The Trump administration and the Republican Party are currently scrambling to deal with the fallout after the unjustifiable killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino have been sidelined after spending the weekend lying about Pretti and blaming him for his own death. The border czar Tom Homan, who was under investigation for public corruption before returning to office, will now oversee Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minnesota. Republicans in Congress are fretting about the public backlash.
Whether there will be any actual policy changes remains to be seen, and certainly no one is holding their breath for an apology — to Pretti’s family, to Renee Good’s family or to anyone else. But even if Trump were to pull ICE entirely out of Minneapolis tomorrow, long-lasting damage has been done, particularly to the U.S. criminal justice system.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota appears to be deteriorating, and more resignations from career prosecutors may be on the horizon. Justice Department and FBI leaders in Washington have undermined their public credibility yet again in defense of the White House’s political priorities. Meanwhile, the federal deployment of ICE agents has created a major rupture between state and federal law enforcement officials in Minnesota, who once prided themselves on their cooperative working relationship with one another. The whole episode risks further destabilizing federal-state law enforcement relations throughout the country, ultimately making Americans everywhere less safe.
Already, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has been seriously hobbled, but the full extent of the problems have only been partially visible to the public.
The office is supposed to have 50 criminal prosecutors on staff, but at the moment, there are only “about 17 prosecutors” left, according to David Lillehaug, who served as the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota during the Clinton administration and remains familiar with dynamics inside the office he once led. (A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on personnel.)
Lillehaug, who later served as a judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court, was recently enlisted by the state’s bar association to brief roughly 150 lawyers on the legal response to the federal deployment and to moderate a brainstorming session on potential legal claims or defenses against the federal government’s overreach.
You can read the full article at Politico.