Did a Border Patrol officer kill Alex Pretti in self-defense after being alerted that he was carrying a gun in a chaotic scramble to arrest him? Or did he execute the anti-ICE protester in cold blood after he was disarmed? The truth is that it is difficult to know. Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minnesota.
Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus
Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus. Trump opponents post freeze-frames and selective snippets of the horrible video to hammer home their assertion of out-of-control ICE death squads. The media, eager for click-generating hysteria, fail to report on laws that protect officers when they shoot to kill in self-defense if a gun is sighted during an arrest. Trump supporters, meanwhile, post red circles around Pretti’s hand to suggest he was reaching for his gun.
Pretti himself is not a black-and-white character. A nurse who can be seen in a video circulating on social media reading out a final salute to a dead veteran: “Today we remember that freedom is not free, we have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we can enjoy the gift of freedom.” Even the NRA has come out in defense of his Second Amendment right to carry a firearm.
Pretti is held up as martyr for justice, or a crazed radical, depending on what your social-media algorithm shows you. But the truth about him seems neither black or white.
He is very much not the trans antifa leader, Kyle Wagner, who is riding the coattails of this tragedy and encouraging like-minded people to follow him to Minnesota with their guns. He was an ICU nurse. He was also carrying a loaded weapon.
An autonomous zone has already been set up with law enforcement banned. This is exactly the febrile atmosphere that caused Pretti and Good to act out of character and ultimately lose their lives.
Hyper-charged partisan opinion asserted as fact — from political figures, official bodies and journalists alike spreads like wildfire on social media and sways the broader debate on ICE and immigration.
The facts, here, are also hard to divine. This week ICE claimed to have rounded up 10,000 illegal aliens who it said were “killing Americans, hurting children and reigning terror in Minneapolis,” since Donald Trump took office a year ago. The figures raised eyebrows not least because the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) said on Monday that the total was 3,000. It’s not clear when and where the additional 7,000 arrests occurred and the DHS hasn’t answered detailed questions. Indeed, the DHS last week crowed about arresting 7,000 murderers, kidnappers and thieves across the entire country.
It is important to know how many of the, let’s say, several thousand arrested in Minneapolis in recent days were criminals. Yet we have no clear information.
Polls have consistently shown that Americans overwhelmingly back deporting serious criminals, less so childminders and store workers who’ve been in the country, albeit illegally, for decades.
Why won’t the DHS be straight with the American public? If as they say the vast majority are bad hombres, then there is nothing to fear. If not, then Americans, whether Republicans like it or not, must be allowed to make their own determination. Withholding vital information from the public is telling, doomed to eventual failure and reveals a fragility at the heart of the DHS’s leadership.
What is a fact is a poll conducted after the Renee Good shooting found that 47 percent of Americans think ICE is making the country less safe, compared with 37 percent who say more safe. And 46 to 43 percent say they would support abolishing ICE altogether. The numbers in support of ICE will have only deteriorated after the latest fatal ICE shooting.
Another inconvenient fact is that the midterms are nine months away. And the already poor outlook for Donald Trump and the Republican party will also be deteriorating. Rather than pour oil on these troubled waters, the president has, in his typical bomb-hurling style, doubled down – sending thousands more ICE agents to Minnesota and threatening to send in the army by invoking the Insurrection Act.
It’s a high-risk strategy that threatens to overshadow the popular work he has done on reversing Biden’s open door immigration policy, closing the border and stemming the tide of illegal immigrants.
Late Sunday, Trump did try to calm some of the turbulence, declining to say whether the ICE officer had acted appropriately. “We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” he told theWall Street Journal. He even hinted ICE agents could be pulled out of the state soon. It is of note that since the Pretti shooting J.D. Vance has tweeted little and only in general about the “engineered chaos,” while Marco Rubio has been mute.
Congressional Republicans are already apprehensive about the midterms. Trump has vowed to campaign like it’s 2024 but still they fear losing the House, the Senate and watching helplessly as Democrats find new reasons to impeach Trump on a weekly basis.
Trump must decide if the problem here is one of messaging rather than policy. If so, he should tell the American public about this supposed army of child molesters, murderers, violent offenders and fraudsters who’ve been rounded up on his watch. If not, a deepening bloodbath in Minneapolis and electoral peril lie ahead.
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