With midterms looming, Trump softens stance on ICE brutality after second killing

The Trump Administration may just possibly be beating a partial retreat from its harshest, sharp-edged immigration arrest efforts following a second killing of a Minneapolis citizen whose “crime” seems to have been observing and recording ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Border Patrol actions.

This new victim was Veterans Administration hospital ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Earlier in January, ICE agents killed Renée Good, an unarmed mother.

Pretti was recording federal agents who had been harassing a woman on a city street, and he was attempting to help her after the agents pushed her to the ground. But then Pretti was set upon by several agents who pepper-sprayed him, violently pushed him to the ground and then shot him 10 times. He died on that street.

Trump Administration officials — including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt have all continued a drumbeat of blaming the dead victim.

Basically, their argument has been that because Pretti had a registered firearm in his possession when he was killed, that meant, ipso facto, he was a “merciless thug” intent on doing unspeakable things to ICE agents who were, after all, just doing their jobs. Or, less charitably, they were doing their jobs of snatching up people on the off chance they might be undocumented/illegal immigrants — or even actual criminals.

When this began, the original idea in the Trump Administration had been that, via deployments of federal officers in cities such as Minneapolis, ICE and Border Protection officers would round up violent criminals who had somehow slipped through the complex maze of immigration or asylum processes and who were now carrying out their reign of terror on hapless Americans.

But that seems to have been lost in the shuffle and it has been replaced by deployments of officers wearing military-style full camouflage uniforms (on city streets?) and equipment utility belts, high-powered weaponry, face masks, the lack of any visible identification badges or numbers, and what seems to be the apparent freedom to carry out actions – absent real command and control by senior personnel who know something about crowd control.

Shifting ICE

On Monday, however, in the wake of the indignation over this latest killing, the White House has now taken some modest steps away from the surface texture of those smash-mouth, in-your-face, no-restraints operations and slipped on a kinder, gentler velvet glove, even if the iron fist clearly remains inside that glove.

The hard-as-nails ICE operations leader in Minneapolis, Greg Bovino, has been recalled to Washington, and Tom Homan, the administration’s border and immigration “czar”, has been dispatched to Minneapolis to replace him. Homan may have similar views, but he has a significantly more polished public persona and isn’t given to strutting around in combat-style field gear for his media appearances.

The president also announced he had had a “good conversation” with Minneapolis and Minnesota’s mayor and governor — presumably in place of his previous (and sometimes obscenity-laced) fulminations against them.

Reporting on this shift, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, “President Donald Trump on Monday softened his tone on immigration enforcement in the wake of another killing of an American citizen by federal officers — and amid growing calls for investigations — by expressing sorrow over the bloodshed and sending a new personal envoy to take charge in Minneapolis.

“At the same time, the White House tried to pin the violence on Democratic-led jurisdictions that prohibit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The administration warned that the violence won’t end until Democratic governors and mayors assist federal law enforcement in arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants.”

The Washington Post quoted White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt: “Nobody in the White House, including President Trump, wants to see people getting hurt or killed in America’s streets.”

“It is President Trump’s hope and wish and demand for the resistance and chaos to end today.”

But Leavitt added, “The most peaceful way to carry out this vital public safety mission is for Republicans and Democrats to do it together, and for state and local law enforcement to work together with federal law enforcement,” something the White House has stymied so far in investigations of the shootings.

Still, this “appears to shift the tone of an aggressive enforcement policy of Trump’s own making. The clearest sign of that shift was Trump’s decision Monday to send to Minnesota border czar Tom Homan, whose focus on targeting violent criminals contrasts with the dramatic confrontations that Trump has demanded.”

There had been speculation that there might even be some very awkward, even violent, confrontations between ICE and border patrol officers on the one hand and contingents of Minnesota National Guard units on the other.

The National Guard units had been called up by the Minnesota governor to give some support to an increasingly pressed Minneapolis city police department. The police have been trying to keep order on the streets (between demonstrators and protestors and the federal officers) and still keep doing their usual police work.

At this point, however, the visuals have been of National Guard units handing out coffee and donuts to demonstrators, giving an indication of their sympathies to anyone who insists on protesting in the frigid winter conditions.

In the meantime, though, so as not to let up the pressure, the Attorney General has been pushing for Minnesota to turn over its full voter registration roll with all the identifying data so they can presumably check that register for all those fabled illegal immigrants masquerading as citizens who would be voting Democratic Party in the upcoming midterm election.

Never mind that the US Constitution provides for state — not federal — control of elections and that no credible evidence has ever turned up of hordes of illegals pulling voting levers for all those far left, communist, anarchist Democrats anywhere and everywhere in the country.

The midterms spectre

Pushing the Trump Administration, though, may be the realisation that while a majority of voters continue to support serious efforts to deal with illegal immigrants, those same voters have, in numerous polls, registered a disapproval of strong-arm, extreme efforts by ICE to do so — especially given the highly publicised killings of two citizens, breaking down doors to take potential immigration status violators into custody, and, in one case, taking an older man into detention literally in his underwear and Crocs — in the middle of a ferocious Minnesota winter.

These incidents have been recorded on bystanders’ cellphones, and millions of people have seen them on social media and news broadcasts, giving further impetus to the idea that ICE agents are acting well beyond the law, let alone standards of decency. The effect on America’s moral standing globally has been horrible as well.

Lurking behind all this is, of course, the spectre of Republicans losing big time in the midterm elections in November, where the entire House of Representatives is up for election or re-election, as is a third of the Senate.

Because Republicans hold a paper-thin majority in the House and only slightly better circumstances in the Senate, there is a good chance Democrats could end up controlling at least the lower house of Congress after the election. If that occurs, they could convene hearings, demand documents and issue summonses for testimony by administration officials.

It could be very ugly for Trump and his team for the next two years — or more. Conceivably, they might even pass a bill of impeachment of a cabinet officer or two or even the president (although the Senate’s conviction would be a harder push). In the interim, the administration is being pressed hard over passage of the budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

In recent months, the president’s critics have taken to saying, “Trump always chickens out” or Taco, as in his pushing for over-the-top measures but then settling for something rather less extreme.

Exhibit A has been his stance on Greenland — first demanding that it be ceded to the US but then settling on a framework for further discussion, whatever that really means. In the case of ICE and immigration raids, let’s just say that this time around, on immigration, the Trump Administration’s order at the public policy food truck has just become a “half-Taco” instead of the full meal.

While ICE is still a threat to citizens, immigrants and America’s moral standing, the midterm elections are clearly becoming more imminent and challenging for the Trump administration. DM