President Donald Trump appeared at Tuesday’s White House press briefing to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of his second term.
Trump took to the podium holding a book of what he said are his administration’s accomplishments over his first 365 days in office. But what was billed as a celebration of his achievements quickly pivoted to immigration enforcement in Minnesota. The president spent most of his opening remarks showing off mugshots of undocumented immigrants his administration has arrested while denigrating immigrants from Somalia.
“Somalia is not even a country,” he said. “They don’t have anything that resembles a country. And if it is a country, it’s considered just about the worst in the world.”
Trump claimed that the individuals were all “criminal illegal aliens that, in many cases, they’re murderers, they’re drug lords, drug dealers.” But an analysis of immigration arrests by The Associated Press shows the vast majority have no criminal records or only low-level offenses.
While speaking about ICE operations in Minnesota Trump said that people who work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are “going to make mistakes sometimes.”
“They’re going to make mistakes sometimes,” Trump said. “ICE is going to be too rough with somebody, or, you know, they’re dealing with rough people, they’re going to make a mistake. Sometimes it can happen. We feel terribly,” he said.
Trump said he “felt horribly” when he heard about the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer two weeks ago in Minneapolis. “It’s a tragedy. It’s a horrible thing. Everybody would say ICE would say the same thing.”
He said he learned her parents, her father in particular, “was a tremendous Trump fan,” adding, “He was all for Trump, loved Trump, and you know, it’s terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They said, ‘Oh, he loves you.’ … I hope he still feels that way.”
The rare appearance comes as the president has faced extraordinary pushback from America’s European allies over his planned tariffs over Greenland, tensions he’ll face in person this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The president will give a key address in Davos on Wednesday, and he told reporters at the briefing he plans to use the speech to highlight his administration’s accomplishments.
“I think more than anything else, what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” he said. “I didn’t think we could do it this fast.”
The White House had previously said the remarks, in a room likely to be occupied with global elites and billionaires, would focus on Trump’s affordability agenda, particularly on housing.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has also overturned decades of U.S. trade policy — building a wall of tariffs around what used to be a wide open economy.
His double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country have disrupted global commerce and strained the budgets of consumers and businesses worldwide. They have also raised tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.
Trump has argued that his steep new import taxes are necessary to bring back wealth that was “stolen” from the U.S. He says they will narrow America’s decades-old trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the country. But upending the global supply chain has proven costly for households facing rising prices. The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the higher costs to their customers. That includes businesses and ultimately, U.S. households.
And the erratic way the president rolled out his tariffs — announcing them, then suspending or altering them before conjuring up new ones — made 2025 one of the most turbulent economic years in recent memory.
The Supreme Court is set to issue a ruling on the tariffs sometime this term. If the court rules the tariffs he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are illegal, companies across the country may be eligible for hundreds of billions in refund payments.
Trump threatened to use “something else” to increase revenue if the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs.
“I have to use something else. I mean, you know, take a look at the word license. Take a look at other things,” Trump said. “I mean, we have other alternatives, but what we’re doing now is the best, the strongest, the fastest, the easiest, the least complicated.”
