Off the Kuff

Maybe. Don’t fall for any hype.

The Trump administration has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to halt most vehicle stops while carrying out operations across the country, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about the directive.

The order comes after ICE officers killed two people over the past week in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The pause on vehicle stops could hamper the agency’s ability to increase arrests as it faces increasing pressure to deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations. But it comes as some influential lawmakers and state officials have demanded answers about the latest shootings.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who is running for re-election this year, said in a statement on Tuesday that the shooting in Biddeford raised important questions, and that she had urged Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

[…]

The renewed deportation effort in recent weeks has lacked the fanfare of previous high-profile enforcement surges, including in Minneapolis in January, during which two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed. On Monday, a county prosecutor in Minneapolis said the Justice Department had turned over evidence in those shootings to state investigators after months of stonewalling.

Yes, even with Susan Collins putting on her Very Concerned face, I suspect this is mostly a PR move, in the hope of waiting until the heat is off and everyone’s attention is turned to whatever the latest atrocity/shiny object there is. The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to a similar reduction in visible ICE activity. But while they may have burrowed underground for a few weeks, they never went away and they never changed their ways. I don’t expect anything different this time, either.

Here’s more on the news about the Minnesota lawsuits from that last paragraph.

Federal prosecutors turned over key evidence long sought by Minnesota investigators in their ongoing probe into the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during pitched protests against an immigration enforcement crackdown earlier this year, state prosecutors announced Monday.

The progress came as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a motorist in Maine on Monday, and Houston prosecutors complained the administration was still withholding critical information in their investigation into a fatal shooting by an ICE officer last week.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the evidence turned over by U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen’s office included previously withheld hard drives containing statements, police body camera video and other materials in the Minnesota killings. Federal prosecutors also turned over Good’s badly damaged SUV, she said.

“The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence,” Moriarty said. “Any time the government is responsible in whatever way of taking the life of a community member we need to have a full and thorough investigation.”

[…]

Moriarty on Monday declined to provide details on what prompted the federal government to turn over the evidence.

But documents recently filed in a lawsuit brought by state and local officials suggest the breakthrough came after federal officials sought evidence state investigators gathered in the investigation of ICE agent Christian Castro.

Castro, 52, was charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime in connection with the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Prosecutors say Castro fired through a Minneapolis home’s front door and shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh while in pursuit of another man.

State and local prosecutors said they would provide evidence in Castro’s case as soon as the federal government agreed to share its evidence in the shootings of Pretti and Good.

“We are willing to share evidence with you if the exchange is reciprocal,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans wrote in a legal filing to federal officials.

Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison later amended their lawsuit to add details about the federal government’s refusal to share the evidence collected in the fatal shootings.

Days later, they said in a court filing that the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office and state officials “have recently re-engaged in discussions about the prospect of mutual information sharing.”

Ellison, in a statement Monday, said he remains “deeply troubled” it took more than half a year for federal officials to hand over the materials.

“It should never have taken this long,” he said. “I hope that this is the beginning of a major course correction on the part of the federal government.”

Moriarty added that she’s not yet prepared to drop the lawsuit against the Trump administration, which seeks access to evidence in the three shootings.

It’s good that Minnesota finally got its hands on evidence that the feds have refused to share for months. But as TPM points out, there are still problems.

While this breakthrough is huge and gives state prosecutors a fighting chance to complete full investigations and make sound charging decisions, a lot has already been lost that could come back to bite any attempted prosecutions of federal agents.

There’s little indication that federal law enforcement fully investigated the three shootings so while the evidence the feds do have is critical it may be incomplete. In addition, time was wasted. Leads that might have been followed if the evidence was available may be harder to follow now.

If any federal agents are eventually charged, they may use the fact of the contested investigation in their defense, raising questions about the delays, the chain of custody of the evidence, and other anomalies that wouldn’t have occurred if the feds hadn’t circled the wagons and refused to cooperate.

It’s also difficult to draw any broad lessons from this episode that might apply in future cases, especially after fatal ICE shootings over the past week in Texas and Maine — other than the obvious: Minnesota’s elected Democratic officials presented a united front and took aggressive action to assert their rights to investigate state crimes and protect their prerogatives in our federal system.

Well, we know that however united local officials are here and how hard they’re willing to fight, they’re going to get zero cooperation from the state. Indeed, the state will fight them every step of the way. There is a solution for that, of course, but it won’t be easy, to say the least.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia adds his perspective.

As a former Harris County sheriff and someone who has been a cop for most of my adult life, I know what responsible policing requires and what it takes to protect the public trust. Too much about ICE’s account of Salgado’s does not add up, and the lack of detail creates questions and strong frustration. Until we have a full and transparent accounting of what happened, Houston’s sense of safety will be harmed. The federal unwillingness to welcome an independent investigation raises serious doubts and encourages conspiracy theories. That should concern us all, regardless of political party.

But still, politics appears to be playing a role. The Department of Homeland Security issued comments that “back-to-back Democrat shutdowns” are to blame for the lack of bodycams and are the reason the public can’t see what happened.

That is no excuse. In April, Congress gave Homeland Security $20 million for “the procurement, deployment, and operations of body-worn cameras” for immigration officers, but according to Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the acting head of ICE says that fewer than a third of officers currently wear them. Failure to buy this equipment puts agents who want to do their job right in a losing situation.

[…]

ICE’s own directives state that cameras “increase officer and public safety, accountability, and transparency,” the Department of Justice prohibits federal agents from discharging firearms at moving vehicles merely to stop an escape.

Federal officials claim that Salgado was a threat because he “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” But if a vehicle is moving toward the agent in a threatening way, rather than firing, the agent is supposed to move out of the way if at all possible.

And at what point would Salgado even have been sure that the agents in ICE’s unmarked vehicles were, in fact, law officers who he should obey? He lived in a neighborhood that sees its share of crime. How would any of us react if an unmarked SUV, with no sirens or flashing lights, tried to run us off the road?

ICE’s failure to properly equip its agents and its resistance to transparency hurts the public’s trust of law enforcement in general — a trust that I’ve dedicated my career to enhancing. If someone doesn’t trust law enforcement, they’re far less likely to report a crime or offer themselves as a witness when a crime is committed.

We will get these answers eventually. Hopefully, in time to enforce accountability and enact consequences. But the fact that we have to fight every step of the way is a huge problem.

And finally, there’s always a bigger problem.

Last week’s killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was the latest test of an already strained relationship between the two nations that share a border in Texas.

On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her government will file complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice and with prosecutors in states where 17 Mexican people had died in a federal detention center or during immigration enforcement in the U.S.

Sheinbaum also said the Mexican government will file civil lawsuits against companies that operate immigrant detention centers — fulfilling a promise made shortly after Salgado Araujo was shot to death in Houston to seek justice for what she called human rights violations against Mexicans living in the U.S.

“This is probably one of the toughest moments in the relationship since 1985,” said Tony Payan, executive director of the Claudio X. Gonzalez Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Sheinbaum called on Mexico’s political parties to unite in support of Mexicans living in the U.S. and urged officials to submit inquiries and statements condemning human rights violations of Mexicans.

“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” she said. “This is an issue for all Mexicans.

See here for the background. Most likely, this will be another mess for the next President to clean up. But after the 2024 election, I don’t know how receptive any of our current allies will be to the argument that we’ve turned the page and things will be more normal going forward.