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US border czar Tom Homan Alamy Stock Photo
State sovereignty
Trump sends border czar to Minnesota as judge considers ruling ICE deployment there illegal
Tom Homan is unlikely to bring the temperature down.
LAST UPDATE | 26 Jan
US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has announced he is sending his border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis as anger continues to swell in the Minnesota city following the second fatal shooting by immigration officers this month.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site that he would be sending Homan to Minneapolis tonight, describing him as “tough but fair”.
“He has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there,” Trump said.
The president then said there was a “major investigation” into alleged fraud by Somali immigrants in the state, which he said “is at least partially responsible for the violent organised protests going on in the streets”.
Trump also said that the US Department of Justice and members of Congress were looking into Somali-American Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a frequent target of Republican attacks.
The Trump administration has shown no sign of wishing to de-escalate tensions between protesters and the roughly 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers that have been deployed to Minneapolis, and the dispatching of Homan is unlikely to bring the temperature down.
Homan has defied court orders aimed at halting the deportation of people to Latin American countries.
“We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think,” Homan said in March last year.
More recently, after and immigration officer shot dead 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, Homa told Fox News: “The hateful rhetoric has caused a lot of this violence.”
State sovereignty
Meanwhile, a federal judge in Minnesota is due to hear arguments today on whether she should at least temporarily halt the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that has led to the fatal shootings of two people by government officers.
The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul sued the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month, five days after Renee Good was killed.
The shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday by a Border Patrol officer has only added urgency to the case.
Since the original filing, the state and cities have substantially added to their original request.
They are trying to restore the state of affairs that existed before the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge on 1 December.
The hearing is set for later today in a federal court in Minneapolis.
The state and cities are asking US district judge Kathleen Menendez to order federal law enforcement agencies to reduce the numbers of officers and agents in Minnesota to levels before the surge, while allowing them to continue to enforce immigration laws within a long list of proposed limits.
US justice department attorneys have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous” and said “Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement”.
They have asked the judge to reject the request or at least stay her order pending an anticipated appeal.
Dublin protest
An anti-Ice protest was held in Dublin city this evening.
People Before Profit organised the protest at the Spire to call on the government to drop the traditional White House visit for St Patrick’s Day, and to express solidarity with the strikes against President Donald Trump in the US.
Avery Vogt, from Minneapolis – who is a UCD student, thanked the protesters who attended the event in Dublin on Monday evening.
She said it was an “immense privilege” to be “safe” in Dublin, but added that “it wrecks me everyday having to go through everyday life not knowing what’s going on and knowing what the people that raised me are going through”.
She said she travelled back to Minneapolis over the Christmas break, but said it was “completely different” under Mr Trump.
She added: “People are disappearing off the streets and the feeling of fear is palpable.
“It’s like everyone is holding their breath.”
With reporting from Press Association
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