Overview
- Walz, in a Wednesday interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, said the Trump administration targeted Minnesota with an immigration sweep as payback for his role on Kamala Harris’s ticket, offering no independent evidence for the claim.
- He said federal officers “came to Minneapolis with about 3,500” agents and argued officials sought a volatile response to justify using the Insurrection Act, which he framed as an authoritarian tactic.
- The governor called the operation “weaponized” against citizens and pointed to two U.S. citizen deaths involving federal agents in Minneapolis as proof of harm to residents’ lives.
- MPR reported the enforcement surge followed probes into alleged daycare fraud and the earlier Feeding Our Future case, providing a nonpolitical investigative backdrop to the federal action.
- Coverage split along ideological lines, with Newsbusters faulting Walz and Kimmel for speculation without proof and Fox News highlighting Walz’s dismissal of fraud as a GOP excuse, as he also announced a new PAC and a forthcoming book titled Good Neighbors.