After the extrajudicial killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, federal officials were quick to put the blame on him. Pretti was accused of planning a “massacre” of cops, while videos depict him filming and rendering aid to a woman before he was shot in the back.
This has been the Trump administration’s playbook since federal agents occupied Minneapolis: A controversial use of force, then false accusations blaming the victim without evidence or investigation.
Renee Good suffered the same fate after she was killed by an ICE agent earlier this month. Kristi Noem called her a domestic terrorist just hours after she was gunned down. Again, an accusation without evidence.
Shortly after the killing of Good, we interviewed the MAGA conservative Rep. Chip Roy on the steps of the US Capitol about ICE’s actions.
His answers were revealing and worth revisiting in light of the continued use of the victim-blaming playbook, if only to understand what all this rhetorical posturing implies about the continuing presence of ICE in American cities.
Roy is one of the most conservative members of Congress. He’s also a MAGA stalwart. When we asked him if Renee Good’s killing was justified, he initially stuck to blaming the victim.
“I think she put herself in a bad position by interfering with law enforcement and by hitting the gas in a car with a law enforcement officer right in front of her. That’s what I think,” Roy responded.
Then, as the interview progressed, his defense of ICE shifted.
“Do we talk about the ICE officer who was dragged down the street in a car? Do we talk about the ICE officer who had a steel thermos beat against his head and lacerations across his face when he was executing an arrest against a really bad guy?” he asked.
“How come? Where’s the headlines on that? Where’s the stories on CNN, or MSNBC, or Fox, or anywhere?”
His argument is revealing. It suggests ICE’s violence is justified. Not due to the specific circumstances which precipitated Good and Pretti’s killing. Instead, because of unrelated and alleged violence against ICE officers.
But Roy didn’t stop there. I asked him to respond to Democrats who recently called for the impeachment of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Instead of addressing the question directly, he rattled off a list of victims who died at the hands of immigrants.
“I can tell you what, Jocelyn Nungaray’s not here and Laken Riley’s not here. And Rachel Morin’s not here. And Kayla Hamilton’s not here.” He continued, “I can keep going down the list of all the Americans who are not here because our streets were made dangerous by the previous regime.”
To be clear, all of the names he listed were victims of heinous crimes. Brutal deaths at the hands of criminals. But would preventing that horrific violence justify killing more American citizens, or anyone else, for that matter? Because that’s what Roy is implying.
By tossing them into the debate, Roy is suggesting it’s all tit for tat. He situated ICE’s legally questionable and violent actions within the scope of government-sponsored vengeance. His argument discards constitutional safeguards in exchange for settling scores.
If this is what’s on the mind of other Republicans, then when ICE guns down US citizens there is no law or safeguard that will hold this increasingly rogue agency to account.
There has been some pushback on Roy’s hardline response.
Recently, a handful of senators have called for an independent investigation into Pretti’s killing, including retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“As a former federal prosecutor, I’m trained to wait for the facts to come in,” Roy stated.
“I’m talking about what led to them, and it is very clearly the Democrats in Minneapolis and Minnesota Democrats across the country, they’re inflaming tensions that led to the situation where these agitators put themselves between ICE carrying out their job.”
Roy appears determined to blame anyone other than the agents who fired their weapons. The thirst for retribution is boundless, extra-constitutional, and impossible to constrain.
That’s what ICE and their supporters are counting on.
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