I -- I -- I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into.
We don't want these guys to have kangaroo courts. We want them to actually have real due process, real investigation. Because again, sometimes they're accused of wrongdoing, and it turns out when you learn the context, they didn't actually do anything wrong. But of course, we're gonna investigate these things.
Of course, we're investigating the Renee Good shooting, 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 gonna face disciplinary action, but we're not gonna judge them in the court of public opinion. I've spoken at length on this particular case.
I think that Renee Good's death is a tragedy. I also think that she rammed an ICE officer with her car. So there are, the tragedy here is multi-layered. The tragedy is there was a misunderstanding. The tragedy is that Renee Good lost her life. The tragedy is that you have ICE officers who are going into communities where they're worried that if they call 911, no one's gonna come to help them.
That is what produces this terrible situation, and it's something state and local officials here in Mini -- Minnesota could solve.
Mr. Vice --
Yes sir.
Could you give us a message towards March for Life tomorrow, especially regarding this cooperation and kind of values, that it's a shame that kids have to get caught up in all this, and, uh, you know, towards -- towards that, sir?
Well, you know, it -- it is a shame that kids have to get caught up in this. I am speaking at March for Life tomorrow. I'm pro-life and I'm very excited to speak there. I want to talk about local law enforcement. But, you know, I -- I mean, look, I -- I am, as a child, I saw people in my family get arrested.
It's terrible. It's heartbreaking, it's chaotic, it's traumatic for the kids. I can recognize that, and I can recognize that we gotta support these kids, while on the other hand saying that just because you're a parent doesn't mean that you get complete immunity from law enforcement. And I think we have to hold both of those thoughts in -- in -- in our head at the same time.
We've gotta be sympathetic to the kids who are caught up in some of these enforcement actions. We've also gotta say we have to enforce the law without bias, with fairness, but we've got to enforce the law.
Mr. Vice President.
I've a question about local government. Um, there was clash in St. Cloud [Inaudible] and their mayor said they hadn't heard about them staying in the city, um, and how did ICE [Inaudible] with local agencies [Inaudible]?
You said there was an altercation in St. Cloud --
[Inaudible]
Yeah.
After the incident, the mayor said that ICE did not communicate with them that they were in the city for any operation, but the police did not know about the operation at the time. Can you talk a little bit about proactive communication --
Yeah.
-- with local law enforcers?
Yeah, it's actually, it's one of the takeaways. I've talked with these guys before we came on the stage, but during our round table and some of the other conversations we've had, communication, w- -- we -- we absolutely wanna ensure there's good communication between federal officials and state and local officials, and I'm sure that we can do better on that.
We absolutely wanna make sure that we are communicating, but that also requires a two-way street. And that's the point that I make about state and local officials. These guys will absolutely communicate with state and local officials. They'll tell people if -- if they're, they have to do an enforcement operation in a particular municipality, but part of that is they also want to ensure that if they're communicating about their whereabouts, that's not being used as a weapon against them.
Sometimes they tell people where they're going, and then they find out that their agent's faces are on the, you know, on Reddit or on some social media threads saying, "Here's this guy. We know he's gonna be at this place at this exact time." So that communication has gotta be a two-way street. These guys are gonna communicate with business leaders, with local officials, with -- with state officials.
But we also need the local officials and state officials to do a good job of protecting people when they're in their communities. We're not -- we're not asking, by the way, we don't want any police officer in this community, in this state, to help us do immigration enforcement. We've got that. But if --
Mr. Vice President.
-- but -- but -- but if -- but if a protestor shows up and that protestor turns violent against our immigration officers, we really, really need the cooperation of our local partners. We haven't gotten it yet, but I think if we do, we really can lower the temperature. Yeah.
Mr. Vice President, [Inaudible] reports that ICE are not allowing agents to answer[Inaudible]
Yeah, so I -- I -- I saw that story and the story is like so much that I read in the mainstream media, it's missing a whole lot of context and you appreciate the context, it makes sense. No one is saying, look, there, there are exceptions. For example, a crazy exception, if somebody is fired at from inside a house, they don't need a warrant to go inside that person's house.
There are very narrow exceptions to the warrant requirement where law enforcement officers don't need a, you know, a warrant if, for example, they're in imminent threat of their lives. But what we've said, and what ICE has proposed, what, what Department of Homeland Security really has proposed in the Department of Justice is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law.
