Vance goes to Minnesota and tries to ‘lower the temperature’ over ICE raids - but still takes shot at local leaders

Vice President JD Vance’s efforts to calm the furor in Minneapolis were not likely to win him any friends in Minnesota’s state government, but the analytical politician who helped Donald Trump win the White House through scandal and past defeat was on full display on Thursday.

Even as Vance pleaded with state and city officials to assist ICE agents in locating individual undocumented immigrants and enforcing the law with regard to protesters, he was nearly as punitive as he repeatedly blamed those same officials for the “chaos” he said was infecting the city in isolation after the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good.

"The guys behind me are doing an incredible job, and frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job they do every single day. That doesn't mean that there aren't occasionally stories and videos out there that suggest they aren't doing everything right,” said Vance, flanked by top ICE and Homeland Security Investigations officers.

He said that his purpose in the city was to “tone down the temperature, reduce the chaos” as he blamed that chaos on state officials and agencies refusing to cooperate with ICE officials attempting to organize targeted immigration enforcement operations. The result, Vance claimed, were the volatile raids seen on city streets and individual businesses throughout Minneapolis.

Even as he addressed questions from the media, though, Vance declined to infer that the tactics and demeanor of ICE agents interacting with the public during enforcement operations contributed to that chaos. Instead, he argued that it was largely the fault of state officials.

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Describing an environment where ICE agents were in fear for their safety even when off-duty, Vance said that threats of violence and intimidation against federal officials were being hurled by “far-left” agitators while state and local officials refused to step in.

“That is the environment that has been created, I think, by a lot of very, frankly, far-left people but also by some of the state and local law enforcement officials who could do a much better job with cooperating and working [with us],” claimed Vance.

“What I need [state leaders] to do is empower their local officials to help...our federal officials out in a way where this can be a little less chaotic and it can be a little bit more targeted. Like, if we’re trying to find a sex offender, tell us where the guy lives!” he exclaimed.

And Vance said repeatedly that his purpose was to discover the reasons behind the uniquely raised temperature of protests and confrontations in Minneapolis between residents and ICE agents — yet he did not seem to accept that the common factor was ICE’s own behavior in the city, even as he seemed to acknowledge that protests had only grown louder and angrier after the shooting death of Renee Young by an ICE agent earlier this month.

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While toeing the administration’s line on the shooting, Vance did mark a clear departure from his previous line of thought offered in defense of the administration in the wake of Good’s shooting.

At a White House news conference in the days immediately following the shooting a very different version of the vice president appeared: Furiously, that version lectured and shouted at reporters for supposedly inflaming tensions with misinformation while calling the coverage of her death an “absolute disgrace.” He also labeled Good, 37, was a “deranged leftist.”

The Vance on display Thursday was more akin to the version that helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2024 and delivered a calculating debate performance against Tim Walz, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. He parried questions from reporters about the detentions of U.S. citizens, including members of city police, and a five-year-old migrant child that have made headlines in recent days.

He still accused Good of trying to run over ICE agents with her car, but softened his tone and did not label her “deranged” or any other insulting language. The vice president also seemed to dial back the administration’s position on whether Good’s shooting and other instances of alleged ICE misconduct would be subject to federal investigations after previously claiming that they had “absolute immunity” in the field. He said they would.

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But tone shift or not, the vice president showed no signs that the administration was rethinking any of its tactics or strategies on Thursday, as protests continued for their second week over Good’s death and nationwide the reaction to ICE tactics grows increasingly sour. He was eager to dive into specifics in cases where Americans or migrants involved in confrontations with ICE agents were in the wrong; less so in the case of videos where agents are seen manhandling people and detaining them with varying degrees of violence, or reports of profiling.

Questioned about reports that off-duty city police officers had been swept up and detained in immigration raids, prompting anger from city officials including in law enforcement, Vance only demurred that it would have to be reviewed to determine if those accounts were accurate.

The Trump administration on Thursday clearly appeared to be trying to cool down its own rhetoric, with Vance at the helm.

But there’s only so much a skilled communicator can do when the visuals of the president’s mass deportation strategy are increasingly hard to escape for everyday Americans.