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Jacob Frey, only days into his third term as mayor of Minneapolis, stepped to a microphone last week hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good on the south side of town.
Federal officials were defending the shooting. The mayor was having none of it.
Mr. Frey, a Democrat, called the federal government’s self-defense claim “bullshit.” He told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” And he asked residents to stay peaceful, lest the Trump administration send in the military.
His comments made national headlines, winning him praise from unlikely corners of his city while angering top officials in Washington.
A senior federal law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, cited the mayor’s fiery remarks as the reason state agents had been removed from the shooting investigation. On social media, the Trump administration said that Mr. Frey was a “scumbag” who “should be ashamed of himself.” And in a statement, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, described the mayor as “a disgrace” who had “rushed to publicly lie and incite more violence against law enforcement.”
Though President Trump’s allies have portrayed Mr. Frey in recent days as an example of liberal excess, the mayor has long faced the opposite charge inside his heavily Democratic city, where some residents have complained that he was too moderate and too accommodating of the police.
In recent days, as ICE has flooded Minneapolis, Mr. Frey and other top Democrats have been unified in their criticisms of the president and their calls for agents to leave. It is a far different political landscape from 2020, when Minneapolis Democrats were divided over what to do about policing after an officer murdered George Floyd, and when Mr. Frey became a target of left-wing protests.
