What Are We Doing?

I don’t know what we’re doing in America.

Yesterday, an ICE agent shot Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, less than three weeks after an agent shot Renee Good in her car. The former was an ICU nurse and the latter a writer and mother of three.

I wasn’t able to find a video on YouTube that includes shooting itself, but this one gets within a second of it¹.

In the longer video that includes the shooting, I counted something like ten or eleven shots that rang out.

And here’s Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol officer who’s been the de facto leader of deployments to major US cities, commenting on the situation.

During this operation, an individual approached US border patrol agents with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots…. The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

That’s not what I saw. I saw an ICE agent push a woman to the ground, and Pretti step toward her, at which point the agent started pepper spraying them both without being in any evident danger.

And then, Pretti is grabbed by multiple agents and forced to the ground. Another agent comes in and clubs him in the head with an object. Then during the struggle, he’s shot multiple times.

Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, spoke about it:

When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons – and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence – that is the definition of domestic terrorism. This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism. That’s the facts.

Is it the facts? He came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation? What actions could Pretti have been doing before the beginning of the video to justify being abruptly physically restrained and then shot?

He did have a gun. Was there any reason to think he was going to use it? Other video angles strongly suggest that the gun was actually removed from his possession moments before he was shot².

But even getting to this point is an indictment of ICE’s conduct. As law enforcement, you’re going to have to put up with some verbal abuse, and even some people obstructing your ability to do your job. You don’t get to assault them.

Perhaps more disturbing: what absolutely appalling, deplorable behavior by Noem and Bovino. At best, they’re correct on technicalities. More realistically, they’re lying through their teeth.

Immigration

Illegal immigration is illegal, it’s true. Is it such a problem that we should send in our armed border patrol force to large American cities?³

ICE is not trained for this, and it was never going to end well. Public opinion in those places was against them from the start, and they did themselves no favors by wearing full face masks to look maximally villainous.

But on substance, there’s been a total disregard for humanity in immigration enforcement. Bovino has been reprimanded by federal judges for using tear gas on protestors. The Economist:

Under what circumstances can federal agents use chemical irritants on children preparing for a Halloween parade? On October 28th Sara Ellis, a judge for the federal district of northern Illinois, called in Greg Bovino, a senior official at the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, to outline when his officers can deploy tear gas while remaining compliant with a restraining order she previously issued on October 9th. The answer, she made clear, is essentially never.

Judge Ellis summoned Mr Bovino to court after an incident in which federal agents, confronted with the threat of middle-aged dads shouting at them, lobbed tear-gas grenades just as a crowd of children in costumes were gathering on the street. “These kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in a local school parking lot,” Judge Ellis said. “I can only imagine how terrified they were.” At the hearing neither Mr Bovino nor the lawyers representing the government disputed the specific facts, though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that the use of force was justified because agents were “boxed in”. … Over the course of just a few days, Border Patrol agents have been filmed lobbing tear-gas grenades out of a car, shoving a woman who was shouting at them to the ground and dragging a 67-year-old man out of his car and pinning him to the ground—allegedly breaking his ribs in the process. In the latter two cases, both victims were citizens, not targets for arrest. These videos, cited in court, have all been viewed by The Economist. According to court documents submitted to Judge Ellis by the plaintiffs, one agent also pointed his rifle at a protester and told him “Bang, bang” and “You’re dead, liberal.” “I never expected to be tear-gassed on a street of multimillion-dollar houses,” says a woman who saw an incident in Lakeview, one of the city’s wealthier neighbourhoods.

The immigration raids have been half terrorism, half publicity stunt. The Economist again:

Back on September 6th President Donald Trump posted a picture on his Truth Social page referencing “Apocalypse Now”, a war film, with the caption “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” On September 30th a raid on 7500 South Shore Drive showed he meant it. At around 1am, at least 300 masked federal agents, mostly from border patrol, some rappelling from helicopters, others using breaching ladders, stormed into the building. They threw flashbang grenades into the corridors, smashed in doors and then marched everyone, including children, into the street in their pyjamas. Some 37 Venezuelan immigrants were taken away.

Here’s that Truth Social post:

This guy is the president!

This behavior is disgusting, and it’s clear disdain for the principles America is supposed to stand for.

Back in October, in the early days of these high-profile raids, ProPublica had already compiled a list of 170 American citizens who were detained by immigration agents, 20 of whom were children. Four of the children were held for multiple weeks without access to an attorney.

