As the United States Conference of Mayors opened its meeting in Washington, mayors described a fast-shifting dynamic around federal immigration enforcement—one they said is pushing residents to question the way laws are carried out and, in turn, complicating how local officials manage public safety. Much of the attention focused on the fallout from the killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti by two federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, a development that reignited a national debate over the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics, which have often targeted cities.
Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth Kautz, a Republican who said she has occasionally diverged from President Donald Trump’s views, described personal anxiety from the operations. She said she has been carrying her passport around the Minneapolis suburb where she has been mayor since 1995, and she cited the risk of being harassed by ICE agents who, she said, do not know her role. “Those ICE agents don’t know that I’m the mayor of the city of Burnsville,” Kautz said Wednesday, adding, “I could be coming out of a store and be harassed so I need to make sure that I have credentials on me.”
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, the conference president this year, said the debate has taken on heightened urgency in recent weeks. He told reporters that “There has been no more urgent challenge facing all Americans these past few weeks than the chaos in Minnesota stemming from an unprecedented surge in immigration enforcement.” Holt framed the mayors’ meeting—which typically covers issues like housing, transit, climate change and violence prevention—as being overshadowed by the enforcement fallout in Minnesota.
Several mayors said they appreciated what they described as President Trump’s recent signal toward deescalation in Minnesota. They also said they agreed with the administration’s goal of deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. But they described a practical tension: constituents are pressing them to push federal agents out of their cities, an action they said may be outside local governments’ control, while they struggle to coordinate with federal counterparts.
The mayors said the consequences are not limited to places facing the most direct pressure. Lincoln, Nebraska, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, warned that trust can become a regional public-safety issue once enforcement practices are perceived as undermining community confidence. “When trust is lost in how laws are being enforced in one city, we feel the risks to our police officers and to our residents in all cities,” Baird said.
Asked about the mayors’ concerns, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin responded by disputing the premise and citing public-safety outcomes. She said: “Have they seen the plummeting murder rates? It’s not a coincidence when you remove tens of thousands of gang members, murderers and known and suspected terrorists from the country who were here illegally.” The exchange underscored the gap between federal justifications for enforcement and local officials’ assertions that the approach is reshaping community-police relationships.
Holt also said the White House had not invited the mayors to meet while they are in Washington this week. Trump, he said, has put local officials on the hook for cooperation with federal law enforcement, and he has criticized Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whose stance toward federal immigration enforcement has drawn attention from the president. Trump has repeated in social media that Frey was “PLAYING WITH FIRE” for saying Minneapolis would not enforce federal immigration laws.
Some mayors said they support border-security goals but criticized how enforcement is being implemented. Jerry Dyer, a Republican who was Fresno’s police chief before being elected mayor in 2020, said he was not in Washington to “bash” ICE or the administration and that he appreciated Trump’s work to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. He still warned that the way federal immigration enforcement has been carried out is being rejected by communities nationwide and said that, as a result, trust in law enforcement is at stake. “In order to gain that trust, we have to police neighborhoods with their permission,” Dyer said. “We cannot be seen as an occupying force when we go into these neighborhoods.”
Jim Hovland, the nonpartisan mayor of Edina, Minnesota, described “external forces” that he said are tearing at the fabric of communities local officials are responsible for managing. He said, “It’s really hard to figure out how to deal with it,” reflecting the broad theme that mayors view the enforcement surge—and the political fallout around it—as a challenge that cannot be solved solely through local policy changes.