Hindsight

 

Transcript: Trump’s Agents Kill Citizen—Then Damning New Info Emerges

As the ICE shooting horror in Minneapolis gets worse, a writer who focuses on ICE accountability explains why the government’s cover story is full of holes—and what recourse we have now.

Editor’s note: After we recorded this, The New York Times published a frame-by-frame video analysis of the shooting that further debunks the Trump administration’s version of events.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

On Wednesday, an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her vehicle on the streets of Minneapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem immediately accused the woman of committing an act of domestic terrorism. Then President Trump posted a misleading video of the affair and blamed it on the victim in truly vile terms. Officials in Minnesota are flatly disputing the official federal government account of the shooting, calling it a reckless act by out-of-control ICE agents. We think the danger of this moment is hard to overstate. There are now heavily armed government militias roaming the streets of U.S. cities, they’ve been given free rein by Trump and Noem, and they appear unbound and unaccountable. So we’re working through all of this with New Republic contributing editor Felipe De La Hoz, who writes well about the need for ICE accountability. Felipe, good to have you on.

Felipe De La Hoz: Nice to be here with you, Greg. Wish it was under better circumstances.

Sargent: It’s pretty fucked. So as of this recording, the authorities haven’t released this woman’s name. The government is saying she weaponized the vehicle against ICE agents and that they killed her in justified self-defense. But videos of the event that are floating around online seem to show that the agent in question fired into the vehicle from the side at close to point-blank range after the vehicle had driven past him. And it was going pretty slowly. Felipe, can you bring us up to date on what we know here?

De La Hoz: Sure, so this was all part of, you know, a kind of a surge to Minneapolis and Minnesota more broadly that is kind of broadly part of the fascination that the administration currently has with that state and city for a number of reasons, including this kind of story about the welfare fraud that has kind of lit up right-wing media.

And so this was part of that broader operation. And it seems that the woman in question, the person who was shot, was either a legal observer or somehow involved in some of the of the protest movements there and had been responding to a raid that was happening in the community.

There are plenty of kind of interviews so far with eyewitnesses, plus, as you mentioned, videos of the event itself where it seems like the agents are approaching her vehicle, she kind of backs up a little bit, and then slowly kind of turns, begins to turn, is what it looks like is happening, at which point one agent fires what seemed like three or four shots through the windshield and into the open driver’s side window, at which point the car kind of speeds off, hits another car, and eventually a telephone pole.

Sargent: Yeah, I think one thing that’s not clear from the videos I’ve seen—maybe you’ve seen something to help clarify this—the agent who fired the gun might have been standing in front of the car when it first backed up and started to move. But even if that were the case—and again, I don’t know if it is—we’re still in a situation where the car was really kind of visibly turning down the street, not looking like it was trying to ram a guy. And again, he fired into the driver’s side window at close to point-blank range from the side after the car was clearly posing no danger to him whatsoever. This, at an absolute minimum, looks like extraordinary recklessness, right?

De La Hoz: Indeed. Well, there are a few things that we can establish. The car was going very slowly at the time that the shots were fired. As you mentioned, it does seem like the trajectory of the shots indicates that they were fired mainly from beside the car. There’s one bullet hole through the windshield, but most of the shots seem to have come in through the driver’s side window. It looks like there are two agents who are kind of in the immediate vicinity of the car at the moment of the incident, and it was the one that was kind of closer to the front of the car that fired the shots. But I think from the videos that I’ve seen—and I’m sure you’ve seen—it really does not seem justifiable to say that the car posed kind of an imminent threat to the agents. Certainly not the kind of threat that I think in most law enforcement understandings would necessitate deadly force.

Sargent: Yes, and I want to underscore that in Minnesota, police officials and elected officials are describing the event the way you and I are, and they’re strongly contesting the account being offered by the government. I want to read what Trump said on Truth Social about this: “The woman driving the car was very disorderly obstructing and resisting who then violently willfully and viciously ran over the ice officer who seems to have shot her in self-defense Based on the attached clip it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.”

Felipe, it’s hard to see how the videos demonstrate anything like this. He was not run over. The clip that Trump himself posted was only a faraway shot that didn’t show anything of the kind. What’s your reaction to this?

