President Donald Trump has lost the battle, according to leaked private chat messages from federal agents in Minneapolis.
The Daily Beast cited reports of "furious agents begging to abandon Trump’s Minneapolis crackdown" after federal agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti.
“This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” a Border Patrol official revealed in the chat, according to Ken Klippenstein's report in his Substack newsletter.
“I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota; that battle is lost,” they added.
Other agents are complaining that the Trump administration is pulling them away from the actual immigration crackdown to instead fight with protesters. Those like Pretti and Minneapolis mom, Renee Nicole Good, are being labeled as "domestic terrorists" associated with "impeding" law enforcement.
Democrats have argued that the increase in violence between the two groups is helpful in laying the groundwork for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
One new recruit for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Klippenstein “a lot of the guys… are honestly pretty sketchy." The new staffer described colleagues passing around flasks on stakeouts and showing off their “weird tattoos” that wouldn't normally be seen among federal law enforcement.
One ICE officer told Klippenstein that the briefings are now focused on the public's “retaliatory” plots against them.
“Lots of people are freaking out,” said an officer.
Agents are “getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators.'"
One ICE agent was disgusted by the shooting of Pretti, calling out the justifications from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
"Ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal” method, 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?”
“We can’t always support what happens just because it’s one of us,” one agent said, according to Klippenstein.
