President Trump says he’s concerned about Minnesota.
Good.
If he’s so concerned, he can tell immigration agents they do not have absolute immunity. Remove their masks. Order them to obey the law. Demand independent investigations of any use of force. Send border patrol agents back to the border to deal with cartels — not community protests.
Trump also can order immigration agents to disarm. No live ammunition. No rubber bullets. Local law enforcement can handle crowd control and provide armed backup as needed.
This president will do no such thing. But Congress can — by refusing to give more money to ICE without first ensuring that Americans are safe from Trump’s hired guns.
At war with Americans
Lawmakers who celebrate ICE’s vicious “Turn and Burn” tactics, including explosives to break into homes, would be horrified by that.
But taking away their lethal weapons may be the least radical idea for dealing with a group that’s not a military force but wields weapons as though at war with Americans; that is not a police force, but acts as if it owns city streets; that respects no law, but declares itself judge, jury and executioner.
It’s important to understand that ICE agents are not executing people in broad daylight in Minneapolis because they have to. They’re doing it because they choose to.
The police in Minneapolis took 900 guns off the street last year and arrested hundreds of violent criminals. No one was shot to death.
Presidents Obama and Biden collectively deported more than seven million immigrants. None of the removals involved shooting American citizens. None involved blinding a citizen by shooting a combination of plastic, metal and glass into his eye. None involved tear-gassing a baby in the car of a family returning from a basketball game.
Better training is not the answer here. First, ICE has spent the last year attracting recruits using memes well-known to neo-Nazis, including a slogan that’s a white supremacist anthem, “We’ll have our home again.”
‘Like Call of Duty’
Those recruits have already been trained — to kick in doors at night, choke neighborhoods with tear gas, kneel on necks, brutalize with impunity and snatch preschoolers. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one agent said, referring to the video game. “So cool, huh?”
Further, violence was always at the top of ICE’s new agenda. Spending on weapons exploded by 700% last year as ICE shelled out more than $71 million for guns, armor and chemical weapons, even a grenade-throwing robot.
Beneath that agenda is another.
Attorney General Pam Bondi let slip that there’s a deal to be made off blood in Minnesota’s frigid streets. Turn over state voter registration records for every Minnesota resident, Bondi wrote Gov. Tim Walz on the day of Alex Pretti’s killing, and this could all go away.
Bondi’s letter stated that DOJ needed access to voter rolls to ensure “free and fair elections” as part of a broad list of demands that could “bring an end to the chaos” in Minnesota.
If agents are in Minneapolis to remove the “worst of the worst,” why would their bosses be willing to call it a day in exchange for potential election-influencing data?
The answer: “Ransom,” said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
Bondi unsuccessfully sued to get voting records of that state, and an immigration sweep has begun there too. Masked agents are already showing up at homes and warning people not to follow them.
Speak up, Florida
Counties and sheriff’s offices across Florida were forced to sign agreements to help ICE. Cities were threatened if they did not. Given Bondi’s admission of using ICE for nakedly political goals, and the bloodshed in Minnesota, every one of them should consider severing or modifying those agreements.
That’s because it is now clear that bad immigration agents are a political tool armed for political ends, and violence is part of the politics. In October, amid reports of children being hauled from their beds at night, Trump was asked whether agents in Chicago had gone too far.
“They haven’t gone far enough,” he replied.
Weeks later, DHS sent 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis. They arrived Jan. 6. The next day, an agent killed Renee Good. Trump’s DHS then sent more agents.
Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was there when they marched down Nicollet Avenue and shoved a woman to the ground. “Are you OK?” he was overheard asking her, seconds before he was disarmed, assaulted and shot 10 times at point-blank range.
As long as ICE’s goon squads can mask up and strap on guns, no American is OK.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.