Trump's ICE Shoots Protesters and His DOJ Charges Them Instead of Investigating the Shooting, Handing Agents a License to Kill

The ICE and Border Patrol immigration enforcement strategy is to shoot first and ask questions later. Or never.

The Washington Post documents a pattern of the administration declaring shootings to be justified before an official investigation has been completed, which implies that the results of the investigations are decided beforehand—and then punishing the victims with bogus charges:

Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July, and as in the recent shootings in Minneapolis, in each case the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed.

Most of the incidents involve officers firing at drivers during enforcement stops in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago where DHS has surged federal immigration officers. At least 10 people have been struck by bullets—including four U.S. citizens. Three people have been killed.

The shootings have sparked alarm not only for their violence but also for the Trump administration’s response. Lawyers say officials have been quick to pursue felony charges against those fired at—though in four of 10 cases, prosecutors have either dropped charges or a judge has dismissed them after evidence emerged contradicting the government’s narrative of events.

None of the officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Border Patrol or Homeland Security Investigations has faced criminal charges in any of the shootings, nor has the administration announced any internal disciplinary measures against them. …

“Historically, federal cases are investigated thoroughly up front,” said Christopher Parente, who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago and Miami and is representing a woman shot by Border Patrol in Chicago. “Here, they are charging people first and asking questions later. There’s such pressure from the administration to charge right away and make headlines so they can put out false press releases.”

The effect of this policy is to grant automatic immunity for all uses of force by agents of the DHS, in effect giving them a license to kill—a license they have been using in Minneapolis.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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