DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on ICE operations in Minneapolis

(CBS, KYMA) - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the ICE operations in Minneapolis.

According to Brennan, the DHS has called it the largest operation in its history, with nearly 3,000 federal agents deployed there.

This prompted Brennan to ask Secretary Noem if this was an open-ended deployment, or if there is a metric for success that ends it, to which the secretary said:

"I think every day we get a murderer off the streets of Minneapolis, the public is safer, and President Trump is keeping his promise to the American people. And we literally have arrested and detained thousands of illegal criminals in Minnesota since President Trump came back into the White House. And I've never met a family that ever said, 'Oh, I wish you would have left that rapist free. I wish you would have left that murderer on the street.' So we're just so thankful that we have a president that's upholding the law and is determined to make sure that the laws are applied equally to everyone."

Brennan followed up by bringing up a Pew Research Center study saying Minnesota's population of immigrants in the U.S. illegally stands at 2.2%.

This led her to ask Noem how does she judge when immigration enforcement agents has gotten everyone off the streets, and how does she say when the mission is accomplished, and Noem said:

"We won't stop until we are sure that all the dangerous people are picked up, brought to justice and then deported back to their home countries...We wouldn't be in this situation if Joe Biden hadn't allowed our open-border policies to be in place and allowed up to 20 million people unvetted into this country. We have no idea how many dangerous people are here. When you have millions of people coming in that are terrorists, suspected terrorists, criminals, come from countries in the mass migration that the Biden Administration facilitated, I can't tell the people of Minnesota exactly how many dangerous criminals they have. I do know that they're extremely grateful every time we get a pedophile off the street. We arrested an individual this week that was raping children. I think those parents in Minnesota can sleep better at night knowing that that person isn't free."

During the interview, Brennan and Noem talked about the fatal ICE shooting which left Renee Nicole Good dead.

According to a CBS News poll, 54% of Americans say the shooting was not justified while 60% say the Trump Administration responded to the ICE agent's actions unfairly.

When asked if this concerns her, the secretary said:

"The facts are that this individual weaponized her car and threatened the life of the law enforcement officer and those around him. And that is what the media needs to cover, people understand it's the truth when they have the chance to hear the facts around the case. And this individual was impeding law enforcement operations for quite some time before this incident happened. It's a tragedy that this situation has happened in this country, and we hope there's never another situation like this before. But this officer relied on his training to, to defend his life and to defend those around him, and we're grateful that we're in a situation where we hope that more people don't weaponize their vehicles like this. We're seeing it happen over and over again. We've seen over 100 different vehicle weaponized and attacking law enforcement officers. I would hope that Mayor Frey [will] announce that he's going to start working with us to bring safety to the streets. If he would set up a peaceful protest zone so that these individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights and do so peacefully, we would love that, because then we could work together to make sure we're getting criminals to justice and letting people still express their First Amendment rights."

Later in the interview, Brennan and Noem talked about ICE's tactics during enforcement operations in Minneapolis.

Brennan mentioned a family of six who were driving to basketball practice only to be stopped by ICE agents, with them telling the family to leave, but because the agents were in the way and they didn't drive off out of fear due to what happened to Renee Good, ICE released a canister of tear gas, with the mother sharing that she have her six-month-old baby CPR.

This led Brennan to ask if these tactics seem heavy-handed to her, and Noem said:

"That family was caught up in that situation because of violent protesters that were impeding law enforcement operations, and that family would have never been in that situation if those protesters had been acting peacefully and law enforcement was able to do their job without being threatened. And so, it's a terrible situation that that family had to go through, and I hope it never happens again. But we need to remember that because the mayor and the governor have allowed this kind of violence to be perpetuated across Minneapolis is why there's other innocent people that are impacted throughout the city but throughout their state as well. And it doesn't have to be this way...They could establish a peaceful protest zone, they could enforce their or their laws. And if Governor Walz didn't recognize that, that what he is doing there is poor leadership, he wouldn't have put his National Guard on standby in order to respond. And I'm hopeful that he does recognize that he needs to start working with us."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Noem, click here.