De La Hoz: The administration, Trump, Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin could have spun a much more plausible story here than they did. But the thing is this administration treats brazen lying as kind of an assertion of power in itself. And so I think they really can’t help themselves. And it’s very evident from the videos, from the eyewitness accounts that precise details of what they’re describing did not happen. Nobody was run over. It’s very evident in the videos that nobody was actually struck by the car, right?

The agent who was supposedly hospitalized can be seen in videos, not only in the immediate aftermath, but for some time afterward, sort of milling about walking around. Apparently unharmed, right? And various sort of key components, the speed of the car, whether people were hit, are kind of very easily disproven.

I want to point something out too, by the way, Greg, which is that there was a similar incident in Chicago in October when ICE agents fired on a woman and similarly claimed that she was kind of battering officers with her car. That woman survived, fortunately. But they brought criminal charges against her and those charges were ultimately dismissed with prejudice in part on the request of the Department of Justice itself, which chose to dismiss the charges. And so I think this is an MO at this point for the federal government to kind of use this as a catchall circumstance to explain their conduct and these exact kinds of allegations have fallen apart in the past.

Sargent: This October episode you’re talking about, at the very outset, the Department of Homeland Security did the same thing that they did this time, which is they put out a statement blaming the woman, saying she had functionally weaponized the vehicle, was attacking the ICE agents with the vehicle.

And I actually went and looked at the language of that statement from back in October and compared it to the language of Department of Homeland Security’s statement just today about what happened. And it was weirdly, weirdly similar.

It really is almost like cut-and-paste language that they know they’re going to need in situations like this. They sort of prefabricated the language and they just dropped it into this situation really almost before anyone even knew any of the facts.

De La Hoz: Yeah, I mean even sort of giving them sort of the benefit of the doubt, any law enforcement agency, I think, in a shooting conducted by one of its officers, would wait to some extent to sort of clarify the facts before they started making public statements about what exactly happened.

I think you’re right that in this case they had the language more or less ready to go because this has been their sort of justification for use of force over and over again—not only in shootings like this, but in sort of violent arrests, in sort of the use of chemical weapons, munitions against protesters.

It’s always more or less the same language about their officers being at risk, attacked. The use of the phrase “domestic terrorism,” it gets bandied about quite a bit. And so I think they’ve settled on this as the language that they perhaps have adjudged is most likely to get them off the hook when they are kind of using excessive force in this way.

Sargent: It sure looks that way. Now, let’s listen to how Kristi Noem described this particular situation really early on. Listen to this.

Kristi Noem (voiceover): It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively shot to protect himself and the people around him. And my understanding is, is that she was hit and is deceased.

Sargent: Felipe, this is an absolute horror. We still don’t know who the woman is as of this recording or what she was doing, but for her to rush out, for Noem to rush out and call this domestic terrorism is just absolutely sick public conduct, I think. What’s your thought about it?

De La Hoz: Yeah, I mean, I think that the Department of Homeland Security under Noem has kind of envisioned itself, has conceptualized of itself, not only as a law enforcement department, an agency, but as a kind of a propaganda, you know, agency to some extent. Which is why Noem herself sort of oftentimes appears at operations, you know, in full blowout and glam makeup and an ICE vest. Why there are ICE videographers and photographers often at these raids themselves.

They are in the business of narrative spinning as well as kind of general law enforcement. And I think that this is sort of an extension of that. They feel that they have to get ahead of the narrative quickly, whether or not that narrative is accurate. In fact, I would say that they probably know that it is not, but they are kind of utilizing it again as an exertion of power to be able to say whatever they want regardless of the facts.

Sargent: Well, let’s listen to what Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said about this.

Mayor Jacob Frey (voiceover): To ICE: get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart. Long-term Minneapolis residents that have contributed so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our economy are being terrorized and now somebody is dead. That’s on you. And it’s also on you to leave.

Sargent: So Felipe, I find that striking because in one instance after another the story has been that local officials simply don’t want this ICE presence in their cities. And in just about every conceivable way, these ICE invasions of local regions are really making everybody a lot less safe. What do you think of what Frey said there?

De La Hoz: I mean, I think that, you know, there’s a reason why these—these raids, these operations—have been conducted exclusively in sort of cities and regions that are led by Democrats and that are perceived to be political opponents of the Trump administration.

