Sadness. Anger. Fear. Disgust. Shock. Shame. Images of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement agents shoving, beating, pepper-spraying and fatally shooting protesters in Minneapolis elicit all of these emotional reactions.
Two law-abiding American citizens have died — so far. The morning of Jan. 7, a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, was shot to death by an agent at the scene of an ICE operation in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Federal officials say Good tried to ram agents with her car in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
But video evidence clearly shows that Good, who had been ordered out of her car by agents, was merely trying to drive away from the scene. Her only “crime,” it would seem, was taking a sarcastic attitude toward the agents.
Seventeen days after the death of Good, ICE agents shot Alex Pretti to death in another Minneapolis encounter.
Pretti was carrying a handgun in his waistband, but video evidence shows that he never drew it and he never initiated physical contact with agents. Instead, he was pushed to the ground after trying to help another protester who had been pushed down. Agents then pepper-sprayed Pretti, beat him in the face with a can and then shot him to death after removing his handgun.
It wasn’t the first time that Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, had been brutalized by ICE agents, CNN reported Tuesday. Roughly a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain others.
The activities of protesters and observers of police actions have broad protections under the First Amendment. ICE agents have consistently ignored those protections.
If the deaths of Pretti and Good were the only examples of ICE agents losing control and violating the law in Minneapolis, it would be damning. Add dozens of other incidents, captured on video, of ICE agents bullying and beating — and repeatedly and reflexively using pepper spray on — observers and protesters in Minnesota’s capital, and a clear picture of a poorly trained, lawless, abusive agency emerges.
In short, ICE has become a federally sponsored vigilante organization.
Have ICE agents been treated disrespectfully by some of the protesters? For sure. But disrespect, no matter what President Donald Trump says, shouldn’t be answered with pepper spray and bullets.
In the final analysis, the main reason ICE is even in Minnesota is that the city leans strongly Democrat and has a reputation for making immigrants feel at home. The ICE operation to arrest and deport dangerous illegal immigrants there is merely a front for the real motivation — to punish the Trump administration’s political opponents and incite violence.
What’s happening in Minneapolis is an American nightmare on par with the events at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of students protesting the war in Vietnam. Four died and nine were wounded.
If the ICE operation in Minneapolis doesn’t end soon, the death toll could eclipse the Kent State tragedy.
Sadness. Anger. Fear. Disgust. Shock. Shame. If the Trump administration doesn’t stop dropping ICE operations into peaceful cities, the nightmare will continue elsewhere. Even Indianapolis, a “blue” Midwestern city where the state Legislature recently defied Trump’s redistricting agenda, could be a target.
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