WASHINGTON — Five days after federal immigration enforcement agents killed the second of his constituents, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had a message for his peers: Speak out.

“Mayors, we do not back down to bullies. We stand up for democracy,” Frey said in a speech last month in Washington, D.C., at a gathering of hundreds of mayors from around the country.

Frey left the U.S. Conference of Mayors and rode to Capitol Hill to meet members of Congress, and five days after that, President Donald Trump said that he’d pull 700 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of Minneapolis. Some 2,300 would remain.

Frey, a liberal mayor governing a predominantly liberal city, illustrated his way of responding to Trump’s increasing encroachment into city limits and city business, and he urged that way — public, loud, strong — for others too.

But his path isn’t the right one for all mayors, who hold mostly nonpartisan jobs in an increasingly hyper-partisan political environment. Their jobs are primarily to pick up trash, fill potholes and keep people safe. While some view confrontation with the White House as the right approach, others are opting for accommodation — or just keeping their heads down.

Cities rely on federal money, and Trump has made it clear that more ICE agents and fewer federal dollars will flow to cities that don’t respond to his requests.

Plainfield, New Jersey, Mayor Adrian Mapp, the son of immigrants, said in an interview at the conference that some disagreements with the federal government, such as those over immigration raids, can feel like a personal and political battle. Residents expect their mayor to fight for them, he said, especially against unpopular policies or federal overreach.

“There is a sense in our community that this is what people want from their mayor — to know we’re standing up, putting resources together and doing everything we can to support those who are affected,” Mapp said.

Boots on the ground

Chris Jensen, a two-term mayor of Noblesville, Indiana, told Stateline that city leaders are often insulated from Washington’s partisan battles, and that unless those issues get local, they’re not worth engaging in.

“Mayors don’t get to go on cable news and just repeat talking points,” Jensen said. “We have to do the work every single day. Snow has to be plowed. Roads have to be built. Trash has to be picked up. That’s not partisan, that’s just governing.”

A registered Republican who used to work for former Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, Jensen said mayors must embrace bipartisanship so they can get resources for their constituents. And federal leaders, he added, could better utilize mayors by asking them for on-the-ground data and feedback from their constituents.

“We’re the boots on the ground,” Jensen said. “If you want to talk about housing, we know how many permits we pulled. If you want to talk about mental health, we know how many crisis calls we ran. Rely on us and get out of the way when we need to move faster.”

At last month’s conference, several mayors described tensions with the Trump administration — often not naming the president directly — as having intensified in recent months, particularly around immigration enforcement, federal deployment of National Guard troops and threats of revoked federal funding.

Much of Trump’s ire, they pointed out, has been aimed at big cities with large Democratic populations. The African American Mayors Association has noted that the cities Trump has decried as lawless and in need of National Guard troops — Chicago; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Oakland, California; and Washington — are all led by Black mayors. All have seen significant declines in violent crime.

Trump has also threatened to send troops to New Orleans, despite its falling crime rate. Mayor Helena Moreno, who took office in January, was among the mayors visiting Washington. She told constituents in an Instagram message that she grabbed a moment with Trump at another event — and worked to shift his attention to other city needs.

“I thought it was very important for the president to hear directly from me on what the city of New Orleans actually needs from the federal government,” she said in the video. The city’s homicide rate is at its lowest in 50 years, she said, and she told Trump of the city’s infrastructure needs.

“I think he was receptive,” Moreno told constituents. “I’ve always said this: That even though I might not be politically aligned with someone, that if they are in a position of power, and have the ability to help the city of New Orleans, then I want to make sure that our needs are being told … so that we can figure out if there’s a path to being able to work together.”

Pushing back

Trump had told mayors that if they didn’t agree to drop sanctuary status, which bars local police agencies from working with ICE on immigration enforcement, their federal dollars would be cut off Feb. 1.

When the funding threats from the president didn’t materialize, newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his administration “will continue to stand up for the city” against efforts to restrict federal funding for cities based on politics and ideology.

But Mamdani, like other mayors, has looked for ways to connect with the president, meeting with Trump in the Oval Office shortly after his election last fall.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Browser, who finishes her third term next year, has said that whoever succeeds her in office will have an especially tricky job, because of the city’s unique circumstances — the federal government can overrule local laws.

Bowser pushed back strongly against Trump in his first term, but has been more pragmatic in his second term — looking for common ground over his National Guard deployment, accelerating homeless encampment sweeps and erasing a block-long “Black Lives Matter” mural that had been painted onto the street as protest in front of the White House. At the same time, Bowser has warned that such measures could limit city autonomy.

