It does seem like there are a lot more of these shootings that, say, shootings by other Federal agencies. Some of us raised the issue that training was being abbreviated in order to build the ICE agent numbers rapidly, and that it raised the danger of such things happening. Details are too few in the most recent one yet to know if that was the case, but I think given the frequency and scale it's worth asking the question again. Are they getting adequate training for this task before they're being sent out there, and them with Federal immunity to boot?
The question of training is quite valid. I've generally thought American police need better training, and the abbreviated training given to some ICE agents is a real concern.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, it could also be that there is a political party deeply invested in obstructing ICE at every turn. Does any other federal agency get this kind of physical resistance and obstruction?
Or it could be both.
In general resistance and obstruction license arrest but not lethal force unless agents are themselves in mortal danger, or can show they were acting to save an innocent third party in imminent mortal danger. There don’t seem to have been any protesters to resist this one. The statement from the Feds is this:
Delete‘“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
That’s not even, ‘the officer feared for his life because he thought they were trying to hit him/might hit him.’ It’s ’the officer was worried they might hit someone while trying to escape.’ The imminent threat condition, if it existed, was not described.
Normally that’s not sufficient reason to deploy deadly force. I think that statement strengthens the argument that a safety stand down and retraining is needed, as well as more training going forward. Reexamination of the immunity from prosecution as well.
I don't see that statement in the articles you linked.
DeleteIn the Houston case: "ICE officials released a statement on Tuesday afternoon, hours after the shooting in the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood. They said they were performing a "targeted enforcement operation" and alleged Salgado Araujo "weaponized his vehicle," rammed it into an ICE car and attempted to run over an ICE officer, who then shot Salgado Araujo in self-defense, according to ICE."
In Maine: "Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen told Maine Senator Angus King that the man had been been given an order to leave the country. He was reportedly in a vehicle, pulled out in the vehicle, and the term the secretary used was “weaponized” the vehicle and was shot by an ICE agent."
In both of the cases you linked, at least the claim of the feds is that the shootings were self-defense.
The statement was released after the articles published yesterday. I read it in the NYT this morning, but that article is paywalled.
DeleteAnother issue is that I have serious doubts that ICE can get fair media treatment anywhere, so how much can I believe news reports? Not too much, I think.
ReplyDeleteDo you believe their own statements?
DeleteMaybe. But the statements I've seen from the feds are claims of self-defense. I didn't see the NYT statement, but if it's accurate then that's a problem.
DeleteIt occurs to me that there is an I.3 issue here, which deserves its own post.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue is that I also doubt that ICE agents can get a fair jury in blue territories. The Dems just don't care about rule of law anymore and feel fully justified murdering their political enemies. I doubt many of them would hesitate to convict an ICE agent just because he was an ICE agent.
ReplyDeleteIf we get to the point that we can't apply the law to ICE agents because we can't trust the legal process will be fairly applied to them, their existence as an entity is an unacceptable risk. In that case, the agency must be abolished. We cannot have armed agents of the state without any recourse to protection from the courts.
DeleteSimilarly, any political entity that allows itself to get to that state must also be abolished and a republican form of government re-established.
DeleteAs a constitutional matter, I think I agree with that. Theoretically, I would prefer NOT to replace certain abolished entities when possible. The constitution does require the Federal government to guarantee a republican form, however.
DeleteIf we get to the point that we can't apply the law to ICE agents because we can't trust the legal process will be fairly applied to them, their existence as an entity is an unacceptable risk. In that case, the agency must be abolished.
ReplyDeleteNo. That's just a lethal version of the heckler's veto. What must be eliminated is the inability of law enforcement (not just ICE) to get a fair trial in [blue territories]. That that's a much tougher nut to crack provides no reason to grant the veto as somehow simpler.
Maybe that nut cracking begins with making libel laws actually fair: celebrities, even those created by the press for the purpose, are free targets for lies and slander, since the bar to prove slander against them is so much higher than slander against average Americans. That would open up the possibility of countering the knee-jerk ICE/Cops is Evil slander, which has the real, dangerous outcomes we see in these two shootings.