Bovino has also been pretty transparent that agents are looking for people based on race. The Chicago Sun-Times:

“You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that,” Bovino said. “It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location. “Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” he said to the reporter, a tall, middle-aged man of Anglo descent.

I don’t think he meant height.

Everything Else

In the past few months, the Trump DoJ has brought charges to settle his grudges with James Comey and Letitia James⁴. He’s tried to fire a Federal Reserve governor on specious grounds, prompting 593 economists to sign an open letter in defense of Fed independence. His DoJ brought charges against the Fed Chair after repeatedly urging him to lower rates.

Trump has no respect for norms. He treats independent agencies, and even an independent judiciary, as obstacles.

He’s driven our closest neighbor toward China by bullying them like a child, and is alienating all of our strongest allies in Europe by demanding they give us Greenland.

He initially seemed to be on the right track by freeing Venezuela from its dictator, only to leave the dictator’s second-in-command in charge and openly promise to send in American oil companies:

We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take out money. Use that money in Venezuela. And the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.

Trump makes us all look like fools on the world stage, distracting with rhetoric about immigrants and resentment of elites while nakedly pursuing his own benefit without any sense of decency.

But the worst thing is January 6th, 2021. 53,000 people gathered for a Trump rally titled “Save America”, after Trump had lost the election and repeatedly claimed it was stolen. It was already looking like a riot well before erupting into violence. The report from the House Committee contains text exchanges from Trump allies, who were already alarmed:

Unknown, 3:04 p.m.: “Are you with potus right now? Hearing he is in the dining room watching this on TV . . .” “Is he going to say anything to de-escalate apart from that Tweet?”

Reince Priebus, 3:09 p.m.: “TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!”

Unknown, 3:13 p.m.: “POTUS should go on air and defuse this. Extremely important.”

Alyssa Farah, 3:13 p.m.: “Potus has to come out firmly and tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed . . .”

Representative Chip Roy, 3:25 p.m.: “Fix this now.” Meadows responded: “We are.”

Sean Hannity (Fox News), 3:31 p.m.: “Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital [sic].”

Meadows responded: “On it.”

Katrina Pierson, 3:40 p.m.: “Note: I was able to keep the crazies off the stage. I stripped all branding of those nutty groups and removed videos of all of the psychos. Glad it [sic] fought it.”

Unknown, 3:42 p.m.: “Pls have POTUS call this off at the Capitol. Urge rioters to disperse. I pray to you.”

Unknown, 3:57 p.m.: “Is he coming out?” “He has to right?”

Brian Kilmeade, 3:58 p.m. (Fox News): “Please get him on tv. Destroying every thing you guys have accomplished.”

Donald Trump, Jr., 4:05 p.m.: “We need an oval address"

In Trump’s defense (sort of), he said they should leave while still encouraging their cause: “It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace.”

Many didn’t go home. The FBI estimated 2,000 or more people entered the Capitol. One was shot by police while trying to climb in a window. The Capitol Police union said almost 140 officers were injured. Two committed suicide shortly afterward.

The video is almost beyond imagination.

This can’t be America, right?

Trump issued a blanket pardon to all participants on January 20, 2025.

Where we’re going

I love America, both in practice and in its ideals.

I find the left’s constant denigration of the country frustrating, to say the least. America is the great liberal experiment, doing plenty of bad things along the way, but genuinely proving the viability of a democratically-governed country with constitutional protections against tyranny.

Those protections aren’t holding up.

Prosecuting political enemies, disregarding individual rights like the right to protest, and disputing election results is a path to becoming Russia. Unchecked presidential power is a late stop on the road to authoritarianism.

Pardoning violent insurrectionists is a whole other level.

And the aggressive immigration enforcement is the latest instance of divisive, careless, and truly deplorable behavior by Trump administration.

This isn’t a game. Democracies do slide into authoritarianism sometimes. I sense in many people a “well, it’ll be fine” attitude that I don’t think is justified anymore. I felt that way after Trump lost in 2020, but somehow he’s back and even more destructive this time around.

Small scale political issues are increasingly that: small scale. I have my gripes with Democrats almost across the board. I think they’ve done some illiberal things too. But at this point the stakes are far bigger than these hobbyhorses.

In a few years, will it still be safe to speak out against bad behavior like this? I think so, but I also would never have predicted prosecutions of the media or disallowing entry to visitors based on private political discussions or targeting lawyers who opposed the administration.

I hope I look back on this in a few years and think it was an overreaction. I hope.

I want to live in America. I want to raise kids here, and I want them be proud of the country.

But we’re not doing a very good job of making that happen. Let’s try to fix it before it’s too late.

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