An ICE agent was seen clapping moments into the aftermath of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis, according to video clips shared widely on social media.
This witness video of the Customs and Border Protection shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday escaped my (and others’) attention because it does not show the shooting itself. But it captures something else. CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) aren’t targeting “the worst of the worst” criminals, it’s hiring them. There is a culture of violence among CBP/ICE agents that won’t be reformed by replacing top leaders. It’s ingrained and passed along. It’s baked into the funding, the structure, the lack of proper training, and signing and arrest bonuses.
A new examination of witness videos by The New York Times is “A frame-by-frame assessment of actions by Alex Pretti and the two officers who fired 10 times shows how lethal force came to be used against a target who didn’t pose a threat.”
Videos confirm why Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker advised his citizens to know their rights, have their cell phones ready, and document everything done by “[DHS secretary Kristi] Noem’s thugs.” Calling them law enforcement is unjustified. Actual law enforcement professionals must be horrified. Citizens of Chicago filed suit (Axios):
A coalition of Chicago journalists, organizations and protesterssued President Trump and top administration officials over federal agents’ “pattern of extreme brutality” at a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale,” their filing argues. “The individual acts of brutality by federal officers are too numerous to catalogue.”
The videos tell the tale. Watch this one carefully as this “law enforcement professional” chokeslams a protester.
In Chicago this weekend.Trump's thugs beat the hell out of this young guy who was just standing there.He is now in the hospital. The thug who beat him was doxxed by the female activist who Border Patrol shot on Saturday.He went from the scene of the shooting to this.@democrats.senate.gov
President Trump said ICE would go after the "worst of the worst." Apparently unable to find them, it is instead rounding up refugees with legal status, flying them in shackles to Texas and in some cases then releasing them and making them pay their own way back.…
Selamawit Mehari, an Eritrean single mother of three, was starting her day when federal agents showed up at her apartment in St. Paul, Minn., on a recent morning. As her 13-year-old son wailed and her older daughter produced paperwork proving her mother was in the United States lawfully, the agents shackled Ms. Mehari and took her away.
“They didn’t explain anything,” recalled her daughter, Yosan, 21, who described the encounter to The New York Times. “We didn’t understand. We had done everything right.”
The next day, chained at the wrists, waist and ankles, Ms. Mehari, 38, was shuffling up the steps of a plane bound for Texas, tears streaming down her face in the frigid wind.
More than 100 refugees with no criminal record from about a dozen countries have been arrested in Minnesota by immigration agents in recent weeks and flown to detention centers in Texas for interviews, according to lawyers, family members and faith leaders. At least some, including Ms. Mehari, were eventually released in Texas, leaving them to find their own way home.
Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s immigration enforcement is not about crime. It is about ethnic cleansing. Greg Sargent of The New Republicput it bluntly on Monday:
We need to get it broadly understood that Stephen Miller’s ethnic reengineering project will result in a permanent metastasized immigrant carceral state and paramilitary warfare on US streets that goes on *for years.*
That’s his real agenda.
They will lie, cheat, and murder to make the quotas DHS and Republican allies in Congress have incentivized.
When you think about ICE conducting home invasions, this case in Texas is an incredible read. How they will deceive courts and even each other to make unlawful arrests, all while putting themselves in dangerous situations and then inventing an "assault". https://t.co/vExMwh4nrNpic.twitter.com/mZMVnirVKo
