ICE murders unconscionable
As we’ve previously stated, our paper rarely comments on national issues. However, in light of recent events and with the knowledge that our opinion pages can offer comfort or encourage dialogue in trying times, we would like to address the recent deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.
To start, one needn’t disagree with the idea that we should have more robust border control or immigration policy reform – most people we know, regardless of their political affiliations or lack thereof, agree this is a front on which multiple administrations have failed for over 30 years. But one should, we hope, see that a woman saying she isn’t mad at an agent before putting her vehicle in reverse to make space, and a man filming and stepping in to help two women being pushed before being shot dead are entirely unrelated to policy issues.
What we should realize is that the murder of American citizens for exercising their constitutional rights — to assemble and peaceably protest, to possess and carry a weapon — will not end in ‘Blue states’ or ‘Blue cities.’ ‘Blue states,’ ’Red states’ and all their derivatives are arbitrary designations and precisely the sort of rhetoric our founding fathers cautioned against when advising our fledgling nation to avoid party politics. We are American citizens, first and foremost, and we must be wise to the fact that tacitly permitting these illegal activities to continue unchecked, because ‘It can’t happen here’ or ‘It’s a Blue state problem,’ will enable further erosion of the civil liberties, rights and values we hold most dear. It is not binary. When our rights are violated anywhere, they are violated everywhere.
The video evidence of both Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti’s murders makes clear that we have an unchecked arm of federal law enforcement at work in our country. In both instances, the federal government said they were dangers to agents and in both instances the videos released contradicted those narratives.
What’s more, the NRA is absolutely correct that Pretti’s legally acquired, concealed weapon was not justification for his death – as was implied by one federal prosecutor from California. The second, fourth and 14th Amendments of our Constitution make clear that a citizen in possession of a weapon that is not an imminent threat is not cause for use of lethal force by authorities. Video evidence of Pretti’s death is particularly chilling. Despite initial reports and statements made by federal officials that Pretti posed an imminent danger and had drawn his weapon, video analysis shows him holding his phone at chest-level before he was knocked to the ground, held down by several agents and shot.
The question of DHS and ICE has been debated since their inception in the early 2000s, and it is an entirely separate matter from these killings. The question we must ask ourselves, instead, is what kind of country are we becoming if these crimes can happen without punishment; if the government can lie to us in spite of the visual evidence; if federal prosecutors can imply that exercising our right to bear arms automatically puts us at risk of assault or death by law enforcement? It doesn’t sound like the America we know and love.
What does sound like the America we believe in is this: Pretti was an ICU nurse at the VA hospital in Minneapolis. A video circulating online since Saturday shows him reading a late veteran’s final salute. In the video, Pretti reads, in part that, “Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it.”