Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey shifted his rhetoric overnight as he called for peace across the city — just a week after unleashing a foul-mouth tirade where he demanded ICE agents “get the f–k out.”
The Democratic mayor softened his tone slightly while urging anti-ICE agitators to be peaceful or “go home” in the wake of a violence-plagued night that saw an illegal Venezuelan migrant shot in the leg after allegedly ambushing an agent with a shovel.
“I’m calling for peace,” Frey told a news conference late Wednesday shortly after the shots were fired. “Everybody has a role in achieving that peace — and we’re going to try and do everything we can to keep it.”
Frey, who still ripped ICE’s recent conduct in Minneapolis as “disgusting” and “intolerable,” pleaded with protesters not to take what he described as President Trump’s bait by wreaking havoc on the streets.
“We’re in a position right now where we have residents that are asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE agents on the street,” Frey said.
“We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another.”
“If it were your city, it would be unacceptable there, too,” he added elsewhere.
“And for anyone that is taking the bait tonight, stop. That is not helpful … You are not helping the undocumented immigrants in our city. You are not helping the people that call this place home.”
Frey’s calls for peace were vastly different to the furious attack he unleashed last week after local mom, Renee Good, was fatally shot by a federal agent.
“To ICE, get the f–k out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here,” he raged during a fiery press conference in the wake of the deadly shooting.
“Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite.”
Frey’s pared back remarks on Wednesday came soon after the Department of Homeland Security revealed a federal agent had opened fire on an illegal migrant after he allegedly fled a traffic stop and then beat the “ambushed” officer with a snow shovel.
Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to flood the city with military forces if local lawmakers didn’t help stem the chaos.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE, who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” he raged in a Truth Social post.
Frey, for his part, has repeatedly blamed the nearly 3,000 federal officers already deployed across the city as the reason for the disorder.
“Tonight a man was shot in the leg by an ICE agent on the Northside. No matter what led up to this incident, the situation we are seeing in our city is not sustainable,” he wrote on X.
“There’s 600 MPD officers working to keep our streets safe. Meanwhile, they’ve sent in 3,000 federal agents. America, this is not the path we can be on.”
Meanwhile, lame-duck Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday called for Trump to “turn the temperature down.”
“I am making a direct appeal to the President: Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are,” he in an X statement.
“And an appeal to Minnesotans: I know this is scary. We can — we must — speak out loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. We cannot fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants.”
