'Surrender' or 'de-escalation'? Officials react to Tom Homan pulling 700 immigration officers from Minnesota

JD Vance 

Vice President JD Vance discussed Tom Homan’s work in Minnesota during an interview with Megyn Kelly that premiered this week. Vance told the media personality that the officers withdrawn from Minneapolis were there to protect ICE agents as they carried out arrests. 

The vice president said officials in Minneapolis and across Minnesota are beginning to cooperate in ways they hadn’t before. Ideally, he said, the system behind immigration enforcement would involve local police protecting agents when they encounter threats or violence while doing their jobs. 

“The reason why Minneapolis was so chaotic is because we had to have all these extra officers doing the job the local police wouldn't do,” Vance claimed. “If the local police are willing to step up a little bit, I think that's a good thing, not a bad thing.”

“And you know, I don't want to give this talk of surrender because I know that we haven't surrendered, but if they're in Minnesota doing the very thing that they said they refused to do, I don't think that's a surrender on the part of the Trump administration, especially as we continue on immigration enforcement,” he added.