Trump Defends ICE: Blasts Minnesota’s Opposition to Removing Violent Criminals President Trump is once again standing up for American safety and security, as he defends ICE’s actions to remove dangerous criminals from the U.S. Trump criticized Minnesota leaders for opposing these essential efforts, questioning why they would allow murderers and drug dealers to remain in their communities. The former President also called out protestors, labeling them as “highly paid professional agitators and anarchists” who are distracting from more pressing issues, like alleged fraud in local governance.

President Donald Trump defended his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and said he would continue having enforcement raids across the country despite pushback and protests about them.

In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump said that he didn’t think ICE had gone far enough because they were being held back by “liberal judges” appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The administration has run into obstacles ramping up deportations in dozens of rulings across the country as judges have questioned whether the administration is going beyond its authority to arrest and detain people in the sweeping crackdown.

It comes as the administration has faced backlash over its crackdown on immigration that has included sending immigration enforcement agents and National Guard troops in cities across the country for what the White House says is a mission to deal with violent crime and failures of the state’s leaders to get rid of people living in the U.S. illegally.

When asked if he was comfortable with agents sometimes using aggressive or violent tactics to take people into custody, he said, “yeah, because you have to get the people out.”

Recent videos of immigration agents tackling a woman, smashing in a car window or deploying tear gas have drawn criticism that authorities were going too far to take people into custody and remove them from the country.

Trump and other officials have said they are prioritizing dangerous and violent criminals in the crackdown and removing them from the country is their top priority in the deportation push. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently said 70% of the people who have been deported had a criminal record, but other groups and federal data have indicated most people being held in detention centers do not have a criminal record.

“Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown outta their countries because they were, you know, criminals. Many of them are people from jails and prisons. Many of them are people from, frankly, mental institutions,” Trump said.

His comments come after the administration began making moves to overhaul regional leadership within ICE to further ramp up deportations, which are higher than before Trump took office but not yet meeting the administration’s lofty goals. Coming into office, Trump had set a goal of 1 million deportations in his first year, a level not on pace to hit despite more resources and funding for his immigration agenda.

Reports into the changes at ICE indicate U.S. Customs and Border Protection staff will take over leadership positions at regional field offices, which comes as Border Patrol officers are under a microscope for more aggressive tactics in taking people into custody.

Border Patrol agents have conducted some of the recent controversial raids, including a recent incident where officers rappelled down onto a building in Chicago from a helicopter. ICE’s operations are typically more targeted on specific people, while Border Patrol has cast a wider net in its enforcement efforts inside the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a release last week the administration is on pace to deport nearly 600,000 people by the end of Trump’s first year back in office. More than 2 million people have left the U.S., including 1.6 million who have left voluntarily along with 527,000 deportations, DHS said.

The administration has argued that people who leave voluntarily will get a chance to come back to the U.S. through legal channels, while people who have to be removed cannot return to the country.

“We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be you came into the country illegally, you’re gonna go out. However, you’ve also seen, you’re gonna go out. We’re gonna work with you, and you’re gonna come back into our country legally,” Trump said on “60 Minutes.”

That has also resulted in drastically lower levels of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border as fewer people try to enter the country. Illegal crossings of the southern border hit the lowest level since the early 1970s for the most recent fiscal year, according to data reported by CBS.

Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration and carrying out a mass deportation campaign a central feature of his 2024 presidential campaign and is getting a mixed reaction from the public despite preexisting concerns about border security.