Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Monday suggested that an organized group is behind the protests in Minnesota following the Trump administration's launch of its operation targeting fraud in the state.
Last month, two protesters were shot and killed during separate incidents by federal agents amid demonstrations over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol operations in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the state.
The operation was launched, in part, to target massive federal entitlement fraud, according to President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Following the shootings, protesters and rioters came out in greater numbers against federal agents' presence in Minneapolis, and the two incidents triggered a nationwide debate over the administration's mass deportation plans.
"We had a massive fraud going on all through Minneapolis, all through Minnesota, and suddenly it turned. It turned almost on a dime, and it became suddenly all about ICE, all about getting ICE out and how horrible ICE was doing," Blanche told Fox News' Laura Ingraham in an interview on Monday evening.
Blanche said that the federal government received "very strong pushback when we raised our hands and said ‘stop,’ so, yes, we have multiple investigations going on."
"It’s not something we’re going to do overnight," he stated, adding: "But ... it's not just [a] coincidence that these massive numbers of protesters and rioters and agitators show up at the same time, and they're pushing back on what has been a profit center for fraudsters."
In the interview, Blanche did not indicate where or how the Department of Justice (DOJ) would target those networks he referenced.
This past week, Trump sent his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis to take control of operations, displacing Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who was in charge of the enforcement plan in the city and others in recent months.
The DOJ said it had also opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting death of protester Alex Pretti last month. The other protester who was shot was Renee Good, who allegedly hit an ICE agent with her SUV.
“As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country,” Noem said in a social media post on X on Feb. 2.
After Noem’s announcement, Trump said in the White House that the decision was up to the secretary but that he thought it was generally good for law enforcement to wear cameras.
“They generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening,” he said in the Oval Office on Monday, adding, “If she wants to do the camera thing, that’s OK with me.”
Democratic officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota have called on the Trump administration to stop operations in the state and said the agent-involved shootings of the protesters were a sign of government overreach.
"Thousands of aggressive, untrained agents of the federal government continue to injure and terrorize Minnesotans. This must end," Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in a post on X.
In the midst of the protests, DHS and Noem have said that threats and attacks on ICE agents have skyrocketed since the Trump administration took office last year.
A Jan. 27 DHS news release said assaults on ICE agents were up by 1,300 percent year over year, along with a 3,200 percent increase in vehicular attacks.