Similarly, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie persuaded Trump in a phone call last fall to hold off on surging immigration agents to the city, telling the president that the city was doing well. Trump told reporters he was giving San Francisco a chance.

But sustained pushback may have been what led to the scaling back of ICE operations in Minneapolis.

Portland, Oregon, Mayor Keith Wilson has been hoping for a similar reduction in immigration enforcement in his city as he calls for ICE officers to leave the city.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who noted at the conference that mayors are facing “headwinds” at the federal level when it comes to funding, recently joined regional mayors to announce a slew of accountability measures for ICE officers.

Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor James Solomon are both advocating for state lawmakers to pass legislation limiting how much state officials and local police can cooperate with ICE agents.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order to expand the city’s investigation into possible misconduct by ICE officers.

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval said during a panel session at the mayors conference that the administration’s use of partisan politics — and the scope of the federal government’s powers — has profoundly changed the job for mayors.

“It’s absolutely affecting trust at every level,” he said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

A cheesehead placed at the Minneapolis memorial of Green Bay native Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal agents Jan. 24. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

BALDWIN — Hours after White House border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday morning that the Trump administration would be pulling 700 immigration agents out of Minnesota, agents crossed the St. Croix River to conduct a number of raids in the Twin Cities exurban communities of Hudson and Baldwin, Wisconsin. 

Those operations included the arrest of immigrants at the St. Croix County Courthouse in Hudson and a Mexican restaurant in Baldwin. In prior weeks federal immigration agents have regularly crossed the river, arresting people working at small manufacturing operations and gas stations, ranging as far east as Eau Claire. 

While Wisconsin has seen an increase in immigration enforcement since President Donald Trump took office last year — as well some high profile cases such as the arrest of a migrant at the Milwaukee County Courthouse that sparked the federal felony charges against former Judge Hannah Dugan — the level of ICE action in the state has been lower than in the neighboring states of Illinois and Minnesota, where the Department of Homeland Security launched massive operations targeting migrants in Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul. 

Ben Nelson, a St. Paul resident who serves as the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Woodville and works as a coach on the track team at Baldwin-Woodville High School, said that when students returned to classes after winter break, as many as 50 households in the school district had seen at least one parent taken by federal agents. 

On Wednesday, several ICE agents arrived at the St. Croix County Courthouse and went inside to arrest immigrants who were in  the building for court hearings.

Agents also raided Rancho Loco Mexican restaurant in Baldwin, where four members of the staff were arrested. 

“Within the last 48 hours, we probably had another 10 people taken from Baldwin,” Kimberly Solberg, a Baldwin resident who has been involved in local support networks, said Wednesday evening. “We are a small town, but they’re still doing the raids here, taking two, three, five, eight people at a time.” 

In the shadow of the Minnesota crackdown

Since ICE increased its Minnesota presence in December, these Wisconsin communities have been living in the shadow of the chaos caused by the immigration enforcement surge across the border. Residents work, shop and get their health care in Minnesota — including at the Veterans Affairs hospital where Green Bay native Alex Pretti worked before he was killed by federal agents Jan. 24. 

While the presence of ICE in the Twin Cities has galvanized resistance in the largely blue urban area, the operations in western Wisconsin are deeply dividing residents in a solidly Republican county. 

“The vitriol is so so thick, and the divide is so deep that people on one side, in the local minority, who are trying to do what they can to protect their neighbors, to support their neighbors, or just call for calmness and peace — which even calling for empathy, calmness and peace is radical leftist nonsense at this point,” Solberg said. “They’re terrified. People speak in code, there’s like signals, winks and nods. Everybody tiptoes around to suss out whether or not the person they’re talking to is safe because they’re so scared of how people react.”

Nelson, the Woodville track coach and pastor, said the lack of trust in the community is affecting how people are responding.

“There’s some really just strong opinions … it’s sort of difficult to know who you can trust, because there is a significant amount of people who believe that ICE is operating lawfully and doing the right thing, and will support them in those efforts,” Nelson said. “So honestly, I think we’re just still figuring it out as we go, figuring out how to speak and what we can do.”

Some networks that are helping western Wisconsin’s current immigrant communities were established when Hmong and Vietnamese refugees first arrived in the region after the Vietnam War, according to River Falls resident Ellie Richards. 

