Don't Trust Trump's Fake Interest in "De-escalating" ICE Tactics
Caught red-handed overseeing authoritarian horrors on Minnesota streets, the president is desperate to evade accountability — and preserve maneuvering room to keep escalating his war on blue states
This piece was previously published at The Hot Screen.
In late January, President Trump faced the beginnings of a self-inflicted political crisis, as his administration’s murder and subsequent slander of Alex Pretti as an “assassin” and “terrorist” met a massive public backlash against federal immigration authorities and their brutal tactics. Video evidence shows that immigration agents executed Pretti, shooting the disarmed and kneeling nurse approximately ten times in the back; coming just two and a half weeks after the killing of Renee Good, the killing appeared not as an isolated event, but as the logical outcome of an administration that had doubled-down on its Minneapolis crackdown following the first murder.
For the American people, the crisis lay in the revelation that the administration had been murdering their fellow Americans. But for the president, the crisis took a divergent form. It did not, for instance, involve any deep retrospection as to how his combined war on immigrants and war on blue America had led to the killing of two citizens within weeks of each other. Trump’s crisis, rather, involved the delicate matter of figuring out how to continue his authoritarian onslaught against America while appearing to moderate. As I wrote last time, “Trump wants it both ways — he wants to be able to terrorize his ‘enemies,’ but also to evade the consequences (both legal and political) when this terrorization provokes defiance and criticism, as we are seeing now.”
And so, as Greg Sargent documents at New Republic, the administration has made various cosmetic moves and uttered placating phrases intended to mislead reporters and Democrats into believing that the president is seeking to avoid more violence in Minnesota. The aggro, fascist fashion-forward Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was removed from heading up “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities, replaced by the equally odious but less directly compromised “Border Czar” Tom Homan. President Trump indicated that “We’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” with many in the press and the political firmament viewing his “de-escalate” language as evidence that ICE would be substantially pulled back from the Twin Cities and that federal agents would be given more restrictive orders.
But while the administration may or may not actually reduce the number of CBP and ICE personnel in Minneapolis-St. Paul (more on this below), and while there may or may not be orders that superficially curb their behavior, there are numerous reasons why we should question Trump’s “de-escalation” language and the broader notion that the administration is interested in curbing federal lawlessness and violence against Minnesotans. The first, most obvious one is that the president himself quickly disregarded his own words. After initial administration indications that there would be a reduction in the number of deployments in the Twin Cities, the president denied such a move, saying the administration would “not at all” remove federal agents. Likewise, the president quickly shifted from saying he wanted a “very honorable and honest investigation” investigation of Pretti’s killing (an act of supposed de-escalation after his administration’s initial contention that Pretti was a “terrorist” and “assassin”) to slandering the slain ICE nurse for deserving his own death, calling him an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”
But aside from the president’s own contradictory escalatory language aimed at justifying the Pretti shooting and his statements calling into question whether the feds will roll back or end their occupation of the Twin Cities, it’s vitally important that we resist the larger implications of the “de-escalation” phrasing and the framework it attempts to place around recent events. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, violence has occurred — up to and including murder — not because citizens are seeking to document and expose ICE and CBP, but because federal agents are violating civil rights and resorting to violence. Cynically, the administration has presented de-escalation as a way of making sure ICE doesn’t provoke conflict with Minnesotans, which suggests that the violence is being initiated by the citizenry; but as has been well-documented, the resistance of Minnesotans has overwhelmingly involved peaceful tactics and civil disobedience. Violence is happening because federal agents are the ones engaging in violence. The “de-escalation” language attempts to twist this reality in order to tar ordinary Americans engaging in constitutionally-protected activities, as if this is a “both-sides” situation; it seeks to create a false equivalence between violent aggressors and peaceful defenders.
But there’s an even more serious implication of the “de-escalation” phrasing that should alarm anyone horrified by administration violence in Minnesota and elsewhere. In a subtle but very real way, “de-escalation” attempts to shift the public conversation past events from which none of us should want to move on: the public executions of two American citizens by the Trump administration. You cannot “de-escalate” from murder: these two killings are irrevocable no matter what posture the Trump administration now takes; nothing will bring Renee Good and Alex Pretti back to life. From this perspective, the president’s talk of de-escalation is smoke and mirrors, meant to shield Trump and his administration from culpability and punishment for the two murders in Minnesota.
