LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In the hours after Renee Good was killed, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had this message for ICE.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JACOB FREY: Get the [expletive] out of Minneapolis.
FADEL: ICE did not. Instead, the Trump administration is sending reinforcements. Mayor Frey joins us now to talk about this. Good morning, and welcome to the program.
FREY: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
FADEL: Now, you told ICE to get out of your city. And then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she's sending hundreds more of federal officers to your city. What does this mean for Minneapolis?
FREY: Well, look, let me just start with this. I'm so damn proud of Minneapolis. The way that we are showing up is beautiful. It is strong. We are showing up for our neighbors. And this is emblematic of everything that Minneapolis is about. We've got these ICE agents that are coming in by the thousands. To give you an idea, we have just over 600 police officers in Minneapolis. But we're looking at upwards of 2,500 or 3,000 ICE agents and border control.
I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that at times it does feel, in fact, like an invasion. They are indiscriminately coming after our neighbors. They are picking Latino and Somali people off the street without regard for whether they are citizens or not. They are dragging pregnant women through the street. They are picking teenagers up even though that teenager is saying over and over again, I'm an American citizen.
And let's be really clear, this is not about safety. If this were about safety, there are many mechanisms to tackle that issue. And by the way, Minneapolis is a safe city. Crime is dramatically down here, virtually every single category in virtually every single neighborhood. I'll note that, you know, this entire year so far, unless something's changed in the last 24 hours, we've only had two shootings, one of which was ICE. So ICE is making our city less safe right now. And we're going to be doing everything possible to protect our neighbors, to stand up for them.
FADEL: But what can you do when you say you're going to stand up for your city? I mean, we heard you be very angry when you saw the video of Renee Good getting shot. You used expletives while addressing this administration. I mean, and then they reacted by sending more troops. What can you do as mayor?
FREY: We're going to be standing up in the courtroom. We're going to be standing up on the streets. We're going to be making sure that we are not countering Donald Trump's chaos with our own brand of chaos. This is a moment right now. And increasingly, what we see is the Trump administration is not doing this for safety but for politics, is not doing this to drive down crime but for retribution.
I think there's a clear reason why he's going after Democratic-run cities throughout the country and Democratic-run states. He's trying to, I guess, make a point and cause a ruckus. But the problem is, is that ruckus has a real impact on safety in cities, on business in cities. And I'm increasingly concerned that yet another person is going to get killed.
By the way, we said this for over a month leading into the killing of Renee Good. For over a month, the chief and I were not just privately but very publicly saying that somebody was going to get seriously injured or killed, whether it was a civilian, resident, a police officer or an ICE agent. And with the additional influx of federal agents that are coming into Minneapolis, that is increasingly a concern. I mean, our city is not one that's going to back down. We stand up for each other. We're doing so peacefully - we're doing so with regard for the law. We are not seeing that from ICE agents.
And anybody who's listening here, let me be very, very clear. What's happening is not constitutional. You know, this is not the way that ICE has conducted themselves in the past under, for instance, an Obama or a Biden administration. This is not a methodical, thoughtful plan to get criminals off the street. That is not what is happening. What's happening is full-on discrimination. It's targeting Somali people in our city, targeting Latino people in Minneapolis and looking for a problem that, to be clear, we are not seeing on our streets.
FADEL: And for context here, the administration has been painting Somalis in Minnesota as fraudsters and criminals writ large over a particular case of fraud, where dozens of people were convicted. Plus, a conservative blogger who came into the community and filmed day cares and made allegations of fraud without evidence, right?
FREY: The fraud that took place in Minnesota is real.
FADEL: Right.
FREY: And we all have to acknowledge that. There was fraud that took place here.
FADEL: And convictions.
FREY: Yeah, convictions. And there will likely be more. But here's the thing, when a fraud takes place, when a crime takes place, you investigate it, you prosecute it, you charge it. You arrest the person that did the fraud or the crime, you put him in jail as an individual. You get held accountable as an individual. That's how this works in America. You do not, however, hold an entire community accountable for the crimes of one.
FADEL: We'll have to leave it there. We're running out of time. That's Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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