Vice President JD Vance has absurdly complained that agents for ICE and other agencies don’t “feel safe” calling 911 as they raid the streets of American cities, apparently shooting and killing people at will.

In a post on social media Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey reiterated the city’s position that the role of police is not to enforce immigration laws or “hunting down a working dad who contributes to [Minneapolis] and is from Ecuador.” The statement was made in response to President Donald Trump criticizing Frey for not using police to help hunt down immigrants.

“It’s similar to the policy your guy Rudy [Giuliani] had in NYC. Everyone should feel safe calling 911,” Frey said, referring to Giuliani’s policies to help protect undocumented immigrants as mayor of New York City in the 1990s and early 2000s, including upholding his predecessor’s sanctuary city policies. (Giuliani would later back Trump and defend Trump’s fascist immigration proposals during the 2016 election.)

In response, Vance said that federal law enforcement officers do not feel safe calling 911.

“How about federal law enforcement. Should they feel safe calling 911? Right now, they don’t, because you’ve told your police officers not to help them,” Vance said.

Vance’s statement is nonsensical on multiple levels.

First, as Frey said, it is not the responsibility of local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws — especially at a time when the Trump administration is instructing agents to conduct activities in a manner that blatantly violates the Constitution. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a program to “allow” agencies to partner with ICE, and some states have passed legislation forcing local law enforcement to cooperate with the agency, but Minnesota does not have such a law.

Still, even police in sanctuary cities have violated policies in order to collaborate with ICE, further undercutting Vance’s point that local police could somehow be pitted against federal officers. There are countless cases of police helping to tamp down anti-ICE protests in recent months.

Secondly, community watchers in Minneapolis and other cities under occupation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have consistently said that it is officers who are initiating violence, by raiding businesses and residential buildings, forcibly entering peoples’ homes, attacking protesters and observers, and more. The idea that DHS agents would need to call 911 to respond to their own violence is illogical.

Further compounding that point is federal officers’ killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti this month. In both instances, analyses showed the incidents were dramatically and suddenly escalated by law enforcement officers; DHS even corroborated this idea in an initial report on Pretti’s killing this week.

Further, witnesses in both cases said that federal officers blocked medical professionals from caring for the victims’ bodies before ambulances arrived, and the officers did not try to administer CPR or other lifesaving procedures. This is not a fear of calling 911, but ensuring that their violence has its maximum effect.

There is also the simple fact that law enforcement would not call 911 to request backup. The purpose of 911 lines is “emergency calls, such as reporting a crime in progress, reporting a fire, or requesting an ambulance,” as the federal government outlines. This applies across agencies; the FBI wouldn’t call 911 to get police help on an enforcement action, but would use existing channels of communication between federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Vance’s comment, while absurd, is indicative of who he believes is deserving of “safety.” The federal government is shielding the officers who killed Good and Pretti and turning the narrative back on the victims, saying that the shootings were carried out in self-defense. Far right influencers — who have massive influence over the Trump administration — are trying to spread the narrative that whistles used by ICE protesters and watchers are the real danger.

The twisting of narratives is an attempt to paint any resistance to ICE as violence and justification for extrajudicial execution, analysts have said.