Obviously, you don’t want ICE in your city. Is there anything that you can do to control what the federal government does in Minneapolis?

Well, they’re looking for any excuse to deploy substantial military as an occupying force in Minneapolis, they being the federal government, they being Trump.

You believe they want to deliberately stoke tensions to justify a response?

That is what it seems. It seems they are looking for any excuse here. This is not the way they would operate if the goal were reducing crime. This is not the way that they would operate if their goal was immigration enforcement. I mean, [Barack] Obama, as you know, under the Obama administration, there’s a substantial number of people that were deported and not anything, not like this. This is political. It is done seemingly with the intent to sow discord and stoke fear and cause chaos. And importantly, we can’t take the bait. I am very optimistic that our whole city, our community members recognize that we have a very important role to play. We’ve got to meet the magnitude of this moment, meeting that hate with a whole lot of love, meeting that fear with a whole lot of hope. Recognizing that we care about our immigrant neighbors and an occupying force that is excused by something going wrong here is exactly what they want. It’s exactly what the Feds want. And so we can’t take the bait. And that has been a message that I’m delivering. It’s been a message that our community members are delivering. In other words, peace. We’ve got to stay peaceful here.

This killing evoked memories of another very high-profile killing in the city, George Floyd in 2020, which happened about a mile away. The response to that murder, which included riots, was pretty disastrous for Minneapolis. Do you fear a similar tinderbox situation here?

It’s a very different situation. Of course, I have deep concerns. And at the same time, Minneapolis is resilient, we’re strong, and we also learn from experience, and we improve. Just speaking about me personally, I am not the same mayor that I was in April of 2020. I have learned, I have gained experience that has made me a better mayor and a better leader, and I use those experiences every single day, especially during a time of crisis like this. And I know that our community, our city, is rising to the challenge here. We may get knocked down seven times, but we get back up eight. And like I said, we don’t work with ICE, we do work with our community members.

Do you worry about the abilities of Democrats to push back against the excesses of the Trump administration?

Yeah, of course. We’ve got to show that Democratic run cities can work. If you go back, you were just talking about 2020. If you go back to those late days of May and early days of June in 2020, there was a very viral video of me getting booed and shamed out of a protest that was taking place outside my home, where I was asked to commit to defunding the police. And I said, no. That moment didn’t tickle. I mean, I was spat on, I had things thrown at me. In that moment, I thought maybe my political career was over, but it is a moment that I’m very proud of because it was the right thing to do.