By Adam Cancryn, Kristen Holmes, Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Monday showed his first signs of retreat since surging federal immigration agents in Minnesota late last year — replacing the leader of the crackdown on the ground and signaling new willingness to cooperate with the state’s Democratic elected officials.
But the moves — which came amid an effort to contain the backlash over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and Trump officials’ early efforts to falsely brand the ICU nurse as a “domestic terrorist” — didn’t stop the administration from continuing to try to shift blame, sparking questions about how much would change on the ground.
The first test could come Tuesday. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and some of his agents are now expected to leave the city as soon as then, three sources familiar with the discussions told CNN, after Trump dispatched border czar Tom Homan to run the on-the-ground enforcement operation that has roiled Minneapolis. Sidelining Bovino could herald a move away from the heavy-handed approach that he had encouraged.
The leadership change came as a relief to some at the Department of Homeland Security, who view Homan as a more experienced hand given his years in federal law enforcement. It also won praise from GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.
Some White House officials, including Trump, had grown dissatisfied with the public narrative surrounding the administration’s immigration efforts even before Pretti’s killing on Saturday sparked a scramble to contain the widening fallout, a person familiar with the conversations said.
On Monday, Trump spoke with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, setting aside his long-running feud with the Democrat to push for greater coordination and weigh potentially pulling at least some federal agents out of the state.
“It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post about the governor he had derided in recent months as “corrupt” and “grossly incompetent.”
Later in the day, he also spoke with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in what he called a “very good” conversation, writing afterward that “lots of progress is being made!”
Taken together, the moves represented the first time the White House publicly reckoned with an operation that has resulted in daily confrontations with protesters and violent scenes that have unsettled even some administration officials and close Trump allies.
“You’re going to have mistakes, you’re going to have messiness, but I think [Homeland Security] probably hasn’t handled it as well as it could have,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration, criticizing the rush in particular to cast Pretti as the aggressor. “That’s the kind of thing you say when you have the actual evidence.”
In the wake of Pretti’s killing, Republican lawmakers and allies raised objections to the administration in both public and private, people familiar with the conversations said, warning the deepening crisis threatened to undermine the White House’s broader immigration efforts and cause irreparable damage to the party.
Even beyond the intensifying fears of more violence on the ground, the people familiar said, Republicans vented that continuing such enforcement would backfire politically — overshadowing their efforts to amplify the fraud scandal that prompted the administration to surge federal agents into Minnesota in the f