In his Washington Post column Marc A. Thiessen observes:
When Trump took office a year ago, Homan made clear that the administration’s intention was not to carry out “a mass sweep of neighborhoods” but rather to “prioritize public safety threats” by detaining and deporting “the worst of the worst” — those charged with or convicted of serious crimes.
Trump was elected with a mandate to do that. In a New York Times-Ipsos poll just before his inauguration, an 87 percent supermajority said they supported removing all migrants “who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Indeed, 63 percent said they wanted Trump to go further and deport all migrants “who are here illegally and arrived over the last four years” under President Joe Biden, while 55 percent wanted to deport “all immigrants who are here illegally” — period.
Over the past year, Homan has been true to his word: Nearly 70 percent ICE arrests nationwide have involved illegal migrants convicted or charged with crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In states where local officials work with ICE, these arrests have taken place without chaos. For example, there have been more than 88,000 ICE arrests in Texas — the most in the country — largely without incident. But in Minnesota, there have been 10 times fewer arrests but far more violent confrontations.
Why? Because when state and local officials won’t help federal immigration officers target those with criminal records, they have no choice but to go into communities to get them. Since Trump took office, DHS reports that Minnesota has released nearly 470 illegal migrants charged with or convicted of crimes back onto the streets — including those charged with sex offenses against a child, lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, domestic violence, drug trafficking, vehicular homicide, burglary, first-degree aggravated robbery and larceny. In all, DHS says Minnesota officials are refusing to honor more than 1,360 ICE detainers.
That has required ICE to carry out large sweeps resulting in collateral arrests of illegal migrants without criminal records — the very people Frey and Walz are purporting to protect with their sanctuary policies — because, as Homan has made clear, while ICE is focused primarily on those with criminal records, they will arrest anyone they find who is here illegally.
His conclusion is that Democrats are miscalculating. I disagree. Mr. Thiessen assumes this is a policy failure in Democratic-run sanctuary cities. It’s not. It’s a media strategy. This is not miscalculation but a classic media-driven political strategy: maximize visible enforcement, let federal power generate disturbing images, and convert those images into electoral capital. It has been effective in recent memory—consider family separation footage during Trump 1.0. I think that Democrats may be calculating that the bad taste left in the mouths of Americans by ICE’s killing of multiple Americans in Minneapolis and even the poor optics of masked ICE officers using riot-suppression methods in Chicago and Minneapolis could be enough to sway voters to give the party control of the House in the November elections.
That’s supported by a more recent New York Times-Sienna poll that found that while a majority of Americans still approve of immigration enforcement in the abstract a majority disapproves of the way that ICE has been doing its job.
Democrats may be acting rationally within a broken political incentive structure, even while producing bad policy.
Republicans are acting to further damage a broken political incentive structure, even while producing bad policy.
You appear to bet taking Thiessen at his word. There are multiple other sources that dispute his 70% number claiming it was close to that number for the first few months but has been decreasing and for the last couple of months closer to 30%. As noted before, Minnesota state prisons are cooperating with ICE. Country jails are sometimes cooperating and other times not. In some of those instances it has been documented that ICE claimed they didnt have the time to come pick up the illegal.
As was noted recently it was a deliberate policy choice by Noem and Bovino to set loose roving patrols in Minnesota (and other liberal cities) to grab people who looked suspicious. That was an approach opposed by Homan. Note that they are not doing this in Texas and red states/cities.
Good and Pretti are not dead because of lack of cooperation. They are dead because while they were expressing their first amendment rights to protest poorly trained ICE agents panicked.
Also it appears Thiessen doesnt have access to either Google or Chat-GPT. Bother sources record multiple violent actions in Texas and other states including an incident in Texas where an organized group in tactical gear with weapons attacked a detention center.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/01/19/texas-immigration-ice-arrests-raids-police/
AS I noted before, sanctuary cities are as safe or safer than non-sanctuary cities. I think the policy in sanctuary places is to prioritize safety of their citizens.
Steve
Let me see if I can translate the first paragraph of your comment from the original steve-ese. Is this what you meant?
Is that what you intended to convey? If not, could you please explain it further because I have no idea of what you’re trying to say. Yes, I generally do not re-report what professional columnists at major news outlets like the Washington Post claim. They have fact-checkers for that.
More generally my reaction to his piece was more related to the second paragraph quoted above and less to the rest. His account of the NYT-Ipsos poll appeared to be correct so I sought a more recent, updated NYT poll and opinion has clearly changed, as I reported.
To my eye that was the passage key to his claim that Democrats were miscalculating not the third paragraph you asked about.
The illegal immigrant problem cannot be solved by arresting this or that illegal. You solve it by criminalizing doing business with them Prosecute the people who hire them, or rent housing to them, or sell them food… Then the illegals will self-deport.
It is claimed that Obama deported illegals at a higher rate than Trump is doing, and that might be true. The flood gates were opened by the “Biden” administration (whoever they were), and they let in some 10 million illegals, for reasons no one has ever explained. Minneapolis is just bad political theater, and it cost the Republicans both Houses this fall, and by big margins. Trump’s administration is history.