ICE Unloads

Immigration officers speak out: “Fuck this.”

“The best they can do is shoot the guy in the back?” That’s not the voice of some liberal commentator. That’s what a homeland security officer told me this weekend, one of over half a dozen who have reached out to express their alarm over the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and beyond.

I’ve listened to the stories and the beefs of immigration officers in Minneapolis across the country, and to a person, they all blame the shooter, one of their own. The major media is stuck on framing the killing of Alex Pretti as some national and partisan battle, highlighting Republicans breaking ranks, the NRA protesting, MAGA wavering, and Chuck Schumer doing whatever he’s doing, but no one is really capturing what the federal law enforcement officers on the ground are thinking. The truth is that they’re fed up and have been for weeks.

They paint a picture that is more Police Academy (or even Reno 911!) than a Gestapo on the march. Yes, they agree that Washington is a huge problem and are uncomfortable with the mission creep that is taking them away from actual immigration enforcement. But internally? Theirs is also a story of gung-ho 19-year-olds, drunken stakeouts, and senior officers disappearing into meetings and all of a sudden needing time off.

They are also frustrated with the narrative unfolding and the information war being waged from Washington, including the flamboyant defense of the shooting and other controversial moves on the ground.

“As much as I support this administration there needs to be more common sense in situations like this, not a knee jerk damage control narrative that does not line up with the evidence on video,” one Border Patrol agent said in a private chat group that was shared with me. “This individual was shot 8 to 9 times while unarmed.”

“We can’t always support what happens just because it’s one of us,” he adds.

An ICE agent was even more critical. “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal [means],” the agent said. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”

Overall, as someone who has been covering this for months, I am struck by how angry homeland security officers with their own agencies, and their blunt dismissal of the Washington leadership. All of the immigration officers I interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Sagging morale and declining standards are a constant theme I picked up, problems that these sources say have been festering long before the deaths of Pretti and Renee Good (and ones that very much contributed to these outcomes).

More than one ICE agent in particular complained about how Washington’s focus on labeling protestors as “impeding” federal functions (and thus breaking the law), and the vilification of “Antifa” and others labeled paid agitators, leftists, radicals, extremists, and terrorists is confusing the ranks while also distracting everyone from the immigration enforcement mission.

“I can go on and on but overall it’s been a ridiculous experience,” one ICE agent told me. He says that many agents on the ground are just going along with the expanded mission because they are more interested in their away-from-home per diem pay and collecting overtime than whatever the mission is.

Others express the cynicism typical of everyone who toils at the bottom of any bureaucratic food chain, pooh-poohing rapid expansion of the ICE army and shaking their heads over the ridiculous budget increases being fought for in Washington that will have no impact where they work.

“The brand new agents are idiots,” an experienced ICE agent assigned to homeland security investigations told me. This same sentiment was echoed by virtually everyone I talked to, with several conveying the view that Pretti’s death was the fault of some skittish young recruit who panicked when he heard the word “gun” (if that’s what happened).

Even one of the new ICE recruits agreed with the experienced agent’s low assessment of the Trump freshman class. “A lot of the guys,” he said, referring to the new ICE recruits he worked alongside, “are honestly pretty sketchy.”

The new ICE officer continued: “I thought federal agents were supposed to be clean cut but some of them pass around a flask as we are watching a suspect,” observing as well that the new guys “have some weird tattoos.”

Those tattoos, I’m told, are symbolic of the fact that the new recruits tend to be more ideologically motivated than those of the past. This problem is compounded by the fact, raised by several officers, that ICE is relying on volunteers to go to Minneapolis and other Democratic cities on these temporary deployments. This tends to favor new recruits and those who are chasing overtime pay.

It is unclear how these task forces are organized in cities like Minneapolis or indeed “who” is in charge and in control, but those who I interviewed agree that the tide is turning, that some agencies (like the FBI) are increasingly no shows in the field, and others are expressing a reluctance to participate in non-immigration missions.

“Last I heard,” says one ICE officer, “FBI didn’t want to help us out much anymore, especially in Minneapolis, due to the bad press.”

Another branch of ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) “is being squeezed heavily [to serve on the streets against protestors],” the officer says, adding that “lots of guys [are] totally exhausted out there with a lot of pressure on them” to conduct non-immigration missions.

Despite the bravado of an uncompromising operation and the absolute support Washington expresses for the shooters, there are signs that the Trump administration is growing worried about the public (and bipartisan) backlash. President Trump today posted an unusually conciliatory statement on Truth Social.

“Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota,” the post reads. “It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength.”

That’s a very different tone than the one adopted by his homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, who asserted shortly after Pretti’s death that the intensive care nurse (who actually was a federal government employee) was a “domestic terrorist.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked today if Trump agrees with Miller, replied: “I have not heard the President characterize Mr. Pretti in that way.”

And tonight, news broke that Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino has been demoted from his role and reportedly plans to retire.

There are even signs that Congress has also finally decided to get off its ass, perhaps to do something that captures the on-the-ground sentiment and works towards deescalation.

There’s a good news/bad news consequence of a new reluctance on the ground in Minneapolis, one officer told me. The good news is that leadership “is disappearing into urgent legal meetings,” increasingly worried about the possibility that they will oversee similar killings but also absent on the streets as leaders who might encourage deescalation and discourage the gung-ho and the overzealous.

Worse though, sources say, homeland security in Washington does its stupid thing of trying to divert criticism of their own behavior by raising the specter of protestors (and others) attacking ICE and Border Patrol in revenge for the Pretti and Renee Good killings.

“Threat briefings are now focusing on ‘retaliatory’ threats … , and now they’re scheduling more with contracted DHS attorneys tomorrow and the next day,” one officer told me this weekend. “I know managers got called into meetings all night.”

As the meetings are held, the ICE agents and others I’ve talked to say the government versus terrorists narrative is having a tangible (and negative) impact on the ground.

“Lots of people are freaking out,” one ICE agent told me. “Agents are getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators.’”

Several agents described receiving briefings about retaliatory threats to ICE inspired by the Minneapolis shooting. “Guys take it really serious, like we are fighting insurgents,” as if Minneapolis is Baghdad, an ICE officer said.

Though all of the federal agents I’ve spoken to this weekend support immigration enforcement, they indeed see the Minneapolis operation as something else entirely — an open-ended counterinsurgency in a faraway land and under an out-of-touch leadership in Washington more concerned with optics than immigration.

“This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” a Border Patrol agent said in the private group chat shared with me.

He closed on a plaintive note: “I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost.”

“Fuck this,” a senior ICE officer said about the shooting of Pretti.

— Edited by William M. Arkin