Unpacking the Left’s Anti-ICE Strategy
Clearly, leftist agitators are training and organizing to incite exactly the kinds of hostilities that are getting people killed. Why?
Left-wing agitators have a singular strategy: Discredit ICE and President Donald Trump by provoking and filming (sometimes violent) confrontations with federal agents.
Sadly, it happened again with Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis. After the recent death of Renee Good, leftists have all the “evidence” they need of a Gestapo takeover of peaceful Minnesota.
Innocent people, both 37 years old, were mercilessly killed by masked federal agents, leftists say. Good was just a mom having dropped off a kid at school. Pretti was just an ICU nurse.
Actually, both Good and Pretti were part of a trained, organized, and well-funded resistance. They knew exactly what they were doing.
For the record, I think ICE agents probably should not have killed Pretti, and some of the justification coming from the Trump administration (like saying Pretti was there to “massacre law enforcement”) is, unfortunately, over the top, untrue, and unhelpful. Likewise, tampering with evidence, blocking local police from the scene, and ensuring that the investigation is conducted internally by DHS are all terrible for maintaining the Rule of Law.
However, I also disagree with those even on the Right who argue Pretti was “lying on the ground” and unarmed (or at least disarmed). Easy for them to say from the comfort of their warm offices. Officers on the scene only knew that Pretti interfered with their operations, violently resisted arrest, was still resisting by wrestling from his hands and knees when he was shot, and could have been armed with another gun or other weapon.
Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) contributed her usual incendiary comments, saying that ICE agents “murdered another member of our community,” and calling it an “execution by immigration enforcement.”
If you carry a firearm (with extra magazines and ammo) as you physically tussle with law enforcement, you can expect to get shot. The whole “he had a concealed carry permit” argument is not only irrelevant, but it’s the first and maybe only time you will ever hear a leftist argue in favor of gun rights like that. In fact, most of the time, they vehemently oppose carrying guns to protests.
The broader point is the resistance.
“The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!” declared President Trump. “Instead, these sanctimonious political fools should be looking for the Billions of Dollars that has been stolen from the people of Minnesota, and the United States of America. LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!”
News broke late last year that Somali immigrants in Minnesota had set up numerous avenues of social services fraud and were bilking taxpayers for billions of dollars. The way to get that out of the headlines was to provoke confrontations with law enforcement.
Moreover, leftists have convinced themselves that they’re fighting Nazis, so they see one behind every tree. Real fascists have always been left-wing, of course, but leftists don’t usually trouble themselves with facts.
Minnesota Democrat Governor Tim Walz has been one of the leading agents of chaos in his own state. Aside from the fraud, he runs a sanctuary state in which law enforcement does not cooperate with federal authorities. That’s one major reason why ICE is there in the first place. Rather than help, Walz and his fellow Democrats in the state have consistently framed ICE as the Gestapo, urging residents to resist, film agents, and otherwise stir up agitation.
DHS is operating around the country to apprehend and deport illegal aliens. Violence has primarily broken out in Minnesota.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” lamented Walz. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
What preposterous and inflammatory nonsense.
Yet it is also illustrative of the Left’s horribly distorted worldview: Enforcing immigration law is, to them, the same as rounding up Jews for the Holocaust. That’s why they form groups to train on how to obstruct ICE enforcement. Their worldview is why they lie about five-year-olds being detained and used “as bait,” and it’s why they invade churches and then claim to be the victims.
The Trump administration cannot cede the field to the lawless rabble-rousers. Doing so would only vindicate the awful tactics used by leftist agitators like Good, Pretti, and others. It would reward the open-borders Left.
Still, it would be utterly foolish — and almost certainly lead to more deaths of American citizens — for ICE and other law enforcement not to adjust tactics.
This has become far worse than an optics problem of rounding up too many illegal workers with no other criminal record. Regular Americans are becoming increasingly concerned that ICE agents are overly aggressive and in the wrong, especially when people die. By design, the provocative actions of left-wing agitators provide more video evidence of that charge, and the complicit Leftmedia frames every report — both subtly and more directly — so as to make ICE look as bad as possible.
To continue upholding the Rule of Law, DHS and ICE must adapt tactics, and the Trump administration must offer more accurate, honest, and even conciliatory rhetoric. Be the adults in the room. Uphold the law and turn down the temperature on what has become an insurrection in Minnesota.