Eric Hines
I don't agree that the loss of ICE would be fatal to anything important (nor literally; in fact it might save some lives). But there's a basic problem with the approach of putting the government's weight on the thumb of juries. Juries are one of the few almost unrestricted ways in which actual citizens are able to check government abuses.
DeleteSometimes this is unfair, in the sense of 'fairly applying the law.' Jury nullification sometimes results in someone who technically did break a law going free because the prosecution is considered itself to be corrupt or unreasonable. Other times it addresses prosecutorial misconduct, such as prosecuting this kind of person while ignoring that kind.
It's almost correct to say that juries aren't required to be fair; it's probably closer to correct to say that the system tends to cash out fairness in terms of what the jury decides. However outraged a sitting judge may be by the jury's decision not to convict, he can't order them to convict. (He can, under certain circumstances, direct them not to convict; I have noticed that judges usually don't, however, even when maybe they should, because an actual acquittal by a jury is dispositive while a directed verdict can leave questions.)
What's lethal is not the abolition of ICE, or its continuation, but allowing the heckler's veto to determine the affair.
DeleteEric Hines
In that case, the issue is the difference between a heckler's veto and what would have to be true for it to be the case that you couldn't find a jury that would be fair. A heckler is a problem because one person who doesn't like an activity can disrupt the entire community (audience)'s ability to enjoy a good. But if you can't draw a fair jury out of a community, it's not a heckler -- it's the whole community that is opposed to what you are doing.
DeleteWhat you have here is not a heckler's veto: it's a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the activity. The same is true if you can't find a jury that would convict someone of violating a given law (say, against moonshining). That strongly suggests that the legal regime is not still legitimate in the eyes of that community. They are withdrawing their consent to being governed this way.
And, should a government like the regime in Virginia follow this one, so might I. So might many. It's not just them rejecting ICE -- although I also reject ICE, for reasons of my own in terms of despising secret, nameless, armed agents of the state who baldly resort to violence without accountability. If you can't find a jury that would convict, or if you can't find one that wouldn't convict, it's the same problem. A whole community has rejected the government's legitimacy.
Jury nullification isn't a rejection of the law or of the government, it's a one-time rejection of a particular prosecution.
DeleteIf the community as a whole rejects the law or the activity (of ICE, for instance), it's on the community to work to change the law or the activity or to elect politicians who will do that.
What we have in the particular case is nothing more than mobs attacking law enforcement with no effort to pursue their civic obligations to the rest of the community, but only to try to impose their position on the entire. And, they're doing it in favor of illegal aliens in preference to the citizens of their own community.
That's anarchy, not community rejection of a law. It's not even the community rejecting, just a noisy, violent minority.
Eric Hines
But if you can't draw a fair jury out of a community, it's not a heckler ...
DeleteIt is in the sense that one community is depriving the rest of us of republican government.
Immigration law belongs to the federal government. The nation as a whole voted for the lawmakers who made the laws and then for the president who promised this enforcement. Allowing one community to nullify federal elections is no kind of justice at all. It is on par with a state trying to deny its citizens the right of self defense guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.
The problem with that approach is that it undermines you on the same way as you'd like to undermine them. When you get an administration like Biden's that actively refuses to enforce the law, you lose all ability to resist through local government -- which was the only thing that was working (as well as it was).
DeleteLike all of these things, the more you empower the leviathan by eliminating the ability of local communities, municipalities, or states to resist them, the more you are exposed when the leviathan turns against you. Traditional protections like the right of a local jury to rule on whether or not to apply the law locally is a hedge against that. In spite of its problems, it is both a pressure valve and a safety measure.
No, I don't think so. The laws are legitimate and Trump campaigned on enforcing them, so it is reasonable to think he is doing his job. Biden had the same laws but his refusal to enforce them was dereliction of duty. As the Declaration points out, when the government is derelict, then the power returns to the people. So, the local attempts to deal with Biden's dereliction of duty were legitimate.
Delete"I don't agree that the loss of ICE would be fatal to anything important"
ReplyDeleteI daresay removing Immigration and Customs Enforcement might actually be fata to the nation- Customs collection is literally a power given to Congress in the Constitution, and who have empowered the executive to enforce (as the legislature has no means to do this itself). If we don't control customs or immigration, do we even have a national border? I'd be tempted to say no.
