Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis had a simple yet stunning message for Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a news conference Wednesday following an officer’s fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman.
“Get the fuck out of Minneapolis,” Frey said. “We do not want you here.”
The Democratic mayor, elected in 2017, has presided over some of the most significant moments in the city’s recent history, including the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, which prompted a summer of nationwide protests against police brutality and racism — and critiques of Frey’s response from some advocates.
Now, Frey is back in the national spotlight after federal officials trained their sights on Minneapolis, prompted by a wide-ranging fraud scandal that earned the attention of right-wing media — and President Donald Trump.
Here’s what to know about Frey, who was just sworn into his third and final term as mayor on Monday.
Move to Minneapolis
Frey, 44, grew up in Virginia, where he attended the College of William & Mary. He received his law degree from Villanova University in Philadelphia. He headed to Minneapolis after graduating and became an employment and civil rights attorney, according to his official biography. A former professional runner who competed in the Pan American games, Frey has said he fell in love with Minneapolis after participating in the Twin Cities Marathon.
From City Council to the mayor’s office
Frey was elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 2013. Four years later, he won the mayoral election after running on a platform of expanding affordable housing and ending homelessness within five years. He won nearly 45% of the vote in the final round of ranked-choice voting. (Nearly a decade later, Frey’s promise to end homelessness has yet to come to pass, he acknowledged in a November interview with ABC affiliate KSTP.)
He won his subsequent elections with 56% of the vote in 2021 and 53% in November. But he has consistently attracted opposition from the left, including City Council members who say he has not gone far enough in supporting pro-Palestinian protesters or reforming the police department.
Frey is married to Sarah Clarke, who works as a corporate lawyer for an energy company, according to her LinkedIn page. The couple have two children, including a baby born in July.
George Floyd murder and protests
Frey steered the city during its reckoning over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in 2020. He faced scorn from some advocates after he refused to commit to defunding the police, putting him at odds with the majority of City Council members at the time.
But he earned praise when he called for the officer who killed Floyd, Derek Chauvin, to be charged with murder. After Chauvin was convicted of murder in 2021, Frey said he was “relieved” by the verdict and pledged to further reform the city’s policing system.
“Justice has been rendered in this case, but we still have a long way to go to achieve true justice in our city and in our country,” he said.
Frey implemented immediate reforms to the police department the month after Floyd’s killing, including a ban on chokeholds and a requirement that officers report and intervene if they see excessive use of force by others.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismissed police reform agreements it had made with Minneapolis, among other cities, after Floyd’s murder. Frey subsequently signed an executive order requiring the city to implement the reforms included in a consent decree passed last year.
“We are committed to police reform, even if the Trump administration is not,” Frey said.
Annunciation church shooting
After a gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic Church in August, killing two children and injuring 30 other people, Frey called the shooting “an act of evil” and urged stricter gun control laws. “Don’t say this is about ‘thoughts and prayers’ right now — these kids were literally praying,” he said.
In the middle of an ongoing fraud scandal that led Trump to refer to Somali immigrants “garbage” and call for their expulsion from the United States, Frey said the city stood with its Somali population. At about 80,000 people, it’s the largest Somali community in the country. “That commitment is rock-solid,” Frey added. The scandal centers on large-scale social services fraud in Minnesota in recent years. Federal prosecutors have secured dozens of convictions, and many of those convicted are of Somali descent. The scandal has accelerated in recent weeks after a viral video from a conservative social media influencer claimed that several day care centers run by Somali immigrants were receiving federal funding but not operating. The federal government has frozen billions of dollars in funding to Minnesota as a result, and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., opted to drop his reelection bid in the wake of criticism over the scandal. Frey has accused the Trump administration of targeting all of the city’s Somalis based on the actions of a few. “We reject the hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump,” Frey said last month. “They are Americans,” he added of the city’s Somalis. “They are one of us. They are part of our family. They are part of the fabric that makes Minneapolis a better place.” He has occasionally spoken Somali to address the community directly, which has stirred the ire of some on the right. In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Frey said the criticisms were racist. After reporting first arose last month that ICE was preparing raids targeting undocumented Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the wake of the fraud scandal, Frey said Minneapolis police would not cooperate with any such operation and added that “almost all” of the city’s Somali population “are both documented and citizens.” After the Department of Homeland Security deployed a surge of roughly 1,000 additional agents to Minnesota this past weekend, Frey told CNN on Tuesday, “This is not about solving crime, this is not about preventing fraud, this is about sowing chaos on the streets of Minneapolis.” On Wednesday after the fatal shooting, Frey blasted ICE, accusing it of “sowing chaos on our streets and in this case, quite literally killing people.” He also pushed back on the narrative, put forth by the federal government and the president himself, that the ICE officer killed the woman in self-defense. “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit,” Frey said. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
Support for Somalis during fraud scandal
Response to ICE