Remember: the administration initially tried to cover up both killings, and indeed is still trying to do so by subverting the investigatory process (for instance, by cutting out local authorities). The administration’s first move was to justify murder, and indeed, after the Good killing, this self-justification and communication to federal agents that they were above the law led almost inexorably to the Pretti execution — so that we could argue that for the two and a half weeks before Pretti’s killing, the administration was hoping to use murder as a tool of political power. If there had not been videos showing Pretti’s murder, and so no resulting public backlash, we can be pretty certain that the administration would still be insisting he was a domestic terrorist, and broadcasting to federal agents that it was still open season on Twin Cities civilians.
When Trump says he wants to de-escalate, we should understand that he is merely conceding that his administration is currently paying a political price for killing Americans — not that he’s actually opposed to such murders. But in fact, this is a perverse reversal of where we should be: not only should the administration (obviously) not kill any more Americans, but the officials whose policies, orders, and inciting language led to the killings need to be held to account both politically and legally. True de-escalation from federal violence requires such accountability, as only punishment of those responsible will reliably prevent a repeat of the policies and incitement that led to these unforgivable murders.
In fact, we’ve seen the opposite happen: not only did the administration began investigating the slain Renee Good and her wife, but also Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly conspiring to obstruct federal agents. Seeking to criminalize peaceful resistance to lawlessness and the Democratic political opposition only shines a spotlight on the administration’s eagerness to evade accountability, and to retain the capacity to use violent repression as a key political tool.
Any honest assessment of the administration’s willingness to “de-escalate” — whether from further violence or further murders — also must recognize the fundamental lawlessness of ICE and CBP. Even if the administration sincerely wanted to avoid further abuses, these agencies are so rotted through with white supremacist employees, gutter-level admission standards, and poor training that their continued deployment alone will inevitably mean continued violence towards citizens and immigrants alike. Additionally, actual de-escalation would require the administration to renounce its schemes to ethnically cleanse the country, its fascistic claims that the U.S. has literally been invaded by immigrants, and the white supremacist ideology that underpins these insane policies. There is zero evidence that such changes will be forthcoming.
Finally, any actual de-escalation in the Twin Cities would involve an end to the federal occupation there. Tom Homan’s statements yesterday around withdrawing 700 federal agents illustrate the administration’s two-faced game as it seeks to claim credit for easing tensions and limit the political damage it’s been taking on. Given that some 2,000 federal officers would remain in Minnesota following such a withdrawal, it offers the pretense of de-escalation without doing the one thing that would credibly lower the possibility of violence: withdrawing all the forces inserted into the state as part of Operation Metro Surge. Likewise, though “Homan emphasized that immigration officers would focus on more targeted enforcement operations that prioritized arresting criminals who posed public safety threats,” such an assertion hardly addresses the specter of trigger-happy ICE agents shooting unarmed Minnesotans who dare call attention to their activities.
Instead, according to CNBC, Homan tried to tie further reductions to the compliant behavior of Minnesotans, noting that a “complete drawdown” would depend on “the decrease of the violence, the rhetoric and the attacks against [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol,” as well as cooperation from local authorities. Insisting that Minnesotans are the ones causing violence is deeply inflammatory, at odds with the idea that the administration is trying to tamp down tensions or is interested in taking responsibility for its primary role in the deaths, beatings, and other forms of state terror besetting the Twin Cities. Not coincidentally, it also feeds the storyline that the story out of Minnesota is the violence of the citizenry, not the public executions of citizens or the unprecedented occupation of the Twin Cities.
Notably, Minneapolis Mayor Frey responded to Homan’s comments by stating that the drawdown was “not de-escalation” and that Operation Metro Surge needs to end, though he did note that the withdrawal was “a step in the right direction.” Likewise, Governor Walz stated that, “We need a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and an end to this campaign of retribution.” Both politicos’ comments indicate they recognize the need to contest the administration’s efforts to control the narrative of what’s happening in their state, and understand its goal of deferring and denying responsibility for federal offenses.
So long as Donald Trump and his allies face no accountability for murder on the streets of Minneapolis, and so long as they remain committed to a national policy of ethnic cleansing through deployment of the thoroughly corrupted legions of ICE and CBP, any claims to be seeking “de-escalation” should be seen as bad-faith attempts to protect themselves from popular backlash to their violence, law-breaking, and white supremacism. Blind acceptance of the de-escalation framework will allow the president not just to evade the consequences of his incitement to violence — it will also help position him and federal agents to start killing again once the heat is off. Ordinary citizens and Democratic politicians alike should not be taken in by this latest snow job by America’s leading con man.