It’s because the administration itself knows that these are destructive operations, that they are not primarily about public safety. They are an attempt to intimidate and to sort of harm the local populations, right? If this was really about engendering public safety, I would assume that there would be sort of an ICE presence of a similar aggression and size in all sorts of kind of red areas, but there are not. Right.

And so I think that it’s evident that these are not intended to be public safety operations. Primarily, they are intended to carry out Stephen Miller’s broader agenda of sort of ethnic cleansing, of generalized fear.

And I think that the mayor sounds very frustrated because this is an instance where somebody is dead—and I think somebody is dead in a circumstance that at least as of now appears to be clearly unjustified. Right. And so I think that this is channeling a certain level of anger that is present in the Democratic base right now. And I think that elected leaders are beginning to see that and embrace it to a greater extent.

Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about that because it seems to me that in a situation like this—and as in many of the other situations we’ve seen—we could be hearing more from Democrats. Look, this sort of ICE presence, this ramping up of ICE recruitment is all because Trump and Stephen Miller want to deport as many immigrants as possible, especially including nonviolent ones who are now deeply part of American life.

They’re diverting enormous amounts of law enforcement resources away from serious crimes and into this. That puts us in more danger and it creates highly combustible situations that are, as we see here, killing people, including U.S. citizens. And I don’t understand why every single Democrat is not out there shouting this fact about the situation. What do you think?

De La Hoz: I will say I have seen a number of members of Congress who have already commented on the situation today in its immediate aftermath, using words like “murder,” and that I think is totally fair to use at this particular moment in time.

And so I think incidents like this may begin to kind of break that sort of facade of regularity or decorum, right, that has kind of held some of these officials back. But, you know, I think it is the combination of the fear that if they sort of face off against the administration they might lose. I wrote something about this a few weeks back that I think that there is a certain calculus that’s being made by some members of Congress, for example, where they sort of retain some level of political power and influence and they’re actually afraid that they might actually kind of lose in a showdown over the rule of law with the administration.

The problem, of course, is that as the power gets sapped away, their ability to eventually fight back kind of begins to decrease. And so I think if you’re going to strike, you have to strike early, make sure that you’re pushing back on this authoritarianism before it consolidates. And I think that’s what we’re beginning to see now. But it’s been a slow lesson to be internalized. I just hope that this is making it clear that there really is no one that is safe.

Sargent: Again, we don’t know the full set of facts. There may be exonerating things for the officer that we don’t know about. We should be fair. I assume there will be body-cam footage potentially. Maybe that’ll show something a little different. But if this does end up showing that this was something close to murder or extraordinary recklessness to the point of, you know, extreme dereliction, what should happen? And sort of more broadly, are there prospects for the states and localities to be doing more to rein in what is clearly a rogue, out-of-control militia force at this point?

De La Hoz: Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, there are investigations now sort of being led by the FBI at this moment. But one would hope, first of all, that the FBI is not so politicized at this time that they would be unable fully to kind of conduct an impartial investigation. I am frankly not very confident about that. The FBI has itself been out with these kinds of immigration operations with agents detailed to these teams. And obviously, Kash Patel is not a particularly reliable leader of the agency.

I wrote relatively recently for The New Republic about the prospect of states prosecuting federal officials who are acting outside the bounds of the law. And I think there’s a sort of a misinterpretation that there’s a kind of blanket immunity for federal officials. But there is not. I mean, there is a Supreme Court precedent dating back over 100 years that states that states cannot prosecute a federal agent for carrying out their duties. However, agents who are acting in excess of their duties, who are using unreasonable force, who are breaking the law are not as categorically immune from state prosecution.

And so I would like to see at least a conversation had in this instance about local prosecutors, state prosecutors considering state charges in this case, right? Regardless of where the FBI is coming down, there is nothing that prevents it. Of course, there would be litigation about whether this particular agent was acting sort of within the boundaries of his duties as an ICE officer. But it’s entirely plausible, and I think that it would go a long way towards showing that states have an ability to assert their own police powers and maintain peace in their own jurisdiction.

Sargent: Right, I think at an absolute minimum what we need is a clear sign from some of these state leaders that they are looking seriously at the range of options at their disposal along the lines you’re talking about. And it’s at least possible that this is a case that could push that along in a major way. Felipe De La Hoz, thanks for coming on with us, man. Really good to talk to you.

De La Hoz: Thanks, Greg. Hope to talk again, perhaps in brighter circumstances.