Is Trump looking for an off-ramp out of Minnesota?

The Trump administration seems convinced that because “immigration” was a winning issue for them in 2024 literally anything they do with respect to immigration will be popular. The truth is that military invasions of American cities that involve killing random, unthreatening civilians are not popular:

Yesterday, a U.S. border patrol agent shot and killed a 37-year-old Minnesota man, Alex Pretti, for the crime of … actually, it’s not clear why he was killed. Pretti was an ICU nurse who was filming a confrontation between an immigration agent and two civilians. He had a gun on him, but he was licensed to carry it. It doesn’t appear that he was holding his weapon at any point, and it was removed from his person moments before he was shot — shot at least 10 times despite already having been pinned down on the ground.

And, of course, this is the second such incident captured on video in Minneapolis within 17 days. Another citizen, Renee Good, was shot and killed in her vehicle by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.

I wrote about public opinion on ICE on immigration in a New York Times chat following that incident, noting that initial polling showed that few voters thought Good’s killing was justified and that public opinion was turning against ICE. Indeed, in our tracking, Trump’s net approval rating on immigration has declined by about 4 points since the day before Good’s death until today. Meanwhile, his overall approval rating has declined by 2 points and is near its second-term lows.

Note also that there’s no longer much of a gap between Trump’s immigration numbers and his overall approval rating. On average, over the course of his term, Trump’s net approval on immigration has been about 6 points better than his overall rating; it had been his least-bad issue. Now, that gap has mostly evaporated.

Trump finally seems to be realizing that this is not going well:

President Donald Trump and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke by phone Monday, a call both men praised and one that signals a potential path forward to ease the boiling tensions in the state created by two shooting deaths by federal immigration agents.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the Democratic leader requested that they “work together.”

“It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote.

It marks a noticeable shift in the way the president has talked about Walz, whom he’s repeatedly criticized for his handling of a fraud scandal in Minnesota and blamed for unrest that has led to federal officers shooting and killing two people in recent weeks.

Having said that, even if he’s looking for an excuse to get out, the psychos he put in charge are unrelenting:

The federal immigration agents who were at the scene of Alex Pretti’s shooting in Minneapolis are still working, and not on administrative leave, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino tells reporters.

[image or embed]— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) Jan 26, 2026 at 10:00 AM

Still can't believe they immediately put the officers who killed Pretti back in the field. Even if the shooting had been justified (it wasn't), it's just incredibly callous and reckless — to the public, but also to the officers themselves. Just a sociopathic dearth of humanity.— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T14:19:40.548Z

As Balko says, even when a police killing seems clearly justified officers are generally placed on administrative leave during the initial investigation. To not do it after a summary execution of a disarmed person who posed no danger to anybody is just open fascism. And unlike with a lot of Trump’s malfeasance people can see it.