Trump's feds need to back off Minnesota now
People gather Sunday near the scene where Alex Pretti was fatally shot Saturday in Minneapolis. Credit: AP/Adam Gray
The public safety crisis in Minnesota, fueled by Washington, now reaches a national inflection point that should bring overdue changes to the needlessly aggressive and cruel deportation policies of the Trump administration.
Federal agents, sent to round up violent, undocumented immigrants, have killed two U.S. citizens, without clear justification, less than three weeks apart. Facing clear, broad-based anger, President Donald Trump finally seeks to de-escalate. He's talking to a political nemesis, Gov. Tim Walz, changing Department of Homeland Security personnel on the ground, and pushing into the background for now the reckless instincts of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as backlash grows.
The deployment of some 3,000 federal immigration agents has been marred by lethal scandal. On Saturday, a well-liked VA nurse named Alex Pretti, 37, was taken to the pavement by six heavily armed Border Patrol agents, then shot reportedly 10 times — six of those to his back. It amplified the horror of Jan. 7 when Renee Good, 37, a mother of three, was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer four times while in her car, seemingly trying to drive away from conflict.
Top federal officials gave flimsy and dubious stories alleging provocation by the deceased. They did not immediately launch, or cooperate with, full investigations. State and local police in the Good and Pretti cases were barred from the crime scenes and denied information. Meanwhile, the masked agents who fired at Good and Pretti have been spirited out of the state without even a semblance of accountability taking place.
Basic constitutional principles are being undermined by the deportation roundup, which might really be an effort to intimidate state officials. Federal officers are asserting sweeping powers to forcibly enter homes without a judge’s warrant, according to a Jan. 7 internal ICE memo. The free speech rights of protesters and the Second Amendment rights to bear arms are being denigrated. Pretti came to the demonstration with a licensed 9 mm pistol that he never brandished. Noem and Miller outlandishly asserted, with no evidence, that Pretti was a "domestic terrorist." FBI Director Kash Patel astonishingly said he had no right to bring his weapon to a protest. Even the National Rifle Association blasted this.
The real and partisan impetus for targeting Minnesota was revealed in a letter to Walz from Attorney General Pam Bondi. One condition she sets for withdrawing ICE forces from the state is allowing the Justice Department to "access Minnesota’s voter rolls to confirm the state’s voter registration policies comply with federal law."
The only way to defuse the chaos is to end this "Metro Surge" operation. Noem, who’s ultimately responsible for ICE’s obvious lack training, must go.
Congress must push for factual answers on the deaths in Minneapolis. Rep. Andrew Garbarino, the Long Island representative who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, must find his voice and demand answers. Our eyes are not deceiving us and our ears are telling us that our government is lying.
MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD are experienced journalists who offer reasoned opinions, based on facts, to encourage informed debate about the issues facing our community.
