by Bruce Dunlavy
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The Trump administration has begun a pullout of immigration enforcement agents from Minneapolis. Seven hundred agents of “Operation Metro Surge” have been withdrawn from the city, with the remaining 1200 or so soon to follow, returning operations there to the existing local field office. During the roughly six weeks of the expanded presence, near-chaos has ruled, with frequent clashes between demonstrators and the armed, masked, unidentified agents who roamed the streets. They chased down anyone they wanted to, invaded homes, and beat/handcuffed/arrested people of all ages on any suspicion or no suspicion.

Last month, sixteen days apart, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two demonstrators in Minneapolis who were protesting the presence and behavior of Federal immigration agents were killed by those same agents. Their deaths have evoked a nationwide outcry and a collapse of trust in the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Although similar killings have occurred in United States (and its previous incarnation as British colonies) at least since the Boston Massacre in 1770, relatively few have had the impact of these two. The backlash has been deep and stayed in the headlines longer than most. Two YouGov polls found that 55 percent of Americans say they have “very little” confidence in ICE, and 47 percent would support abolishing it.

What is the statutory function of ICE? Why are they in Minneapolis and what strategies and tactics are they employing there? The details of the matter are murky and unsettling.

ICE was created in 2002 as part of the Homeland Security Act that was part of America’s response to the 9/11 attacks the previous year. The Department of Homeland Security was created under the Act, and part of its mission was the oversight of border security and immigration matters. These were delegated to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE. CBP is responsible for customs (the collection of tariffs and import duties), and prevention of the entry of contraband. ICE has primary jurisdiction in two areas, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). HIS investigates criminal activities such as international finance crimes, human trafficking, and computer fraud, while ERO is tasked with the locating, apprehending, and removal of non-citizens who violate immigration laws.

Since they do not have such jurisdiction over US citizens, ICE had been dispatched to Minneapolis to conduct activities aimed at locating and arresting undocumented aliens.

Why was there such a powerful ICE-ERO presence in Minneapolis? Of the estimated 11.5 million undocumented aliens in the US, only about 100,000 are in the State of Minnesota. California has the most, with 2.3 million, followed by Texas with over 1.5 million, and Florida with around one million. What is special about Minnesota? I cannot say, but it is a blue State, and Minneapolis is its bluest area. Minnesota is home to some leading members of the left wing of the Democratic Party, including Representative Ilhan Omar and 2024 vice-presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz. Add to this the politicization of federal legal enforcements as a hallmark of the second administration of President Donald Trump, and the picture takes a particular shape.

In any case, Minneapolis has seen two public, on-the-street killings of American citizens during protests against ICE activities. In both cases, the killers seen in video can be identified as ICE agents. These are only the most egregious of the host of improprieties there. Numerous people have been pulled from homes, sidewalks, and cars and taken away in unmarked vehicles. Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was one of many children caught up in the surge. Hewas detained on his way home from school because ICE wanted his father, but after the father was taken Liam was left alone, surrounded by ICE agents. Initially, the Trump administration claimed that Liam’s father had “abandoned” him and the agents had come to his assist him. Then both child and father were sent to a detention center in Texas.

In another notable incident, a dozen armed ICE agents surrounded the St. Paul home of ChongLy Thao, a Laotian-born American citizen with no criminal record. They broke down the door, entered, handcuffed Thao, and forced and outside wearing only underwear and Crocs in snowy 10-degree weather. After an hour being driven around, questioned, and fingerprinted, he was dropped off at back home. Federal sources claimed that the portly, 56-year-old grandfather looked like two young Asian men who were convicted sex offenders.

Image credit: abcnews.go.com

Five days later, Alex Pretti, was an ICU nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital, was shot to death by ICE officers after he was sprayed with chemicals, pushed to the ground, and beaten. The agents set on him after he interposed himself between them and a woman they had shoved down. Petti was carrying a licensed handgun in his waistband, but at no time did he touch it or indicate an intent to use it.

The Trump administration took to the media what has become their default response. They blamed the dead man. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Pretti had “attacked” the agents. Presidential aide Stephen Miller categorized Pretti as a “would-be assassin,” and Operation Metro Surge’s then-leader Gregory Bovino announced that Pretti had wanted to “massacre law enforcement.” Once videos of the encounter went viral, officials quickly backtracked, then changed their argument to an unexpected one: Petti had it coming because he was carrying a gun. This is not exactly true, because at the time Petti was shot, the gun was in the possession of an ICE officer who had seen it and taken it.

President Trump said Pretti’s possession of a firearm “doesn’t play good,” and FBI Director Kash Patel astonishingly flipped the usual narrative by announcing, “You cannot bring a firearm” to such a demonstration. I must say that I have never heard the inviolability of the Second Amendment challenged from that part of the political spectrum.

The fact that Patel would imply that exercising one’s right to bear arms means Federal agents can kill you for it is clear evidence the debacle that is Operation Metro Surge has led the administration to desperate straits. Sure enough, Bovino was packed off and ‘border czar” Tom Holman put in charge to oversee the pullout of the members of the surge.

The disorganized scrambling with which the Trump administration had been trying to justify Operation Metro Surge and, by extension, the ramping up of ICE to go into other American cities, neighborhoods, and homes has seriously damaged Trump’s reliance on scapegoating undocumented aliens. While that is a welcome relief from non-stop escalation of government overreach, it came at a high price.

Yes, the administration’s poll numbers have dropped so precipitously that the Gallup organization has announced that it will no longer conduct them. Yes, some members of Congress are starting to show that they are not spineless abdicators of their Constitutional duty. However, Alex Pretti is dead. Minneapolis is suffering community PTSD. People are holding their breath wondering what horrific action will be attempted next, either to rekindle the use of paramilitary force against Americans or to redirect their attention to a potential attack response to some ginned-up “outside threat to national security.”

Perhaps the murder of Alex Pretti by uncontrolled agents of the Federal government will be the event that starts the collapse of the ugly abuses that have been visited upon our country by those who would turn it into a tyranny to make us stand in fear.