I watched the video. I have watched the video multiple times. On January 7^th, a woman in Minneapolis, Renne Good, was shot and killed. Was she a terrorist? Was she even a protester? The answer to both those questions was “no”. What was she then? She was a woman who had dropped her child off at school and was trying to go home. She lived in the neighborhood. No evidence links her to the protest whatsoever. There is no evidence that she was interfering with ICE at all. She was just trying to go home. In my opinion, a woman was shot and killed and would be alive and home today if ICE had followed procedure. The fact is, this is a woman who should be alive today.

What did the Trump administration do right after the shooting? They branded her as a violent extremist. Claimed the agent acted in self-defense. Try to use the incident to justify broader crackdowns on dissent. The entire administration has tried to discredit critics and control the narrative. I have watched the videos. I have heard the audio from the videos. Millions and Millions of people around the world have watched and listened to the videos. The world knows that none of the videos or reporting supports the administration’s claim about illegal behavior or any illegal motives. In a nutshell, too many Republicans would rather lie about a mother’s death than deal with the actual problem. Trump has claimed he is making our streets safer. How safe are our streets when a woman is shot to death driving home from dropping her child off at school by the very people that Trump has claimed that he has sent to make us safer? Trump has stated, and many other Republicans have also said, that he is only targeting criminals. Over 70 percent of those detained have no criminal record. Most legal scholars argue that the rate of unlawful or legally defective detentions is significant and not marginal. The problem is that the Trump administration controls the numbers, so there is no publicly available database with that information.

ICE has two major investigative arms, and each has defined limits. First is Homeland Security investigations, but only for crimes with an interconnection to federal immigration, customs, or border laws. The second is Enforcement and Removal Operations. Enforcement and Removal Operations do not investigate crimes. Its only job is arresting people for civil immigration violations, detaining them, and deporting them. They are not criminal investigators. ICE is not authorized to investigate ordinary crimes without an immigration or border connection, act as a general police force, or enforce state or local criminal laws. They cannot take over cases that belong to the FBI, DEA, ATF, or local police. If ICE encounters a non-immigration crime, they are supposed to refer it to the appropriate agency. If Renne Good had hit that ICE agent by accident or panic, which she did not, it would not have fallen under ICE’s control to investigate. Traffic violations and accidents are under the jurisdiction of the local police. ICE’s obligation was actually to call the Minneapolis Police Department.

Even crowd control at the protests is not part of ICE’s domain. Crowd control falls under the domain of the local police, the State police, the National Guard when activated, the Federal Protective Service for federal buildings, and occasionally the Department of Homeland Security, depending on the threat, but never ICE. ICE can appear at a protest if they are conducting a targeted immigration enforcement action unrelated to the protest. They can assist another Department of Homeland Security component in a federal facility protection role, which is rare. They are allowed to respond to a federal criminal investigation with cross-border implications. Even then, ICE is not authorized to disperse the crowd, order protestors to move, or enforce curfews or local ordinances.

Do we see evidence of ICE violating their own guidelines and exercising authority that they don’t have? That answer would, of course, be yes. Multiple available videos show ICE agents conduct what appears to violate federal law, constitutional limits, or ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s own use-of-force guidelines. Videos do not automatically prove criminal guilt, but they do document actions that experts, courts, and even retired ICE agents have said appear to be inconsistent with the law or their own policy. The shooting of Renne Good is a prime example. There are several videos from witnesses and an ICE agent's own cellphone show actions experts say may violate ICE’s use-of-force rules. What the video shows is ICE agents surrounding a stationary vehicle, agents attempting to open the driver's door, and an agent firing into the vehicle as the driver moves forward. Why would this violate ICE policy? Their own policy allows firing into a moving vehicle only when someone inside has a deadly weapon or the vehicle poses a threat, and no reasonable alternative exists, including simply moving out of the way, which happened in this case. If you really look closely at the available videos, no reasonable person can state that the ICE agent followed their own department policy. Because it looks like it didn’t go down as ICE claims it may actually violate the law. It doesn’t appear to be self-defense. It shows the agents escalating contact before the shooting. This raises potential 4^th amendment issues around unreasonable seizure and excessive force. A Minnesota Star video shows a video of a U.S. Border Patrol agent holding down a bystander who has been sprayed with a chemical irritant. The potential violations are excessive force, improper use of chemical agents, and violations of DHS crowd -interaction and guidelines.

Many videos of ICE operations have triggered legal concerns. There are videos of agents entering homes without judicial warrants. There are video agents detaining people without probable cause. There is a video of agents misrepresenting their authority.  Legal observers and civil rights groups have documented these issues extensively. This documentation will last forever for future generations to know what exactly has happened. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that ICE detainers and some arrest practices violate the Fourth Amendment. The Republicans love to say that these are rogue Judges that are not following the Constitution. What we really have is rogue politicians who no longer believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights within that Constitution. To put it simply, we have too many Americans who have turned their back on the very document that has made America Great in the First place. That is what has saddened me the most, because in some cases, they were people whom I have admired. It is hard to unsee the hate in someone's heart after you have witnessed it.