Tom Homan—the Trump administration “border czar” who thinks undocumented immigrants should be looking “over their shoulder,” that the mayors of sanctuary cities should be locked up, and who is perhaps best known for accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives last year—is headed to Minneapolis. And Greg Bovino, the pint-size fascist who has overseen much of the Border Patrol’s operations in the city, is reportedly leaving—and will reportedly be retiring soon.

These twin developments could be interpreted—as many in the media have—as a sign that the president is trying to walk back a monthlong occupation during which immigration agents murdered two civilians. (Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE officer, and Alex Pretti by a CBP officer. Those two deaths account for two-thirds of the murders committed in Minneapolis in 2026.) It certainly seems that the administration is trying to find a way to retreat.

But Homan’s deployment is perhaps more telling in what it reveals about how the administration approaches retreat itself. They know that the Minneapolis operation is a disaster, that it has left two innocent people dead and turned much of the country against them. It has been such a disaster inside Minneapolis that the Republican Party’s leading candidate for governor, Chris Madel, dropped out of the race on Monday, seeming to cut ties with his party in the process. “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” Madel said, in a video posted........

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