‘Worst of the worst?’: The Trump administration has lost the narrative in Minneapolis

This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 28 episode of “The Weeknight.”

For months, Donald Trump has insisted that his brutal immigration crackdown has targeted the “worst of the worst.” According to Trump, his masked federal agents have been dispatched to cities across the country to capture gang members, pedophiles and rapists.

But those agents aren’t being sent to cities such as Minneapolis to get the hardened, horrendous criminals that Trump keeps talking about. They’re being sent there to wreak havoc and meet a quota — and the American people are taking notice.

Federal agents just arrested an elderly man working at a McDonald’s in Minnesota. Does anybody believe he’s a hardened criminal? His teenage son told reporters that after his father was detained, he tried to bring him his heart medication and the ICE agents laughed in the boy’s face. How does that kind of behavior make Americans any safer?

What about the 5-year-old boy who’s being detained in a federal facility after he and his father were taken into custody in Minneapolis? They were moved all the way to Texas after agents tried to use the young boy as “bait.” Are they the hardened, horrendous criminals the president has talked about?

Police officers stood in unison on a podium in Minneapolis and said their nonwhite colleagues were being targeted and stopped on the street by immigration agents. Even law enforcement officers aren’t safe from this administration.

It’s clear the Trump administration is losing its narrative. The visuals the American people see every day, on social media or on the news, do not match what federal officials are telling them to believe.

It’s not just the visuals; the data also undermines the government’s narrative that it’s pursuing only the “worst of the worst.” In January, publicly available ICE data shows that nearly 43% of those detained had no convictions or charges.

What the Trump administration is doing goes against everything we, as Americans, stand for, and I really hope that the passion everybody feels in this moment does not wane. People need to channel that anger into action ahead of the midterms. We’ve got some elections to win.

Allison Detzel contributed.