President Donald Trump recently dispatched Border Czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis and sent Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino back to his previous position in El Centro, California.
Bovino's departure accompanies a softer tone from Trump on his crackdown in Minnesota as polls have shown that the resistance to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been working to reduce support for Republicans, especially among Hispanic voters.
"There are some Cubans that are being rounded up by the Border Patrol, but these are the ones that have come over very recently, and they aren't really political refugees," notes Humberto Fontova, an author and Latin American expert who escaped Fidel Castro's Cuban regime in 1961.
"The Cuban Americans who voted for Trump are still with him," he asserts. "As a matter of fact, our support for him has gotten even stronger over the last couple of months."
He recognizes, though, that the story is different among other Hispanic groups.
"I suspect he may lose some of the Mexican American and maybe some of the Puerto Rican [vote], but of course he didn't have much of that; he had just slight slivers of that," says Fontova.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) continue to support illegal aliens, even those who have committed heinous crimes, and likening ICE agents to the Nazi Gestapo, they appear to be winning the PR battle.
Some observers believe Trump's softer tone with the leadership change indicates he is caving to the radical Democrats' demands and retreating in Minnesota, but conservatives disagree.
"I think it's humorous when the media starts saying, 'Well, Trump's done it this time. He's overreached. He's on the retreat now. He's running for the tall grass,'" comments Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families. "There's been about 20 times over his career where that's been the narrative."
He agrees with what Art Arthur, a former immigration judge who frequently comments on border security and federal immigration enforcement from a legal and regulatory perspective, recently told AFN: Trump is not retreating from Minneapolis.
"This is a tactical moment," says Bauer. "You've had two events that appear to be moving public opinion, and so you make tactical adjustments in order to regroup and figure out what the next step is."
Bauer does not believe Gov. Walz, Mayor Frey, and the entire leftist apparatus are seeking common ground, but instead are engaged in an insurrection against the United States that aims to cancel the result of the 2024 presidential election.
