ICE Shooting Open Thread
I know: I’ve been pretty much AWOL for the last two weeks. Bad eugyppius.
It’s been nothing serious. There is the extremely mild depression brought upon me by the winter dark and the freezing temperatures; there is some writer’s block encouraged by the descent of German politics into a state of paralysis never seen before and the attendant proliferation of retarded stories I have no intention of writing about ever; and finally there is some personal exasperation over the recent Greenland drama.
What I plan to do about this, in order, is: a) stop being mopey and get back to regular running despite the ungodly cold; b) plan and cultivate some new avenues of content, among them book reviews and a look at various presently relevant historical matters; and c) write a long post tomorrow offloading my thoughts about the Greenland Thing specifically and the apparent shift in Trump administration attitudes towards Europe more broadly.
In the meantime, I fear the most recent Minneapolis ICE shooting of Alex Pretti looks pretty rough:
Pretti is shot in the back only after he is disarmed – whether because of a misunderstanding among the officers after one of them shouts “gun” (around this time one of Pretti’s arms appears to bend towards his waistband), because the first shot you hear is a negligent or accidental discharge (perhaps of Pretti’s gun) that provoked all the other shots, or for some other reason. Kristi Noem, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, immediately issued a statement accusing Pretti of “domestic terrorism.” It would be vastly better, in cases like this, for administration officials simply to avoid all specific comments pending the ongoing investigation. As I said earlier, as long as these aggressive protests continue, there are going to be shootings.
Anyway, I await your thoughts in comments.
I went over this last night, with extreme slo-mo videos and whatnot:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/minnesota-shooting-seemingly-caused
To me it looks like the disarming officer accidentally discharges the weapon as he's turning to leave the scene, and that causes the other officers (who just heard GUN!) to start firing.
But make no mistake, this is exactly what Walz and Frey have been hoping for.
Lost in the shuffle of all of this insanity are two things. ICE are not stormtroopers, they are not Trump's Gestapo or any other nonsense. They are a law enforcement division tasked with enforcing the immigration laws created BY CONGRESS. ICE itself was created by the passage of the Patriot Act again BY CONGRESS. So if you have a problem with ICE, you can blame Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and all the rest who voted to create this. Second, why is this happening in Minnesota and not say, Tennessee? Because normal, sane governors and local officials arrest illegal immigrants on criminal charges and then contact ICE to see if they have pending removal orders and HAND THEM OVER peacefully for departation. Minnesota and the rest of the "sanctuary" places check to see if they have pending removal orders and then RELEASE THEM back out into society to assist in their violation of the law purposefully because they believe illegal immigrants have special status and special privileges that your or I would never get. This is why ICE appears to be "patrolling the streets looking for brown people" because they are forced to go serve warrants at residences increasing the danger level, to apprehend often violent criminals who should have simply been handed over to them while in custody. And furthermore these people in the streets are not 'protestors.' Protestors go picket in front of City Hall, they do not go into the field and impede law enforcement. If the FBI showed up to arrest the head of the Gambino crime family and a bunch of his 'goombas' parked their cars across the street and honked their horns and tried to "de-arrest" the Don, do you think they would be called protestors by the media?