Trump Administration Adjusts Immigration Enforcement Tactics in Minnesota Following January Shootings

A slight rift has opened between President Donald Trump and Stephen Miller in recent months prior to May 2026. Miller serves as White House deputy chief of staff and architect of President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. Insiders told The Independent that President Trump sometimes feels Miller goes too far in his push for unprecedented mass deportations.

“I think the president knows very, very well what he can go to Stephen for, and what he probably shouldn’t tell him if he doesn’t want to get an earful,” a former administration official said. “The president knows who he is, period,” another former administration official added. ” Evidence of the apparent distance surfaced after agents fatally shot two protesters in Minnesota in January 2026.

The administration drew down the immigration force in Minnesota after the January 2026 shootings. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired after the January 2026 Minnesota shootings. The administration directed agents to cut back on cuffing immigrants in courthouses and carrying out warrantless arrests after the January 2026 Minnesota shootings.

Gregory Bovino, who led the roving “turn and burn” force of masked agents, returned to his sector in California and then retired after the January 2026 Minnesota shootings. The administration ditched a fast-track immigration agent training program that had been adopted in 2025. It also marginalized Stephen Miller during negotiations to restore DHS funding from Congress.

Immigration arrests fell sharply after their late 2025 / early 2026 peak, according to an April analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. U.S. so far, DHS stated.

White House communications director Steven Cheung defended Miller’s standing. “Stephen Miller is one of President Trump’s most trusted and longest serving aides. Stephen has worked relentlessly to expeditiously implement every facet of the President’s America First agenda and he will continue to do so.

The President loves Stephen and the White House staff respects him tremendously,” Cheung said. DHS stated that “This is one team, and we have one fight to secure the homeland. , alongside Islamist extremists and narcoterrorists.

U.S. in recent decades. The year 2025 saw a historic spike in left-wing attacks. The Independent reported that the changes followed Miller’s earlier push to fund and hire thousands of new agents with billions of dollars in unprecedented funding.

On social media and Fox News, Miller had described anti-immigration protesters as insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government while pressing agents for an unprecedented 3,000 arrests per day.