Zeteo reports two White House officials and an anonymous military source say President Donald Trump's administration privately plans to go scorched-earth if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are arrested or prosecuted for breaking the law.
“As one senior Trump administration official describes it, the mandate was clear: Don’t give an inch, and protect the accused agents ‘no matter what,’” write Zeteo correspondents Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker. “Two of the sources add that within the past year, President [Donald] Trump himself has privately said that if one of his immigration agents were ever subject to arrest or prosecuted, he and his administration could retaliate by refusing to hand over the officer, counter by federally charging Democrats or local officials with ‘obstructing’ immigration enforcement, or threaten to further cut off federal funding to the state in question.”
Trump began rolling masked ICE forces through U.S. cities last year, triggering violent arrests and harassment of local residents, often over the opposition of local leaders. Now that 43 year-old ICE agent Jonathan Ross has killed a 37 year-old mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the administration is already swinging into action to bar unbiased investigations into the slaying, claiming local courts and prosecutors have no jurisdiction into the murder of one of its own residents.
Administration officials say the White House and the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, “gamed out since early last year” what to do if Democrats, or state or local prosecutors, ever moved to arrest or prosecute ICE officers or federal immigration personnel accused of crimes, even murder.
“Almost instantly after news of the fatal shooting began circulating on social media, the Trump administration and its close allies fanned out to insist to the American people that the victim had it coming, or that Democrats will only suffer more if they try to hold anyone accountable for the killing,” Zeteo reports.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quickly labeled the victim, Renee Nicole Good, a “domestic terrorist.” One anonymous military policy official told Zeteo he was surprised at “Noem so readily moving to defend the murderous ICE agent.”
“[It] never has bode well, historically, once the state stops pretending to care about some level of institutional respect and acts without regard for the public backlash,” the source told Zeteo. “Only makes me worried about what it’ll do next.”
The state of Minnesota may yet move to prosecute the ICE agent, but sources say the Trump administration is already “primed to retaliate.”
An anonymous National Guardsman told Zeteo that the ICE agent’s “weapons training, the trigger discipline is completely f—— up” but added that’s “lower down the list of issues.”
Read the Zeteo report at this link.