Under authoritarian regimes, accountability can seem elusive.
The Trump administration’s debunked lies and refusal to launch civil rights probes after the recent fatal shootings of American citizens by federal immigration agents have fueled Americans’ opposition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And now Democratic prosecutors are vowing to pool their resources to prop up state-level investigations to try to circumvent the administration’s inaction.
As I wrote earlier this week, even one of the most outspoken MAGA figures online has said immigration agents could credibly be compared to the Nazi Gestapo if there’s no “accountability”for ICE. And on Tuesday, MS NOW reported that the Justice Department won’t be launching a civil rights investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing, with one official saying the DOJ “may” investigate the shooting “at some later point” if “the evidence presents itself.”
David Noriega, one of the reporters on that story, appeared on “All In with Chris Hayes” and explained how (skip to 32:30) the Department of Homeland Security is essentially investigating itself using a branch of the department that hasn’t shown a capacity to effectively lead internal probes like this. He also said the Trump administration has blocked local officials as they have tried to investigate the Pretti shooting, including by physically preventing investigators from reaching the scene despite their having a warrant to do so.
That’s helpful context for the Fight Against Federal Overreach coalition, a newly formed group of Democratic district attorneys that launched Wednesday — and whose name borrows from the popular acronym “FAFO.”
The founding members include DAs from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona and Virginia. According to a news release, they will “share strategies and best practices among prosecutors, provide regular public updates on efforts to rein in unlawful federal conduct and educate the public on what paths are legally available, and coordinate on accountability efforts across jurisdictions.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is quoted in the release as saying:
No agency and no officer is above the law. When federal agents exceed their lawful authority, local prosecutors have both the power and the duty to act. The project exists to ensure that accountability is real, coordinated, and enforced through lawful institutions.
Krasner is one of many critics of the Trump administration’s tactics who have rebuked claims that federal officers have “absolute immunity,” such as one made by Vice President JD Vance after the deadly shooting of Renée Good. Indeed, legal experts have explained that bringing charges against federal officers can be quite difficult, but the idea that officers are wholly insulated from prosecution is dubious at best, which might be why Vance soon backtracked on his comments.
At a news conference Tuesday, Krasner previewed the district attorneys’ newly formed group and denounced abusive immigration officials as “wannabe Nazis” — perhaps referring to the Gestapo similarities, or the numerous social media posts from DHS invoking white supremacist imagery and language. “This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis — that’s what they are. In a country of 350 million, we outnumber them,” he said. Krasner vowed that “there will be accountability now, there will be accountability in the future, there will be accountability after Trump is out of office” — and he didn’t mince words as he closed out his remarks. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice, and we will do so under the constitution and the laws of the United States.” Watch the clip below:
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