Now, it's possible, I guess, that the courts will say no, and of course if the courts say no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system. Typically, what happens, not always, but typically in the immigration system, those are handled by administrative law judges.
So we're talking about getting warrants from those administrative law judges. And then of course, with other cases, you get judges, or you get warrants from a judge. That's very consistent with the practice of American law. I'm sure the courts will weigh in on that, but we're never gonna enter somebody's house, house without some kind of a warrant, unless, of course, somebody's firing on an officer, or they have to do something in order to protect themselves.
Go ahead.
Do you believe that you can forcefully enter with an administrative warrant, or would that be a violation?
Well, our understanding is that you can enforce the immigration laws of the country under an administrative order if you have an administrative warrant. That's what we think. That's our understanding of the law, that's our best faith attempt to understand the law. Again, this is something courts will weigh in on. I won't speak to that, but yes, most immigration law in our country is not done through the criminal system with a judge.
It's done through the administrative law system. We're gonna continue that practice, just as they did in the Biden administration or any other administration.
Was there anything that you heard or saw today that could cause [Inaudible] President to invoke the Insurrection Act? And then also, did you meet or talk to the ICE agent who's involved in the Renee Good incident?
Uh, I did not talk to him today. I talked to some of his colleagues. Um, you know, your, your question on the Insurrection Act is interesting. I, I've tried to understand this as, as well as I possibly could, and my understanding is what the Insurrection Act, what invoking the Insurrection Act would allow the federal government to do is it would allow the federal government to use the military for local law enforcement operations.
Right now, we don't think that we need that. Now, the President could change his mind, of course, things could get worse, but right now, we think that federal law enforcement officers can do the job of federal law enforcement. Now, what I do worry about, again, is if the chaos gets worse, if more and more ICE agents start getting assaulted, if other law enforcement officers start getting assaulted, that would be a real problem.
But again, we have so much federal law enforcement resources here right now. We have so many people here that we do not wanna have here. I do not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis right now. I mean, good Lord, it's really, really fricking cold outside. But they're here, not even to enforce immigration laws, but to protect the people from the rioters.
That's an absurd state of affairs, and we wouldn't need it if we had a little bit more co -- cooperation from the Minneapolis Police Department. Again, the Minneapolis Police Department, my understanding is that the actual beat cops on the ground, they would love to help out, but they're being told by somebody, I don't know if it's Mayor Frey, they're being told by somebody not to cooperate at all.
What kind of a person tells their local police, "Don't protect somebody if they're being assaulted by a rioter"? It's crazy and it's got to stop. Yes.
Earlier this week, earlier this week, local law enforcement accused federal agents of racial profiling. Why are there so many US citizens being caught up in this operation?
Well, I think your question assumes something that's not necessarily in evidence, which is that when there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer. They're not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws.
They're being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer. That is a totally reasonable thing. Now, to the accusation of racial profiling, uh, you know, look, it's something that we take very seriously. We will take accusations of racial profiling back to Washington. We'll certainly look into them as they come up, but this is not a group that's going around and looking for people who violated the law based on skin color.
They're looking for people who violated the actual law, the law of our immigration system in this country. And so long as we had more cooperation, I think they could do these things in a much more targeted way. They would actually know where some of the bad guys are. I mean, again, you hear things that are hard to believe, but I've confirmed that they're true.
Sex offenders, sex offenders, who we're trying to get off the streets, who the local officials won't tell us their last known address, so then the local officials say, "Oh my God, these guys are doing widespread targeted enforcement operations," when in reality, we would love to just go to one house. The local officials won't tell us which one house to go to.
Mr. Vice President. Um, Mr. Vice President, uh, to that question, the local police chiefs have said their own off duty officers, so police officers are being targeted because they are a person of color and asked to show their papers. Is that a concern of the administration or the Department of Homeland Security, if local law enforcement says their own officers are being targeted?
And they described it as quote, "Civil rights violations in our streets."
So I, I saw one story about this, and one local police officer who said this, and look, certainly is it a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not. And then if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation. And of course, if somebody violated the law, if somebody racially profiled, if somebody violated the rights of one of our fellow citizens, that is something we will take very seriously.
