WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he was looking to “de-escalate” in Minnesota with a reshuffle of the leadership running his deportation effort in the state following widespread outcry over the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.

Still, the president denied he was pulling back his immigration crackdown and said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would remain in her post, as he looked to signal a recalibration rather than a retreat in the aftermath of the Jan. 24 fatal shooting of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent during an enforcement operation.

“I don’t think it’s a pullback,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “It’s a little bit of a change.”

“We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” he added.

Trump’s decision to dispatch border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, effectively replacing Greg Bovino, the U.S. Border Patrol commander who became the face of the contentious immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, spurred widespread speculation that the president may be frustrated with how his deportation efforts are being carried out and viewed by the public.

Trump insisted Tuesday that he remained largely satisfied with his immigration team and the way it has carried out operations — while also acknowledging that they may have inflamed tensions.

“You know, Bovino is very good but he’s a pretty out there kind of a guy,” Trump told Fox News. “And in some cases, that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”

Earlier, the president indicated he was pleased by the reaction to his decision to appoint Homan, a Noem rival within the administration seen as more focused on targeted enforcement than broad street operations.

“He’s meeting with the governor, and he’s meeting with the mayor, I think, later, and I hear that’s all going very well,” Trump said of Homan.

Homan is still a forceful proponent of Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Over the past year, he has threatened to prosecute California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, if they crossed “the line” during anti-deportation protests that shook Los Angeles. He also warned state and local officials who oppose federal enforcement efforts to “get the hell out of the way.”

In the Fox interview, Trump indicated that he saw Homan as more able to collaborate with local officials.

“Tom is a tough guy, but I’ve watched over the years and he’s gotten along with governors and he gets along with mayors,” he said.

During Trump’s first term, Homan served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was one of the architects of the administration’s short-lived and widely criticized family separation policy. Under that approach, some parents who crossed the U.S. border illegally were separated from their children, who were placed in federal custody. Many of the adults were later deported without their children.

Still, it’s not clear the attempted rapprochement will mollify critics or tensions heightened by multiple high-profile instances of violence and the initially strident response from top officials. Pretti’s death came just weeks after the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good, a US citizen and Minneapolis mother of three, by an ICE agent during a similar operation in a residential neighborhood of the city.

Initial statements by administration officials — including Noem, who said Pretti showed up to “impede a law enforcement operation,” and senior adviser Stephen Miller, who intimated on social media that Pretti was an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist” — drew bipartisan criticism. Available video of the incident didn’t show Pretti brandishing the firearm he was legally carrying and suggested that the officers had disarmed him before shooting him repeatedly.

Several lawmakers — including Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, and Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has offered Trump some praise for his progress on securing the border — called for Noem’s ouster.

Trump on Tuesday notably declined to say whether the Pretti shooting was justified.

“We’re doing a big investigation,” he said. “I want to see the investigation. I’m going to be watching over it. I want a very honorable and honest investigation. I have to see it myself.”

“You can’t walk in with guns, you can’t do that,” he added, calling the killing “a very unfortunate incident.”

Public opinion polls show increasing discomfort with the administration’s tactics, even among voters who broadly support immigration enforcement. Nearly half of Americans in a recent Politico poll said the deportation campaign was too aggressive, and one in three Trump voters said while they support the goal, they disapproved of how it’s being implemented.

Still, Trump and his inner circle have been reluctant to remove officials in his second term, after frequent firings and resignations became a regular feature of his first presidential stint.

That appeared to still be the case on Tuesday, as the president drew some of his embattled administration officials close. Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski — the first campaign manager of Trump’s 2016 presidential bid — met with the president Monday night for nearly two hours at the White House, the New York Times reported. Separately, Miller traveled with Trump aboard Air Force One as he flew to Iowa.

“I do that all the time, I shake up teams,” Trump told reporters in Iowa later Tuesday when asked why he had made those changes. “Look, we have an incredible team. We did something that nobody said was possible. We didn’t go back to Congress and ask for legislation. We closed the border,” he added.

But even as Trump appeared eager to calm the palace intrigue, he also signaled a desire to find compromise with state and local officials, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

“All I said: just give us your criminals, and if you give us the criminals, it all goes away,” Trump told WABC in a radio interview.

Asked in Iowa whether he would remove agents from the city, Trump said “we’ll do whatever’s appropriate.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he appreciated the meeting with Homan on Tuesday but pointed out differences that will be hard to bridge.

“I reiterated that my main ask is for Operation Metro Surge to come to an end as quickly as possible,” Frey said in a statement. “I also made it clear that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws, and that we will remain focused on keeping our neighbors and streets safe.”

Business leaders in Minnesota, including executives from Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. Inc., have joined calls for de-escalation, warning that the federal operation was damaging worker morale and the state’s economic stability, while executives in Silicon Valley have also criticized ICE.

In Washington, Senate Democrats have warned they would block funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless restrictions are placed on enforcement operations — raising the specter of a partial government shutdown — while some Republicans are urging more restraint and a clearer strategy on immigration from the administration.

Meanwhile, a judge in Minnesota has ordered the acting chief of ICE to appear in court on Friday to answer questions about the Trump administration’s handling of bond hearings for detained immigrants. The judge said the administration has failed to comply with orders to hold bond hearings for the detainees.

“This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks,” wrote Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz in an order Monday directing acting ICE Chief Todd Lyons to appear in person Jan. 30 to show why he shouldn’t be held in contempt.

Separately, a federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary order prohibiting the removal of a five-year-old boy and father who had been detained in the sweep-up.

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(With assistance from Alicia A. Caldwell, Hadriana Lowenkron and Derek Wallbank.)

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