By Alayna Treene, Priscilla Alvarez, Kristen Holmes, CNN
(CNN) — The ongoing protests and images coming out of Minnesota have prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown as Americans grow alarmed by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the state.
President Donald Trump has expressed frustration behind closed doors that the immigration messaging is getting lost, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN. Trump has sought to take control of the narrative, starting with an impromptu press conference on the anniversary of his first year in office.
The president, at times sounding exasperated, thumbed through mugshots of individuals arrested in his immigration crackdown, highlighting their alleged crimes. His message was clear that while there might be some issues, ICE is necessary to follow through on his agenda — to deport the most dangerous criminals back to their home country.
“He wanted to do that briefing in large part because he himself wanted to bring out the mugshots that we had printed for him,” a senior White House official told CNN. “He wanted to remind the world of why ICE is doing what they’re doing.”
Trump’s advisers have privately discussed the perils of the protests in Minneapolis in recent days, following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent earlier this month, with many acknowledging that the fallout in the city must be contained, the sources said.
As a result, top White House officials have been plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis and instead focus on what they view as ICE’s achievements.
“There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing,” a senior White House official told CNN, adding: “There have not been discussions about toning down the rhetoric. In fact there have been discussions on how to remind people more aggressively of why this happened in the first place.”
Some administration officials believe there is too much focus on the tensions between ICE agents — and therefore the administration — and protesters, and have discussed how to extricate themselves from that narrative, multiple officials tell CNN.
Trump appeared to channel that attitude while addressing reporters on Tuesday: “They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or — you know, they’re dealing with rough people — or they’re going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.”
Vice President JD Vance also acknowledged that ICE had been in the middle of some messy situations in the lead up to and during his visit to Minneapolis on Thursday — a trip he described as intended to “to calm the tensions” in the city.
“Certainly one of my goals is to calm the tensions, to talk to people, to try to understand what we can do better. … Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don’t,” Vance said in Toledo, Ohio before heading to Minnesota.
“If we had a little cooperation from local and federal, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community,” he added, citing conversations that left him optimistic about improved coordination in Minnesota.
Shifting message
That tone was a marked departure from the hardened and, at times, bombastic rhetoric being used by the administration to date amid waning support among Americans over how the president is enforcing his deportation campaign. Just two weeks ago, Vance had furiously castigated the media and what he characterized as “far-left radicals” contributing to a dangerous anti-ICE narrativ