U.S. Vice President JD Vance gives remarks following a roundtable discussion with local leaders and community members amid a surge of federal immigration authorities in the area, at Royalston Square on January 22, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Trump administration has sent a reported 3,000-plus federal agents into the area, with more on the way, as they make a push to arrest undocumented immigrants in the region. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday blamed Minnesota elected officials for the clashes between federal agents and protesters, arguing that their refusal to facilitate the federal government’s immigration enforcement is the cause of the chaos across the Twin Cities.

Vance held a closed-door roundtable with federal agents, law enforcement and businesses. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, confirmed after the fact that they were in the room with Vance, though other participants are unknown.

Democrats who said they were not invited included Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.  

Vance took questions from reporters, defending the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and downplaying recent, high-profile instances of alleged civil rights violations committed by federal agents.

In at least one instance, Vance misled the public when he said the Trump administration is focused on Minneapolis because “that’s where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws.” This is false.

Pew Research estimates that 130,000 undocumented immigrants lived in Minnesota as of 2023.

States that are the most populous — California, Texas, Florida and New York — had the highest concentration of unauthorized immigrations, a combined 8 million in 2023.

A reporter asked the vice president about agents detaining a 5-year-old boy, whom the Columbia Heights Public School district says agents used as “bait” to draw family members away from their homes.

Vance said the incident is an example of the media failing to provide context about ICE’s arrests. Vance said the boy was not arrested, but the boy’s father was in the country illegally. When ICE approached the father, he ran and left his child, Vance said.

“Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?” Vance asked sarcastically. “… If we had a little cooperation from local … and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.”

At a Thursday press conference, a lawyer for the boy’s family disputed that the father was in the country illegally, stating he came into the country a few years ago seeking asylum.

Vance said the administration wants Minnesota law enforcement to work with the federal government and honor ICE “detainers.” Detainers are written requests from ICE that a local jail or other law enforcement detain an individual for an additional 48 hours to give ICE time to decide to take the person into federal custody to begin removal proceedings.

Minnesota officials say that they honor ICE detainers. In addition, some of the arrests that ICE claims to have made in recent weeks were people already in prison that Minnesota handed over.

Vance downplays arrests of U.S. citizens

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last week alleging that immigration authorities are racially profiling Minnesota residents and detaining people with legal status, even U.S. citizens. Numerous U.S. citizens have said they’ve been arrested by ICE.

When asked about alleged instances of racial profiling and arrests of U.S. citizens, Vance said citizens are arrested because they’ve assaulted immigration agents, and agents are not looking for people based on skin color.

“When there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer,” Vance said. “They’re not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws. They’re being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer. That is a totally reasonable thing.”

He again blamed Minnesota officials.

“So long as we had more cooperation, I think they can do these things in a much more targeted way. They would actually know where some of the bad guys are,” Vance said.

Vance said that based on what he heard in his roundtable Thursday, he doesn’t believe the Insurrection Act needs to be invoked at this time, like President Donald Trump threatened last week. The Insurrection Act is a rarely-invoked 19th century law that would allow Trump to send the military to Minnesota.

“What I do worry about again is that the chaos gets worse. If more and more ICE agents are getting assaulted, if other law enforcement officers start getting assaulted, that would be a real problem,” Vance said. 

After Vance’s visit, Walz said the estimated 3,000 federal agents patrolling Minnesota shouldn’t be there.

“I’m glad the Vice President agrees the temperature needs to be turned down, but actions speak louder than words,” Walz said on X. “Take the show of force off the streets and partner with the state on targeted enforcement of violent offenders instead of random, aggressive confrontation.”

Federal agents block in and stop a woman to ask her for another person’s whereabouts Monday, Jan. 19, 2026 in south Minneapolis. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

WASHINGTON — The House Thursday passed four appropriations bills to fund the government and avert a partial shutdown, but Democrats largely objected to spending on the Department of Homeland Security amid aggressive immigration enforcement in communities across the country. 

Democrats have pushed for tougher oversight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In addition, members of the progressive wing of the caucus vowed to not approve any funding for DHS after federal immigration agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. 

