Washington– Elizabeth Kautz says she now carries her passport around the Minneapolis suburb where she has been mayor since 1995.
“These agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement don’t know that I’m the mayor of Burnsville,” Kautz, a Republican who has sometimes deviated from the views of the Trump administration, said Wednesday as the US Conference of Mayors opened its meeting in Washington. “I could be walking out of a store and being harassed, so I need to make sure I have my credentials.”
Her comments reflected the frustration and anger hanging over the mayors’ meeting, which would normally be a place for leaders to strategize on issues ranging from affordable housing and transportation to climate change and addressing urban violence.
But much of that was overshadowed by the fallout from the killing Alex Geoffrey Pretty Two federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday ignited a national debate over the Trump administration’s aggressive law enforcement tactics, which have often focused on cities.
“There has been no more pressing challenge facing all Americans in the past few weeks than the chaos in Minnesota caused by an unprecedented increase in immigration enforcement,” said Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, a Republican who is chairing the convention this year.
Several mayors said they appreciated President Donald Trump’s agreement this week to de-escalate the federal government’s operation in Minnesota, adding that they agreed with the administration’s goal of deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.
But they also described a dynamic in which they face pressure from voters to evict federal agents from their cities — something they can’t do — while struggling to get along with their federal counterparts.
The increase had a noticeable impact even in cities that did not face the brunt of the federal government’s pressure, such as Minneapolis.
“When trust is lost in how laws are enforced in one city, we feel the risks to our police officers and to our residents in all cities,” said Leirion Gaylor Byrd, the Democratic mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska.
Representatives of the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the mayors’ statements. Holt said the White House did not invite the mayors to the meeting while they were in the city this week. Trump has repeatedly held local officials responsible for cooperating with federal law enforcement, saying Wednesday on social media that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was “playing with fire” for saying his city would not enforce federal immigration laws.
Jerry Dreyer was the police chief in Fresno, California, for 18 years before being elected mayor in 2020 as a Republican. He said he was not in Washington to “attack” ICE or the administration, and expressed appreciation for Trump’s work to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
But he criticized the way federal immigration enforcement is being done, and said communities across the United States are “facing rejection” toward ICE. He warned that trust in law enforcement was at risk in the process.
“In order to gain this trust, we have to monitor the neighborhoods with their permission,” he said. “We cannot be seen as an occupying force when we enter these neighborhoods.”
Jim Hovland, the nonpartisan mayor of Edina, Minn., a suburb south of Minneapolis, described “external forces” tearing apart “the fabric of our communities that we are responsible for nurturing.”
“It’s really hard to know how to deal with it,” he added.