After the deaths of civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti, backlash against the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has spurred nationally where citizens are now clamoring for the Trump administration to pull ICE out of their cities. At the heart of this growing outrage is ICE’s lack of transparency which allows for fatal misconduct to be excused, requiring immediate accountability for the agency and its officers.
Since the beginning of his second term, the Trump administration has sent ICE to cities they deem “overrun” with “illegal aliens” and criminal activity. After being ousted from Los Angeles and D.C., they have switched to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dubbed “the largest immigration operation ever,” the actions currently happening in Minneapolis echo the injustices occurring nationwide.
Agents have specifically been receiving pushback for their aggressive tactics towards innocent people in their daily lives. As Wired analyzes, “ICE agents carry weapons and equipment inappropriate for simple search-and-seizure missions: ballistic helmets, bullet resistant plate carriers, magazine drop pouches on their legs… other attachments you wouldn’t catch your average infantryman dead with.”
After the death of Alex Pretti, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension filed a lawsuit and temporary restraining order against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE, and U.S. Border Patrol, along with leaders like Attorney General Pam Bondi. The motion was made as a request to the courts to prevent the defendants from destroying any evidence regarding the shooting, highlighting the lack of trust between local law enforcement officers and ICE agents, and their disregard for the law.
“ICE and CBP’s practices are both illegal and morally reprehensible,” said Catherine Ahlin – Halverson, staff attorney with the ACLU of Minnesota. “Federal agents’ conduct — sweeping up Minnesotans through racial profiling and unlawful arrests — is a grave violation of Minnesotans’ most fundamental rights, and it has spread fear among immigrant communities and neighborhoods. No one, including federal agents, is above the law.”
Despite this, the Cato Institute has found that ICE has failed to comply with or misrepresented themselves in around 43 cases, as of Jan. 15. In fact, it turns out that the DHS has deliberately fabricated details surrounding their malfeasances before, as exemplified by the time Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito described an incident with a preschool teacher that “justified” agents opening fire in self-defense. This case was quickly overturned with video evidence but it raises the question of whether court officials are doing their job to properly vet the information given to them, instead of giving ICE the benefit of the doubt.
This question has propelled citizens to take to the streets as nationwide protests erupted in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York, despite recent sub-zero temperatures. Calling for “ICE OUT,” many protestors are disappointed in their local representatives’ failure to take definitive action to protect their cities. In a stark contrast to this political inaction, even students across AUHSD schools have walked out of classes to march to their respective City Halls in hopes of garnering attention.
While supporters of the Trump administration and ICE argue that the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good were unavoidable as they were “obstructing justice,” or that immigrants need to simply comply, this coarse rhetoric places the blame on the victims, rather than calling for accountability within officers. If local law enforcement and military personnel are trained on de-escalation tactics to prevent the loss of life, there is no reason for ICE agents to be any different— especially if they will continue to be deployed across the country in such mass populations. It has become increasingly clear that these agents need to receive proper police training and wear body cameras to ensure that illegal actions will not go unpunished.
Right now, it is not a question of whether ICE’s actions are lawful but rather of how long the agency will evade culpability and operate without checks and oversight. ICE must be held to the same standards as other law enforcement agencies and it’s vital for citizens to keep speaking out and writing to their local representatives to honor the innocent lives at stake.
