The federal government’s current position is that masked agents of the state can kill Americans in the street without due process, subsequent independent investigations or public disclosures of the identities of the officers involved. It is also the government’s position that recording agents in public or harshly criticizing their tactics is tantamount to “terrorism.”
MS NOW reported Tuesday that the Department of Justice will not conduct a civil rights investigation after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse who worked with military veterans, last week in Minneapolis. Instead, the CBP will essentially investigate itself to determine if its officers failed to follow agency policy when they fired at least 10 shots at Pretti, who had a concealed carry permit, after he was on the ground and disarmed. A separate investigation will be conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate whether Pretti broke any laws.
Even free speech is deemed violence, as one ICE officer was recorded telling an onlooker Tuesday, “You raise your voice, I erase your voice.”
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), the state agency that would normally investigate this shooting, has said federal agencies are not sharing any information or access to evidence with BCA. A number of law enforcement experts have also expressed concern over how (or if) evidence was preserved. For example, the gun that was taken off Pretti’s person before he was shot was photographed on a car seat and posted to social media shortly after Pretti’s killing, which could indicate chain of custody issues that could compromise evidence.
And this is essentially how the federal government is handling the killing of Renee Good, also 37 and of Minneapolis, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross earlier this month. Local authorities had their access to evidence withdrawn by the FBI, which cut them out of the investigation, and Trump’s DOJ said there would be no investigation into whether Ross acted appropriately or not in shooting the mother of three. (DOJ also reportedly sought an investigation into Renee Good’s potential criminal liability, but a judge rejected its request for a warrant.) The Trump administration is so committed to obscuring from the public relevant facts about Good’s killing that Homeland Security Kristi Noem even scolded CBS News’ Margaret Brennan for mentioning Ross’ name in an interview.
Meanwhile, Bovino said on Monday that the officers involved in Pretti’s killing were still on the job, their identities hidden from the public ostensibly to prevent “doxxing” — which completely misrepresents the meaning of the word. Doxxing is when private information such as home addresses and phone numbers are made public for the purpose of harassment. Making public the mere identities of law enforcement agents — who are public servants — is not doxxing. (On Wednesday a federal official with direct knowledge told MS NOW that the officers were placed on administrative leave.)
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a long-time Trump ally, appropriately expressed his incredulity at the situation in a Tuesday post on X, in which he said, “Local police routinely put officers involved in deadly shootings on administrative leave until an independent investigation is concluded. That should happen immediately…For calm to be restored, an independent investigation is the least that should be done.”
Independent investigations are indeed routine when a law enforcement officer shoots someone, and investigations into shootings by federal officers are typically done in concert with local authorities.
That it’s not happening after the Minneapolis shootings reveals how the Trump administration views transparency, accountability and potential consequences for misconduct with regards to the president’s mass deportation crusade. That is to say, the administration doesn’t believe in any of those things. This is a might-makes-right administration, one that has been very clear that it sees certain parts of this country (the ones that didn’t vote for Trump) as less American than others (the ones that did vote for Trump) and that nothing less than military incursions into the “bad” American cities will make America great again.
Put plainly, the federal government is not interested in making sure its agents follow the law — or even their own agencies’ use-of-force policies, which a New York Times analysis of video evidence of Pretti’s killing shows pretty clearly that Border Patrol agents did not follow. The federal government’s current position is that masked agents of the state can kill Americans in the street without due process, subsequent independent investigations or public disclosures of the identities of the officers involved. Prior to his reported demotion Monday, Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino said at a press conference that calling immigration agents “kidnappers” or likening their brutal, often lawless tactics to the “Gestapo” brings “consequences.” Bovino was presumably trying to draw a straight line from Americans freely expressing speech that’s critical of federal agents to the incident where an American recording federal agents in public with his phone was pepper-sprayed, then riddled with bullets, in a matter of seconds. Combine Bovino’s authoritarian language with the reports that ICE has given itself the authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan musing about creating a “database” of protesters (which DHS says it is not building, despite video that seems to show agents in the field saying they are, in fact, scanning civilians’ faces for use in a database), and the president himself saying Pretti — a lawful gun owner in an open carry state — should not have been carrying a gun, and it is difficult not to conclude that the Trump administration believes the First, Second and Fourth Amendments only apply to Trump supporters. Meanwhile, Americans who oppose the federal government’s heavy-handed tactics — or merely want to record their actions so they can’t be as easily denied later on — are summarily branded “domestic terrorists” or “communist agitators.” Even free speech is deemed violence, as one ICE officer was recorded telling an onlooker Tuesday, “You raise your voice, I erase your voice.” Perhaps an independent investigation would find that the officers who killed Good and Pretti were justified. But, as it stands, we’re unlikely to ever know. The Trump administration believes consequences are for the dissenters, while the masked men with guns are entitled to total secrecy, legal immunity and the warm blanket of protection provided by a conspiracy of silence. And this is the country we live in until further notice.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW. 
For the rest of us, however, loom the threat of “consequences.”