What, what I also would say is that many of the most viral stories of the past couple of weeks have turned out to be at best partially true. So we wanna try people based on reality, based on the truth, based on context. We're not gonna prejudge people just because of a viral social media story that turned out to be half false.
Quick question, about the round table you just had, and we presume that happened, did you invite anybody with an opposing point of view to get an idea of why people are upset here? And just as a quick follow up, have you reached out to Governor Walz at all in an attempt to turn down the temperature?
So I haven't talked to Governor Walz on this particular trip. Um, a number of mem -- members of our administration, I believe our chief of staff spoke to the governor, and has been in constant contact with his staff over the past week. We've been at, at, at, in my office in constant contact with people here on the ground in Minneapolis.
There were certainly people at our round table with opposing views. And look, I don't even know, you know, what, what, whether it's public, but, but yes, we, we met with people with opposing views here at the round table. I wanted to get a perspective from everybody, but also, of course, offer my opinion that with a little bit more cooperation, we could lower the chaos.
We're gonna keep on doing that. If Governor Walz wants to call me, uh, we'll absolutely continue talking. I, I will say that my sense of this situation, having talked to these guys for a long time is this is primarily a law enforcement issue. This is the attorney general, this is the local mayor, this is all of the organs of local and state law enforcement.
That's who we focus on, but we've certainly been in communication with the governor and his office as well.
Vice president. Vice president.
Yeah?
So local law enforcement obviously has been really helping out, um, with the agents who've been assaulted repeatedly. What's the plan if nothing changes there here locally and this operation has attracted thousands of agents, are there any plans to go into any other cities from here?
Well, right now we're focused on Minneapolis because that's where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws. And that's al -- also frankly where we see the most assault of our law enforcement officers. I mean, our plan is very simple. If you assault a federal law enforcement officer, we are gonna do everything that we can to put you in prison.
It's very simple. And most of these protestors, as, as much as I may disagree with their politics, most of them have been peaceful, but a lot of them have not been peaceful. And if you go and storm a church, if you go and assault a federal law enforcement officer, we're gonna try very hard. We're gonna use every resource of the federal government to put you in prison.
Respect people's rights. Respect people's rights to worship, respect people's rights to do their job without being assaulted. If you follow that basic principle, the Trump administration is gonna do everything that we can to protect your rights. But if you go after somebody, if you assault somebody, if you make a nine-year-old girl cry because you walked into a church and harassed her, we're gonna go after you with every single tool that we have.
Vice president?
Yeah.
Your administration has said repeatedly this is about safety, about making Americans feel safer. So what do you say to people here in Minnesota who say it's the overwhelming presence of ICE officers and federal officers and their tactics that are making them feel less safe?
Well, one thing I would say is, first of all, we saw in 2025 the biggest one-year drop in murders in the history of the United States of America. Significant reductions in violent crime. The reason why we have less than violent crime is really two reasons. Number one, because we're enforcing the immigration laws and getting very violent criminals out of our country.
And number two, because we're enforcing our criminal laws and putting guys who assault and murder behind bars. This is part of a broad effort to make us safe, and the chaos that people are seeing, and I understand there is frustration of, of the chaos. I, I, I, I'd say that we're doing everything that we can to lower the temperature, and we would like federal and, and local, or excuse me, state and local officials to meet us halfway.
So are you saying that --
So much, so --
Are you saying, are you saying that they're not perceiving it correctly? Are you saying that they're not seeing that it's the tactics or the presence of the officers that are --
Look, I, I'm sure that people are seeing a lot of things that would make any member of our national community feel very upset. But I also think that if you understand this in context, this is the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided that they're not gonna cooperate with immigration enforcement at all.
In fact, they're gonna aggressively not cooperate. So here, I mean, here's, here's a, a basic illustration of this. If you are an ICE officer and you have to arrest a person who's committed an assault and is also an illegal alien, but the state and local officials won't help you identify that person, many of the things that, that people in Minneapolis are seeing that give them pause, that frustrate them, that worry them, that make them feel like things are too chaotic, many of these things are coming from the fact that there's no cooperation with state and local law enforcement.
