Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey delivered a stern message one week in the past to federal brokers following the deadly shooting of a Minnesota lady who was protesting their efforts to spherical up immigrants within the state. “Get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” Frey stated.
The comment instantly put Frey within the nationwide highlight and on the heart of the fiercest battle but over President Donald Trump’s federal crackdown in cities throughout the nation.
Tensions between native protesters and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers have solely continued to boil over, after a federal agent shot and injured a person Wednesday evening who had allegedly assaulted the agent. Seeking to deescalate the scenario, Frey urged protesters to go house afterward.
“We cannot counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos,” he stated Wednesday evening, after native police stated protesters have been taking pictures fireworks at officers. “For those that have peacefully protested, I applaud you. For those that are taking the bait, you are not helping, and you are not helping the undocumented immigrants of our city. You are not helping the people who call this place home.”
The metropolis’s efforts over the previous week to reply to the ICE crackdown — and the Trump administration’s resolution to double down on its Minneapolis surge — demonstrates the troublesome scenario Frey and different state and native Democrats face. Standing up to the Trump administration purchased Frey respect in his overwhelmingly Democratic metropolis — but it surely additionally made him a goal of the White House and its Republican allies.
Polls present that public opinion has shifted quickly in opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions. A NCS poll performed by SSRS discovered that 56% of Americans imagine Renee Good’s killing was an inappropriate use of power, whereas simply 26% of Americans say that they view the taking pictures as an acceptable use of power. Americans say, 51% to 31%, that ICE enforcement actions are making cities much less secure moderately than safer.
But Trump, who campaigned on pledges to lead a mass deportation effort, has dug in, putting a specific emphasis on Minnesota — a Democratic-led state that he wrongly stated he believes he gained in three consecutive presidential elections. His administration plans to send another 1,000 immigration agents to the state. And on Thursday he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a centuries-old legislation, to deploy American troops to Minnesota if native political leaders don’t “stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking” immigration brokers.
Frey and different Minnesota leaders have responded with a lawsuit accusing federal brokers of constructing warrantless arrests and utilizing extreme power, whereas Frey has been a continuing presence on nationwide and state tv.
“This is retribution-style politics,” Frey told NCS in an interview. “This is drama. This is performance politics at its worst, and it’s hurting people and it’s making us less safe.”
As the authorized battle performs out behind the scenes, Frey has been on the forefront of the combat for public sentiment, showing incessantly on tv.
He pushed again when dealing with an preliminary spherical of criticism from Republicans that his rhetoric was inflammatory.
“I’m so sorry if I offended their Disney princess ears,” Frey told NCS’s Kaitlan Collins final week. “If we’re talking about what’s inflammatory, on the one hand, you’ve got someone who dropped an f-bomb. On the other hand, you’ve got someone who killed somebody else. … I think the more inflammatory action is killing somebody.”
Frey has additionally gone onto conservative networks like Fox News to argue that the administration jumped to conclusions to instantly defend the agent and shouldn’t have blocked the state from investigating.
As Democrats search for potent methods to counter Trump’s federal crackdown on Democratic-leaning cities, Frey has emerged as a stunning antidote: a Midwestern mayor with an aggressive message of how to combat again in opposition to a president with three years left in his time period.
“In a moment of crisis like this, in a moment where communities are being terrorized, you have to stand up with absolute clarity and a sense of moral rectitude and sense of purpose — not backing down,” stated Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, a former Minnesota state occasion chair and long-time pal of Frey.
The battle with ICE is the newest in a protracted string of crises to face Minnesota in latest months. Last June, state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband have been assassinated of their house. In August, two youngsters have been killed and 30 individuals injured in a mass taking pictures at a church in Minneapolis. In latest weeks, the state has confronted an onslaught of criticism over allegations of widespread fraud in federally-funded social applications — main to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz forgoing reelection.
Video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross taking pictures and killing Good has sparked a partisan division, with Republican lawmakers and commentators arguing Ross was appearing in self-defense and lambasting Frey’s outspokenness.
Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican and House majority whip, told NCS Frey was “an embarrassment” after his assertion final week.
“Jacob Frey is a disgrace,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated in a press release. “Immediately after an ICE officer was attacked, he rushed to publicly lie and incite more violence against law enforcement. He must stop smearing law enforcement and apologize for his lies.”
When Frey told ICE brokers to “get the f**k out” at a information convention final week, councilwoman Linea Palmisano initially cringed. “Ooh, did he have to do that?” she thought.
But she rapidly realized Frey was talking for a lot of town.
That night, Palmisano requested her 14-year-old son if he’d seen the mayor on tv. “Mom, it was perfect,” he told her. Over the weekend, mothers within the bleachers at her son’s basketball sport have been buzzing about Frey’s remark — one texted her a t-shirt she’d mocked up with the mayor’s phrases on it, asking if she might get it to Frey.