The 37-year-old mother’s death led to massive community protests and  thousands of ICE agents have aggressively descended into Minnesota.

“(Homeland Security Secretary) Kristi Noem and ICE are out of control,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement. “Taxpayer dollars are being misused to brutalize U.S. citizens, including the tragic killing of Renee Nicole Good. This extremism must end.” 

The four bills — Defense; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services and Education; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development — are the last remaining appropriations bills needed to avoid a partial government shutdown by Jan. 30. 

The Homeland Security funding bill passed 220-207. The remaining bills passed 341-88.

Democrats who joined Republicans in voting for the Homeland Security bill included Reps. Jared Gold of Maine, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, Tom Suozzi of New York, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen of New York and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas.

Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted against the DHS funding bill.

Separately, GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the Rules Committee, added a provision to repeal a law that allows members of the U.S. Senate to sue for up to half a million dollars if their phone records were obtained by special counsel Jack Smith during his investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. In a rare move, the provision passed unanimously. 

Smith was also on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify about his investigation before lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

The Senate will take up the appropriations bills when senators return from recess next week.

What does the Homeland Security bill include?

The Homeland Security bill provides $64.4 billion in funding for fiscal year 2026. It cuts funding for Customs and Border Protection by $1.3 billion, and maintains flat funding for ICE at $10 billion.

The bill attempts to put guardrails around immigration enforcement by allocating $20 million for body cameras for ICE and CBP officers. 

It also requires DHS to provide monthly updates on how the agency is spending the $190 billion it received from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the president’s signature tax and spending cuts package signed into law last summer.  

The bill also restricts ICE to spending only $3.8 billion of its fiscal budget on detention. However, the agency will still be able to pull $75 billion from OBBBA, including for detention.

Most Dems say they can’t back any ICE funding

During Thursday’s debate of the bill, Republicans supported the Homeland Security bill, and argued that it contains other agencies beside immigration enforcement. 

But a majority of Democrats said they could not vote to approve the agency’s funding because of ICE’s actions.

“I think we should look at the bill in its totality,” GOP Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma said. “Encouraging people to believe we have massive bad actors in a particular agency… comparing law enforcement officers to the Gestapo or Nazis, that’s not true. The right thing to do is to fund the people who protect America.”

Foxx criticized Democrats for their concerns over ICE enforcement tactics. On the House floor, she defended the agency, arguing that “ICE agents are arresting some of the worst criminals imaginable.”

“The issue is that ICE is terrorizing communities and attacking people, including U.S. citizens,” countered the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. “This is an out-of-control agency at war with communities across the country and they don’t give a damn that you are a U.S. citizen.”

The top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said he could not support voting for the bill because the Trump administration has weaponized the agency and “DHS has strayed from its core mission.”

“Republicans in control of Congress, however, are conducting zero oversight and do nothing but send blank check after blank check to DHS,” he said in a statement. “I have consistently supported the DHS workforce over the past two decades and continue to do so, but I cannot – in good conscience – vote to send another dime to CBP and ICE as they terrorize our communities and sully the constitution.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said she will vote against the bill, even though she is proud of several provisions, such as the increase to Federal Emergency Management Agency funding and a pay raise for air traffic controllers. 

But, she said, “It is impossible to ignore the impact ICE has had.”

“ICE is an agency that has shown itself to be lawless,” she said.

Republicans tout body camera provision

GOP Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, the chair of the panel that deals with funding for Homeland Security, defended the funding bill, and noted that it provides immigration officers with body cameras. He said funds are also provided in the measure for the Coast Guard and agencies dealing with cybersecurity. 

Cuellar of Texas, the top Democrat on that same panel, acknowledged that “this bill is not perfect.” 

“It’s better than the alternative, leaving the department with a blank check,” he said. “This bill flat funds ICE but at the same time, we strengthen oversight of ICE.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum said the ICE enforcement in Minnesota and across the country is one of the “worst cases of civil rights violations by the federal government in recent history.”   

“Minnesotans are being racially profiled on a mass scale, assaulted on our streets, kidnapped from our communities,” she said.