Today in Minneapolis, another US citizen (Alex Pretti, 37) who was out attempting to interfere with ICE operations, was shot during a struggle with officers. This is tragic for many, many reasons, and understandably, tempers are running hot. On the one hand, you’ve got those who think this was the inevitable outcome of his own actions. On the other, those who believe he was murdered while trying to “protect his community”. Well okay, well then I have to ask: from what?
Here are the raw facts of the matter which should be universally recognized as accepted as fact:
- The guy decides to deliberately harass ICE officers. This is not a judgement of whether that is right or wrong, simply a statement of fact. He left his home with the purposeful intent of harassing federal agents.
- He decided to take his (high capacity magazine, $2000, accompanied by extra clips) gun with him, to this date with similarly-armed federal agents.
- He is confrontational and aggressive with the agents. Again, not a judgement on righteousness, just a statement of what happened.
- He gets involved in a physical altercation with multiple officers as they move to arrest him.
- At some point during the ensuing struggle – which is difficult to know the ins and outs of clearly from the currently available video – an agent shot the man.
Can we save ourselves some time and agree on the above? Thanks, that’s great.
It seems to me that this man’s community – which he believes he is protecting – was markedly safer before he decided that an armed confrontation with federal agents was an important thing to do. If he had not been going out of his way to do something illegal (obstruction of a federal officer), while armed with a gun, none of the ensuing violence would have occurred. But what if he was “in the right” by being there, acting to defend his community?
It’s important to recall that, in years past, ICE enforcement was not seen as a threat to public safety. Quite to the contrary, it was lauded as keeping communities safer. CNN did ridealongs with ICE agents to show the public their brave law enforcement agents in action. The head of ICE received awards for accomplishing huge numbers of deportations. The importance of immigration enforcement was a large part of the campaigns of every Democrat administration since ICE’s inception. Obama’s admin deported 3 million under expedited removal, which is the same action currently being protested against. Elian Gonzales happened during a Democrat administration. ICE was never a public enemy until this past year. But what makes them – all of a sudden – so dangerous to neighborhoods that going out, with a gun, to interfere with ICE operations was judged by some to be “protecting the community”?
ICE operations have shown a lot more street-level action, which can certainly be a bit shocking to people whose lives are extremely privileged and easy. Compared to how things had been going under Biden, enforcement of any kind would seem heavy-handed. It’s not that these kinds of operations haven’t been done before – they have, and you had no problem with it – but that there is this sudden, dramatic escalation in visible enforcement.
Making a circus of things has long been Trump’s speciality. The people who voted for him strongly rejected the direction the Left is heading in, so some showy street-level raids and arrests is a way of appealing to his voter base – a voter base concerned with crime and immigration. However, the lists of names to target is generated in the same way those lists have been generated before.
The narrative that, despite decades of doing the job, ICE agents overnight started targeting innocent people, is a false one. There exists no evidence that these men and women, who were receiving awards from your leaders just a short time ago, collectively snapped and became racist Nazi serial killers. If your argument is this, then it’s not really an argument, more of a ‘lunatic raving’ kinda deal.
I will admit, I find a lot of the shock and awe style operations like many American things: garish and obnoxious. Could they have been done a different way? Absolutely. Does that mean these operations aren’t in keeping with the mandate of ICE, which is to enforce immigration laws? No, it does not. The enforcement is broader in scope and more aggressively pursued than during the Biden years. To some, this is a long overdue correction to a system that had become untenable. The question is whether or not ICE is doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is make sure that people who are in their country are documented and legal.
Asking for immigrants to be legal isn’t a big ask. Democrats have said as much repeatedly and loudly over the years. Millions of people each year go through legal immigration routes. Why is it okay that, not only do we have no idea who these people are but they jump the line? More importantly, why are they coming in illegally? Why not legally?
The truth is that many of the people who enter the US illegally are not people you want living down the street from where your children live, even if the majority are just looking for an opportunity. For those who are peaceful, productive, law-abiding individuals who want a chance to make it in America, there is a perfectly serviceable, quite generous legal immigration system to use. If you choose not to enter legally, it’s like someone deciding stop lights are for suckers so they run every one.
Being a nation of laws is important. These laws don’t temporarily not apply when they don’t make you feel good. Seeing a middle-aged woman being arrested after living in the country for 20 years is very sad, but that is the risk she ran when she entered illegally. Laws matter. Truth matters. Reality matters.
And the reality is that it’s not the takedowns of targeted arrests making the news. It is people coming out to do demonstrate against a threat they can’t quite define or qualify, but which they feel deep rage towards. Not a single one of them thinks about what their life would be like if people doxxed them, threatened them, screamed at them, spat on them, and committed vehicular assault on them as they tried to do their job. For sane people, that kind of treatment would be intolerable in this and any other context. And yeah, agents are probably amped on adrenaline – not for being excited to murder minivan moms – out of fear. It’s a very real threat in a job already very dangerous.
Let’s say you live on Lafayette Street. Down the road, there’s a police impound lot where they keep the impounded vehicles and seized items. Guarding the lot are a pair of pit bull terriers. You hate pit bull terriers. You think of them as nothing but weapons masquerading as pets. So what do you do? You march yourself, full of indignation, right down to the impound lot, climb over the fence, walk right up to the pit bulls, bare your teeth, snarl and bark.
My friend, ain’t nobody blaming the dog. Dog is just doing what Dog has been trained to do. Dog was keeping the impound lot safe so that people didn’t break in and steal things. The fact that you don’t like pit bulls is totally fucking irrelevant. Whether or not he meant to pull his gun out to shoot officers became irrelevant the minute he started fighting them after harassing them while they tried to arrest him. Someone who will recklessly endanger themselves and their community like that is no martyr.
Whoever this guy was, he believed in his cause completely, so I pour a drink on the ground to him for that. That kind of devotion is wonderful with your kids, or your career, or your art. Being devoted to a cause that you aren’t able to successfully defend logically is blind faith. The feelings are real. I am sure people are saddened, fearful, enraged when they see scenes play out like the one that we saw today. I feel those things. I know that the demonstrator shot today was a victim. He was a victim of an ideology where being outraged is more important than common sense, more important than family, more important than work, than children, than anything. It’s like a drug.
What happened today wasn’t the product of courage or community defense – it was the predictable collision of adrenaline, ideology, and a refusal to accept limits. You can oppose immigration enforcement. You can believe ICE should be abolished. You can protest, vote, litigate, organize. What you cannot do – without consequences – is escalate a political disagreement into an armed physical confrontation with federal officers and then pretend the outcome was unforeseeable. That isn’t martyrdom. It’s tragedy born of hubris.
If we’re serious about preventing the next one, the answer isn’t louder outrage or more mythology. It’s restoring a baseline respect for reality: that laws exist, that enforcement has risks, that intent doesn’t override consequence, and that “feeling righteous” is not a substitute for sound judgment. Until we relearn that distinction, this won’t be the last life ruined in service of a cause no one can clearly explain – only feel.
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