In Minneapolis, Ctd

News has just come across the wire Web (later: or maybe late last night) that Tom Homan, a senior aide who is currently Trump’s border czar, is being sent to Minneapolis. My assumption is that he’ll replace Greg Bovino, mentioned earlier in this thread, as the lead for the ICE agents, but so far the news just says he’s coming to Minneapolis. Ah, CNBC reports he’ll manage the operation.

This is an interesting action.

1. Homan has worked for both the Obama (Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations) and Trump (“border czar”) administrations.
2. He proposed and developed the policy of separating parents from their children during his Obama Administration employment.
3. He won an award from the Obama Administration.
4. In 2024 he was investigated by the FBI for allegedly accepting a $50,000 bribe for influencing the incoming Trump Administration. The investigation was prematurely folded and sealed after Inauguration Day, and he has denied everything.
5. He’s got a big mouth.
6. But, and I regret I don’t remember where I read this, he’s supposedly on the side of the debate concerning management of Minneapolis (and, presumably, Maine) of doing the job efficiently, quietly, and without, shall we say, drama. On the other side of the debate, Newsweek reports, is Secretary Kristi Noem, so this is certainly a repudiation of that drama queen. I know I also read, somewhere darn it, that Trump was frustrated with the results of the ICE invasion; this may be his response.
7. But can Homan lead a more humane operation? We’ll see.
8. Last night Secretary Noem issued a list of demands to Minnesota, including transmission of voter list data. This was immediately rejected by Secretary of State Steve Simon as against the law. Demands such as these have been issued in the past, and rejected by the States, regardless of party affiliation of the responsible official, as being illegal. Will this be dropped?
9. Finally, this can be viewed as another crack in the Trump Administration. It’s clear they do not understand the American populace, and killing a mother, first, and then a Veterans Admin ICU nurse, does not intimidate, but instead infuriated Twin Cities residents, as well as repelling just about all the critical independent voters nation-wide. While Andrew Sullivan seems disconsolate over Trump’s polling (see here, but paywall), it’s still true Trump seems infuriated over his poll results (see here), which continue to drop – including among Republicans (see here).

What does it all mean? Hard to say. I’m hoping, but not betting on, a withdrawal of some of the ICE agents, and a quieter approach to the entire matter of their putative goal of finding and deporting violent criminals who are illegal immigrants, rather than the “open wide and suck everything in” approach taken until now.

But I could be wrong. Wait and see.