00:00I wanted to meet with business leaders, with ICE officers, with local law enforcement to try to understand a little bit better what's going on so that we can tone down the temperature a little bit, reduce the chaos, but still allow us as a federal government to enforce the American people's immigration laws. That is the purpose of my visit.
00:17If you look at the context of what's going on, you understand that these people are under an incredible amount of duress, an incredible amount of chaos. And because of a few very far left agitators, a lot of these guys are unable to do their jobs without being harassed, without being doxed, and sometimes without being assaulted. That's totally unacceptable. And that's one of the things that I want to send a message to is, yes, come out and protest, protest me, protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully.
00:44You know, you asked a question about this five-year-old kid. I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis. We just left Toledo, Ohio this morning for an economic messaging event. And I see this story, and I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy. And I think to myself, oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more follow-up research. And what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien.
01:10And then when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?
01:23Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?
01:27If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement?
01:40That doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense.
01:43Now, you know, there are so many of these cases like that where if you just understand the context, there have been a number of situations that I've looked into personally where I say, wait a second.
01:52We don't want ICE arresting American citizens. They're supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws against illegal aliens.
02:00So then I look into it and I find out that the American citizen who was arrested took a swing at an ICE officer.
02:06You can't have that happen. And of course they have to defend themselves. And of course they have the right to detain somebody who assaults a law enforcement officer.
02:14Now, this is my point. Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don't.
02:23These guys want it least of all. But if we had a little cooperation from local and federal or excuse me, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.
02:33So it sounds like J.D. Vance is taking a whole lot of my talking points, but not all of them.
02:40He said, quote, come out and protest, but do it peacefully.
02:45That sounds exactly like what I've been saying since the very first moments following the shooting of Renee Good.
02:53Protest peacefully, but don't take the bait. Don't counter the chaos of Donald Trump with our own brand of chaos here.
03:00And so to the extent he's telling people to protest peacefully, we're in agreement.
03:06Second, in quote, we want to enforce the laws on one hand while on the other making sure people in Minneapolis are able to go about their day.
03:15It sounds a lot to me like he wants to be mayor of the city.
03:18He's only been here for two hours, whereas we in this city have been working through these issues and this chaos for the last several weeks.
03:32Peace is not spraying irritants and chemicals at peaceful protesters.
03:37It's not detaining a five-year-old.
03:39It's not dragging a pregnant woman through the streets.
03:42You achieve peace by working directly with communities.
03:47You lower crime by strategically going after people that have committed it.
03:53The vice president said he would love to be able to send some of these agents home.
03:58You know, there's no disagreement there.
04:01We've been encouraging that for weeks.
04:03So what's changed?
04:05What's changed is the response that we're seeing.
04:07What's changed is that we have 3,000-plus ICE agents and border control that are on our streets without a clear plan.
04:19What's changed is we've got this huge influx of what feels like an occupation in a city in the upper Midwest.
04:27And what's changed is that they are arresting United States citizens.
04:32They are detaining people that have done nothing wrong.
04:35They're going after people exclusively based on the fact that they look like they're Somali or they look like they are Latino.
04:43And no reason beyond that.
04:45What we are seeing is this is more about political retaliation.
04:51This is more about tragically terrorizing people than it is about safety, than it is even about immigration.
Comments