After the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, politically speaking, Donald Trump had no choice but to have DHS Secretary Noem removed from the scene.
He inserted border czar Tom Homan into Minnesota, and he immediately shook things up.
Now, Homan is claiming the job is done, and the feds are moving out.
If I were president, my choice for DHS would have been Tom Homan, as I have always thought he did a great job of balancing the job with optics.
Homan can turn into a bear when he needs to, but he generally has the right temperament for this job.
Trump announced the move, stating, “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that’s what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession.”
He continued, “The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”
Homan was only there for a few days when he announced that 700 agents would be leaving the area.
He stated, “More officers taking custody of criminal aliens directly from the jails, means less officers on the street doing criminal operations. This is smart law enforcement, not less law enforcement.”
He further stated that he was seeing unprecedented cooperation between federal agents and local law enforcement.
It was a far different narrative than what we were seeing when Noem was on the ground there, as she has a more confrontational style.
On Thursday, Homan declared the job was done, at least in terms of the massive surge of federal law enforcement.
He stated, "As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals. I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude.”
However, Homan did add, "Additionally, federal government personnel assigned to conduct criminal investigations into the agitators, as well as the personnel assigned here for the fraud investigations, will remain in place until the work is done.”
I think the real mission here was to save face and de-escalate, which Homan has done. Trump could not appear to back down to Democrats, but he also had to get agents out of that state for fear of how things were escalating. Homan just achieved that objective.
