New York Times:
Under Trump, a Shift Toward ‘Absolute Immunity’ for ICE
Since the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, administration officials have defended the use of deadly force, which agency guidelines say should be a last resort.
The fatal shooting of Renee Good last week by an ICE agent in Minneapolis — and the quick reaction by Trump administration officials to declare the agent a hero and Ms. Good a villain — has put a new focus on whether federal agents enforcing President Trump’s deportation drive have been properly prepared for confrontations on city streets. The response of Mr. Trump and his top lieutenants to the killing has also underscored how they have embraced what is supposed to be a last resort under the written standards: using lethal force in self-defense.
Rather than encourage agents to de-escalate combustible encounters, as the agency guidelines emphasize, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have provided tacit approval for more aggressive tactics.
By the way, where are the Epstein files?
Will Bunch:
The success of boycotting corporations supporting immigration raids is an economic roadmap for stopping Trump's abuses
When the Rev. Jack Perkins Davidson and other parishioners in his socially active Spring Glen Church in Connecticut learned last year that budget carrier Avelo Airlines — with a major hub at nearby Tweed New Haven Airport — was also operating U.S. government deportation flights, the pastor kept thinking about one thing.
What would the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. do?
Davidson said King’s 1955 Montgomery bus boycott against segregation — the iconic protest that launched the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century — was an inspiration as he and a coalition of activists pressured Avelo to stop aiding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its mass-deportation campaign.
“I often think about how the Montgomery bus boycott was a very local action, but it became national news,“ Davidson told me by phone recently. ”Sometimes when I feel so overwhelmed by the state of the world, I take hope in that example — that acting in the local level is a way to create national impact.”
Peter Hamby/Puck:
Support for ICE Is Collapsing
Outside the right-wing echo chamber, polls tell the true story of an unprecedented drop in support for Trump’s immigration agency, which has swung 30 points in 12 months.
Earlier this week, Dan Bilzerian, the bearded hedonism influencer and gun-loving poker chud—no one’s idea of a progressive—launched an unexpected verbal attack on ICE following the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. “I don’t believe the ICE agent’s life was in danger,” Bilzerian posted on X. “I think he went into the interaction angry & it was a bad shoot. I don’t care if she was a blue hair liberal, this isn’t about the right & the left. This is about government tyranny & overreach. I don’t trust the government.” The last sentence is an understatement: Bilzerian routinely posts conspiracy theories, antisemitic memes, and rants from Candace Owens. Like most occupants of the manosphere, Bilzerian would be hard to pin down on any kind of conventional left-right spectrum. But he said Good didn’t deserve to die. “If you’re more afraid of liberals than your government, then you aren’t paying attention,” he added.
The shooting also caught the attention of Tim Dillon, the right-leaning comedian who advocated for Donald Trump in 2024. “I don’t believe the cop was justified in shooting her three times in the face,” Dillon said on his podcast last week. “These are not well-trained law enforcement people in ICE. They’re not the cream of the crop.” Calling the proliferating raids “performative” and “psychotic,” he also declared ICE agents buffoons who “answered an ad on Craigslist” and wouldn’t be qualified to work security at the mall.
These comments don’t signal any kind of widespread anti-Trump mutiny over ICE on the right, and no prominent Republican has crossed the president on the issue. Still, the observations of these loudmouth podcasters reflect something real in the public mind: The eyewitness video of the Minneapolis tragedy has broken through to normies, who don’t like what they see.
Joe Rogan’s Harsh New Takedown of Trump ICE Raids Hands Dems a Weapon
When a Trump supporter refers to ICE as the “gestapo,” a door has definitely opened. Will Democrats charge through it?
Ever since Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection victory, Democrats have been consumed in debate over how to do politics in the so-called “attention economy.” How can Democrats access the information spaces that Trump seems to have mastery over? Do they need an army of their own Joe Rogans, or not?
No, they don’t. But Joe Rogan can provide Democrats with a bit of guidance. In particular, Rogan, who backed Trump in 2024 but is politically idiosyncratic, has been one of the most relentless critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the internet. This—plus new polling data on ICE I’ve obtained—tells us something important about that argument over information Democrats are having.
Ron Brownstein/Bloomberg:
This ICE Crackdown Is Making the Case for Real Immigration Reform
- President Trump's hardline approach to undocumented immigrants has generated enormous economic, political, and social disruption, with businesses complaining about a shortage of workers and families curtail their time in public.
- The Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill, would strengthen immigration enforcement and create a long-term legal status for most undocumented immigrants without a criminal record to remain in the US, but excludes a pathway to citizenship.
- The bill has attracted bipartisan support in Congress, with about a dozen co-sponsors in each party, and may provide a foundation for a more durable approach to the undocumented population once Trump's enforcement efforts end.
"There was no policy here. What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people, to twist the laws.""Two cabinet secretaries conspired ... they intentionally, knowing what they were doing, counseled by professionals who cautioned them, nevertheless went ahead to pick off these people with the intention that your clients would be chilled. And did so rather effectively, by the way."
Mona Charon/The Bulwark:
ICE Is a Law-Breaking ‘Law Enforcement’ Agency
A Trump-appointed judge took the agency to task for its flagrant contempt.
Before Renee Good’s body was cold, before a single question had been asked in any investigation, the secretary of homeland security declared her to be a “domestic terrorist” and asserted that she was attempting to run down the officer who killed her. Having blamed and defamed the victim, the administration next attempted to investigate and perhaps prosecute her widow while blocking inquiries into the ICE agent who pulled the trigger and then pronounced her a “f—ing bitch.” Six Department of Justice lawyers resigned rather than participate in that travesty, which is not nothing. Add their names to the roll of honor that also includes the ten lawyers who resigned rather than drop the case against Eric Adams, and the more than five thousand officials who have quit the Justice Department in the past year.
New York Times on a guy who can’t read the room in his own state:
G.O.P. Candidate for Governor Says Renee Good’s Killing Seems Justified
Bruce Blakeman, the likely Republican nominee for New York governor, said the killing of Ms. Good by an ICE agent was just one point of disagreement between him and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
But perhaps the starkest difference between them was in their stances on the killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis last week, which Ms. Hochul has portrayed as an outrage.
“When you look at both videos, it looks like the individual that was shot, that person was engaged in trying to run down the ICE officer,” Mr. Blakeman told reporters in Albany, with the caveat that he would like to see a full investigation.
David Shuster/Blue Amp:
Renee Good and the Big Lie About “Absolute Immunity”
How Trump, Vance, and ICE are normalizing a doctrine of state violence that has no place in American law
But the real jewel in this crown of Trump administration insanity belongs to Vice President J. D. Vance.
He announced with great solemnity that federal law-enforcement officers enjoy “absolute immunity.”
Vance’s declaration is not merely wrong; it is ludicrous. There is no such doctrine in American law. None. It exists only in the fever dreams of fascist wannabes who mistake their own wishes for jurisprudence.