“There is a caring community here who is trying to provide the support we feel like these wonderful souls need,” Richards said. “We view them as an asset to our community. None of us feel the least bit threatened by their presence, despite what the federal government may try to tell us.” 

But the best way to respond has been unclear because of the political divide in the rural communities and the fact that there are fewer people nearby to rush to the scene when immigration agents are conducting an arrest.

On the evening of Jan. 28, about 50 residents of Baldwin met in sub-zero temperatures at a park to hold a candlelight vigil for Pretti and Renee Good. Residents of the small rural community lamented that ICE’s presence in St. Croix County has caused immigrant-owned businesses to close — including the local Mexican grocery store, Thai and Indian restaurants. 

Other area residents have been driving across the border to join Minnesota’s protests against the federal immigration enforcement crackdown. 

‘We don’t have the numbers and support’

In the Twin Cities, the presence of ICE agents often sparks an immediate response from neighbors who come outside to observe and make noise in an effort to deter an arrest. In rural Wisconsin communities, there are often fewer people in the immediate area who can respond in the same way. 

Even when responders arrive on the scene, they often don’t have enough people to feel comfortable standing up to the federal agents. 

“We don’t have the numbers and support, at least not in any way organized like they do in the Cities,” Solberg said. “None of the whistles, none of the honking or shouting. It’s intimidating, because if you don’t have a big group, we’ve all seen the videos of the attitude of some of these ICE agents, specifically that video where the agent tells the protester, ‘You raise your voice, I’ll erase your voice.’ It’s very clear that there’s an attitude that if you resist us in any way, we will come after you, whether we legally can or not.” 

St. Croix residents have joined group chats on encryption apps such as Signal and taken observer training offered by Twin Cities-based immigrant advocacy groups in Hudson and River Falls. But often, immigrants are arrested and swept away by federal agents before help can arrive, meaning that the support networks are largely left to help families handle the effects afterwards. 

Neighbors are bringing groceries to families staying home out of fear of arrest and providing rides to undocumented immigrants, who are legally barred from obtaining Wisconsin driver’s licenses. Residents say they are providing this type of help to immigrants whether they have legal status to be in this country or not, because of ICE’s history of arresting people based on their appearance. 

Strained relationship with local police

The presence of ICE in the community is straining the relationship between residents and local law enforcement. Several residents have complained that the Baldwin Police Department is at the scene when ICE conducts operations in the community. The St. Croix County Sheriff’s Department is not a participant in ICE’s 287(g) program granting deputies some civil immigration authority and the department policy states that victims and witnesses of crimes will not be turned in to federal authorities. But the policy states that the department can notify ICE about undocumented immigrants who are held in the county jail for other crimes. 

Solberg, who said she comes from a law enforcement family, said the perceived assistance local cops are giving ICE is harming their relationship with the community. 

“I have personally seen, with my own eyes, I have seen Baldwin P.D. conferencing, standing with ICE immediately prior to ICE raiding an apartment complex,” she said. “I want to give police every benefit of the doubt, because I’ve lived in places that have bad police, and Baldwin police is very community oriented, but also I’m not going to be willfully blind when so many people are saying that they have personally seen Baldwin P.D. working with ICE, assisting in detention, assisting in action, actively assisting in actions.” 

“The worst is it’s the perception, the perception in the community, for sure, across the board, among the ICE supporters and the ICE detractors, the perception in the community is that all the P.D. is working with ICE,” she continued. “Which, for people who are scared, who are legal migrants or possibly illegal immigrants, the police are supposed to be there to protect the community, and those entire groups of people do not feel safe with the law enforcement.”

But Baldwin Police Chief Kevin Moore denied that his officers were cooperating with federal agents.

“I am concerned that members of the immigrant community may feel hesitant to report crimes or contact law enforcement due to perceptions about immigration enforcement,” he said in an email. “That concern is taken seriously. The Baldwin Police Department is committed to serving everyone in our community, and we want residents to know that contacting our department for help does not place them at risk of immigration enforcement. As a small, community-focused department, our officers live and work in and around Baldwin and care deeply about the trust of the people we serve. While we occasionally encounter federal agents in the course of routine patrol or unrelated law enforcement activity, as we do with many agencies, these encounters are unplanned and do not reflect coordinated operations or cooperation related to immigration enforcement. Our intent is to maintain open communication with community members, address concerns directly, and ensure that Baldwin remains a safe place for everyone who lives, works, or visits here.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

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