Few if any events in President Donald Trump’s second term have caused his administration to course correct as much as when federal agents killed two protesters against its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in January.
Two top officials overseeing that crackdown have since departed, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and the administration tacitly acknowledged that things had gotten out of hand. Polling backed up just how bad the killings were for the administration.
But things are risking getting out of hand for the administration on this issue again — and at a pretty troubling time, politically.
After months of relative quiet when it came to major deportation controversies, federal agents have killed two people this month — one in Texas last week, then another in Maine on Monday.
As with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the episodes appear primed to test not just Americans’ tolerance for Trump’s immigration agenda, but also the administration’s credibility. The Department of Homeland Security has routinely made dubious and even flatly false claims about such incidents, and questions about its accounts are popping up again.