The identical day, a pal attending an anti-ICE rally texted her a photograph of a protester holding an indication that merely learn: “What Frey said.”
“He didn’t really realize it in the moment, but he really grabbed the megaphone,” Palmisano stated of Frey. “In that moment in time, Kristi Noem and Donald Trump had already started laying down the narrative. And I think what he said jumped right up onto that level of the stage as a rebuttal.”
In the times that adopted, Frey emerged because the face of the opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota — repeatedly lambasting the actions of greater than 2,000 ICE brokers deployed to his metropolis and the encircling space.
For Frey, the 44-year-old mayor who was narrowly elected to his third time period this previous November, the protests throughout Minneapolis are harking back to the primary time he was thrust into the nationwide highlight in 2020, when civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd took over Minneapolis and unfold throughout the United States.
Frey confronted criticism from each the left and the proper within the aftermath of the protests and violence that adopted: Progressives within the metropolis loudly booed the mayor when he refused to help defunding the police, whereas Trump and conservatives pointed to protestors burning a police precinct as proof of failed governance.
“I think we found ourselves in 2020 in a situation in which there just were no good options,” stated Melvin Carter, who was mayor of neighboring St. Paul in 2020. “And we had to try to figure out how to navigate the best of the worst options. I think Mayor Frey did that very well, quite frankly.”
Frey told NCS he’s discovered classes from dealing with the Floyd protests which have ready him for this second.
“I’m not the same mayor or leader that I was in 2019,” Frey stated. “Over time, you learn that there’s a long arc. And if you do the right thing‚ while you certainly might not gain love in the moment — in fact you might gain a whole lot of wrath — over time people respect it.”
Tangling with ‘bullies’ — and progressives
Frey and Palmisano have been first elected to town council collectively in 2013. The two are political allies, representing the extra average wing of the Democratic Party, whereas progressives maintain a council majority. She stated she and Frey share a penchant for cursing, recalling when his 4-year-old daughter picked up the phrase “f**ok ‘em.” But those were private conversations; Frey’s remark Thursday was on nationwide tv.
Still, she stated, Frey’s confrontational strategy to the Trump administration is in line with his character.
She described the mayor as somebody who “literally runs at bullies.” She stated Frey — a distance runner who grew up in Northern Virginia, attended legislation faculty at Villanova University and moved to Minneapolis after commencement when he fell in love with town in a 2009 go to for the Twin Cities Marathon — as soon as chased after a person who had run off after heckling him in a park as a result of Frey needed to strike up a dialog.
“When people want to be trolls from what they think is a safe distance, they get Jacob Frey in their face,” she stated. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all that without regard for himself or his own safety, he would run after Donald Trump.”
In 2020, Frey’s refusal to help the “defund the police” motion angered progressives and led to a fierce problem in his 2021 reelection bid. He narrowly fended off a problem from the left once more in November 2025, profitable a 3rd time period, 53% to 47%.
In 2021, Frey opposed a poll measure to overhaul policing within the metropolis within the wake of Floyd’s killing, which Minneapolis voters rejected. Frey and town labored with the Justice Department to agree to police reforms within the ultimate weeks of the Biden administration. When the Trump administration cancelled the agreement in May, Frey swiftly stated town would stand by the modifications to policing.
“He juggled the interests of his constituents and the police department he leans on to keep the city safe,” stated Kristen Clarke, the previous head of the Civil Division on the Justice Department, which reached the settlement with town.
Minnesota has additionally turned to the courts to attempt to cease the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
This week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Twin Cities sued Noem and the Trump administration to attempt to block the surge of ICE brokers, alleging that the immigration operation amounted to “a federal invasion of the Twin Cities.”
A federal choose on Wednesday declined to issue a brief restraining order as Minnesota officers sought, asking for extra responses earlier than issuing a ruling and noting that the lawsuit presents “somewhat frontier issues in constitutional law.”
Frey told NCS that Minnesota leaders have been trying to all doable avenues attempt to combat again in opposition to the federal authorities. “You use the tools that you have, and especially you lean on the law and the Constitution, which is firmly on our side, because what we are experiencing right now does truly feel like an invasion,” he stated.
Carter, who left workplace as St. Paul mayor this 12 months, stated one of many classes that town leaders discovered from the aftermath of Floyd’s killing was the necessity to get their message out and be a “constant presence.”
“How do we keep on communicating — even if I don’t have anything different to say — in a way that at least helps people to feel some sense of security, so they can brace themselves for what’s ahead?” Carter stated. “That’s something I see Mayor Frey doing is communicating very intentionally, very consistently.”
Even as Frey’s nationwide profile has been elevated and Walz has ended his reelection marketing campaign, Frey told NCS he isn’t concerned about working for larger workplace.
“I’ve got a job to do here,” he stated.