“The best they can do is shoot the guy in the back?” That’s not the voice of some liberal commentator. That’s what a homeland security officer told me this weekend, one of over half a dozen who have reached out to express their alarm over the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and beyond.

I’ve listened to the stories and the beefs of immigration officers in Minneapolis across the country, and to a person, they all blame the shooter, one of their own. The major media is stuck on framing the killing of Alex Pretti as some national and partisan battle, highlighting Republicans breaking ranks, the NRA protesting, MAGA wavering, and Chuck Schumer doing whatever he’s doing, but no one is really capturing what the federal law enforcement officers on the ground are thinking. The truth is that they’re fed up and have been for weeks.

They paint a picture that is more Police Academy (or even Reno 911!) than a Gestapo on the march. Yes, they agree that Washington is a huge problem and are uncomfortable with the mission creep that is taking them away from actual immigration enforcement. But internally? Theirs is also a story of gung-ho 19-year-olds, drunken stakeouts, and senior officers disappearing into meetings and all of a sudden needing time off.

…

An ICE agent was even more critical. “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal [means],” the agent said. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”

…

As the meetings are held, the ICE agents and others I’ve talked to say the government versus terrorists narrative is having a tangible (and negative) impact on the ground.

“Lots of people are freaking out,” one ICE agent told me. “Agents are getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators.’”

Several agents described receiving briefings about retaliatory threats to ICE inspired by the Minneapolis shooting. “Guys take it really serious, like we are fighting insurgents,” as if Minneapolis is Baghdad, an ICE officer said.

Though all of the federal agents I’ve spoken to this weekend support immigration enforcement, they indeed see the Minneapolis operation as something else entirely — an open-ended counterinsurgency in a faraway land and under an out-of-touch leadership in Washington more concerned with optics than immigration.

“This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” a Border Patrol agent said in the private group chat shared with me.

He closed on a plaintive note: “I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost.”

A loose-lipped ICE agent in Portland, Maine publicly hinted at the effort in an exchange on Friday that was captured on video. The video shows the ICE agent taking pictures of a car belonging to a woman who had been recording him, prompting her to ask why. The ICE agent replies: “‘Cause we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”

The remark wasn’t just bravado or trolling. In addition to what my own sources at DHS are telling me, David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, published a report last month pulling together reams of incidents similar to the one in Portland. The report concludes that DHS has a formal policy of intimidating people trying to film them on the dubious legal grounds that doing so amounts to impeding federal enforcement.

“DHS has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities,” the report says.

They are not mutually exclusive. In this case Ross could be a domestic terrorist based on the USC, if not for a castrated Blivens and the DHS trying to use the Supremacy Clause.

This as opposes to the administration saying Good was a domestic terrorist, when by definition she only fits section A and B if you stretch the definition by saying she was going to hit Ross and others in an assassination attempt… Which is difficult as she backed up from him and turned the wheels away from him, and further he put her in jeopardy by standing in from of the car which agents are trained not to do to civilians.

So yes, it could be considered a reign of terror as well, but that is more of a cultural definition, not a legal one.

The video if anyone wants it.

Not sure it looks as provoking as they want it to, I’m guessing the other woman’s video might also come out.

This is one of the other views: https://lemmy.world/post/41292157

She backed up before she drove off. Not the intention of someone who is trying to hit you.

Edit: Also Reuters has a good write up on angles, people, and views.