Has the US entered the darkest period of Donald Trump’s second term? It certainly feels like it. The Trump administration’s cruel obsession with immigration had already yielded imprisonments, deaths and deportations, but the recent trend of immigration agents gunning down US citizens in the streets surely represents a painful new step.
The government’s immediate reaction to the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed less than three weeks apart in Minneapolis, has only intensified the air of menace.
Despite video evidence that showed Pretti was holding a phone, not a gun, when he was fatally shot, Stephen Miller called the registered nurse a “would-be assassin”: “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement”. Gregory Bovino, the senior US border patrol official who has become the face of the government’s immigration crackdowns, said over the weekend that border patrol agents were “the victims”, not Pretti. Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, claimed Pretti was involved in “domestic terrorism” when he was killed.
But since then, the White House has backtracked, a little, on some of those claims.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, on Monday called Pretti’s death a “tragedy”. Trump said his administration was reviewing the shooting of Pretti, and on Tuesday told reporters he did not agree that Pretti was “acting as an assassin”.
That’s a little bit of a shift, but it would surely be naive to think this will prompt an abrupt change in policy. It may just be that Trump, ever aware of public opinion, has been paying attention to the data.
A poll by Reuters/Ipsos, taken across the weekend when Pretti was killed, found 58% of Americans believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have “gone too far”. Even before that, surveys by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal found similar levels of dissatisfaction. A CNN poll had earlier found that a majority of Americans believe the shooting of Renee Good was an “inappropriate use of force”.
Even Fox News, which essentially exists as a Trump-fanzine, ran a headline on Tuesday which said: “Support slipping for Trump immigration push.”
Trump will also be aware of rumblings of discontent within his own party, as my colleague David Smith wrote this week. James Comer, the congressman from Kentucky has urged the president to pull ICE out of Minnesota, while Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, has called for a joint investigation into the shooting.
It’s likely that a mix of all of the above led to the White House’s apparent softening in tone. But we should be careful not to exaggerate the extent of Trump’s sympathy. Although the president said he did not believe Pretti was an assassin, he added: “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns, you can’t do that. But it’s a very unfortunate incident.”
Trump’s comments ignored the fact that US law, by and large, very much says people can have guns, and that video footage does not show Pretti, who had a concealed carry permit, holding the gun before he was shot. (Many people pointed out the contradiction between Trump’s comments and the right’s lionization of Kyle Rittenhouse, who in 2020 drove to a different state armed with an assault rifle and shot dead two men at an anti-racism protest. Rittenhouse was found not guilty of murder and was subsequently praised as “a nice young man” by Trump.)
Another apparent refining of Trump’s immigration policies saw Bovino, who has spent at least some of his time in Minnesota cosplaying as a member of the Gestapo, removed. He has been replaced by Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar.
But just because Homan is not literally dressing up as a Nazi officer, doesn’t mean he will necessarily bring a tamer attitude to immigration. This is a former ICE director, after all, who in 2024 said of the looming presidential election: “Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
Homan added: “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
At the Republican national convention that year, Homan described Biden’s immigration policies as “national suicide”, and, addressing “millions of illegal aliens”, he said: “You better start packing now.”
And in February, after being appointed border czar, Homan offered a graphic depiction of his approach to local government relations.
Referencing a conversation he had with Eric Adams, then the New York mayor, regarding his administration cooperating with ICE, Homan told Fox News: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch – I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying: ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
Read into that what you will, but the takeaway seems to be clear: Trump’s language may have changed, but there is no reason to believe his policies will follow.