And I, and I guess what I would, I would tell people, again, many of whom are justifiably concerned and worried about what they're seeing in their communities is, why are we not seeing it anywhere else? We're seeing this level of chaos only in Minneapolis. LA and Chicago, we had some problems there. Pretty much every jurisdiction where these guys are operating, you don't see the same level of chaos, you don't see the same level of violence, you don't see the problems that we're seeing in Minneapolis.
Maybe the problem is unique to Minneapolis and we believe that it is. And it's a lack of cooperation between state and the local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. Sir.
Omar Jimenez of CNN. Uh, ICE has been operating here for years with, with less pushback than, than we're seeing right now. And even the St. Paul police chief recently said, "Is there not a way to find common ground without scaring the hell out of people in the community?" Those are his words. And I just wonder, with this Operation Metro Surge, is any part of it meant to send, send a form of political message to the leaders here in Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota?
And I know you talked about you've been in touch with the governor's offices and the mayor's offices, uh, but, but why have you not been able to speak to them directly? Uh, have they not been willing to do so?
Well, look, I have spoken to some of the people in Minnesota directly. I spoke to some of them today. I've spoke to others, uh, in the past. And again, our staff has been in very direct contact with pretty much every official with any influence or any power in Minneapolis. But no, we're not trying to send a political message.
We're trying to enforce the law. And unfortunately what has happened is that as we've enforced the law, there's been this weird reaction uni -- again, unique to this city. This is not a common thing across the United States of America. There's been a very unique, very Minneapolis-specific reaction to our enforcement of federal immigration laws.
What I'm trying to do here today is understand why that is. What is it about Minneapolis that has become so chaotic? What are the specific types of cooperation that we need? Look, I don't need Tim Walz or Jacob Frey or anybody else to come out and say that they agree with J.D. Vance or Donald Trump on immigration.
I just don't need that. What I do need them to do is empower their local officials to help our local or help our federal officials out in a way where this can be a little bit less chaotic and it can be a little bit more targeted. Like if we're trying to find a sex offender, tell us where the guy lives. Simple things like that, simple changes in how they're approaching immigration enforcement would make this work a lot better.
It would make Minneapolis' streets a lot safer and it would make this whole thing a lot less traumatic for this community. I'll take one more question.
Mr. Vice President.
Go ahead.
You've said that it's time to turn down the temperatures. Does that include changes to both ICE and CDC tactics that we see employed on the streets, including less than legal tactics, pepper sprays, pepper balls? Beyond that, what is the federal government's role in turning down the temperatures? And the Minnesota Department of Corrections says that its own officers have been cooperating with ICE all along, handing over criminals once they serve their sentences to ICE officials.
And you can see that there is some cooperation with the state.
Yeah. Look, if I was gonna list the five agencies locally and statewide that I'm most worried about, I wouldn't put the Department of Corrections on that list. I think that while there are, the -- certain things we'd like to see more from them, they've hardly been the worst offenders. You agree with that guys?
That's a fair, that's a fair assessment. Um, but I, I think you talked about tactics and you talked about the response to things. Look, we don't want to employ tactics that, we don't want to employ the kind of tactics that are only necessary when violence is committed against officers. That is these guys' directive and that's what we're gonna try to do. And, and again, you said, the president said this a couple of days ago.
Whenever you have a law enforcement operation, even if 99.99% of the guys do everything perfectly, you're gonna have people that make mistakes. That is the nature of law enforcement. What I do think that we can do is working with state and local officials, we can make the worst moments of chaos much less common, and all they've gotta do is meet us halfway.
These guys wanna communicate with them. They wanna talk to the local business leaders. They, many of these guys, many of the people standing behind me are members of the Minneapolis community. Many of the officials that I met today who work in federal immigration enforcement, this is their home. They love this place.
These are their neighbors. They want this to work a lot more smoothly. I think that we can get there, we just gotta work at it a little bit and we need some cooperation from state and local officials. Last thing that I'll say is, is I just hope they give it. This is a beautiful city. Uh, I've only been here a few times.
I love it. Even in this weather, I love Minneapolis. We could do a lot better. We could do a lot more with more cooperation. The Trump administration, the directive that I got from the President of the United States is, "Meet these guys halfway. 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.
But for us to do that, we need some help from the state and local officials. We will keep on working with them, and so long as they're willing to work with us, they will always find a partner in public safety and law enforcement in the Trump administration. Thank you all.