Sure, we can fracture back into fully independent states, but Europe has shown over the centuries that way leads terrible things.
You are conflating the loss of ICE -- which has only existed for a fairly short time -- with the loss of any ability to collect customs or enforce immigration laws. ICE and its particular approach is neither necessary nor sufficient for that; indeed, it's not even relevant to collecting customs duties.
DeleteI realize that ICE was moved under Homeland Security, but that's pretty immaterial- if they were back under Customs and Border Enforcement would that matter to you? Why? The powers exercised by them have existed about as long as the executive was assigned power to collect the duties and enforce the laws of the legislature. This structural argument confuses me. What changes in getting rid if ICE in it's current iteration if the powers it has continue to exist somewhere in the government?
DeleteWhen you get an administration like Biden's that actively refuses to enforce the law, you lose all ability to resist through local government....
ReplyDeleteExcept that the sovereign did not lose any, much less all, ability to resist through local jurisdictions or any other venue. The Biden administration and its preferred successor were crushingly (as such things go) defeated in the next election, with a resulting broad-based repudiation and reversal of that failed administration's moves.
That following election, with all politics being local and local voting at the foundation of national counting, is the epitome of the ability of communities not just to resist a government they don't like, but aggregate themselves to toss it altogether.
You are conflating the loss of ICE -- which has only existed for a fairly short time -- with the loss of any ability to collect customs or enforce immigration laws.
What's your limiting principle that prevents that loss from spreading to all forms of border control or customs collection? That problem exists especially dangerously in the face of a Progressive-Democratic Party that's embracing no borders; no police at all; no jails; and blanket, universal amnesty for illegal aliens?
Eric Hines
What's your limiting principle that prevents that loss from spreading to all forms of border control or customs collection?
ReplyDeleteWe could try not having an agency that covers its faces, hides its badges, and then regularly shoots people dead in the street, see how that goes. It might be possible to generate more public support around a policy like that. I mean, that seems plausible.
Except that the sovereign did not lose any, much less all, ability to resist.... crushingly (as such things go) defeated in the next election...
'The sovereign,' being the people, has the voting function but also the jury function. It's no more legitimate to try to force juries to vote a certain way than to try to force citizens to do so in other contexts.
In any case, if the answer is, 'Wait four years! You'll get another chance,' I feel like that might be inadequate. Other means of legitimate citizen resistance -- including the use of juries, but also states and localities -- are not inappropriate brakes during the long wait for another bite at the apple.
We could try not having an agency that covers its faces, hides its badges, and then regularly shoots people dead in the street, see how that goes.
ReplyDeleteWe could have the violent Leftists stop doxxing the agents, deliberately putting their spouses and children at lethal risk, so the agents could stop covering their faces. See how that goes. The agents also are clearly marked on their jackets and vests. Agents are allowed to shoot in defense of themselves and others, even in the street.
You're pushing against an open door regarding juries. No one is saying jury nullification shouldn't occur; I'm only saying that when it happens, it's a protest against a particular prosecution, not a rejection of a law. Regarding forcing a jury to vote a particular way, that has been illegal since Bushell. Pressuring? If a jury, or a juror, feels pressure, the panel or the individual are cowards and unfit for the duty. Unfortunately, that's usually detectable only after the fact.
Election cycles are two years, not four. Other means of citizen resistance do not include violence or threats of violence against law enforcers or their families when the enforcers are going about their duties.
Eric Hines
One more thing: We could try not having an agency that covers its faces....
DeleteThat's not a limiting principle; it's just one possible answer, and it contains no limit.
Eric Hines
The basic limiting principle, if you want it stated formally, is that no action of government is legitimate if it is rejected sufficiently by the people. Sufficiency has some left/right limits, and it is often the case that community standards differ (as we were just agreeing); that can cause conflicts in a diverse larger community made of many polities that disagree. But locally, even, a sufficient rejection of the government's legitimacy occurs when a sufficient magnitude of the population rejects it.
DeleteThat's the difference between 'an' act of jury nullification, which is just the rejection of a particular prosecution; and where Tom began, which is that NO jury could be found that would treat anyone from ICE fairly. In the one case you have a judgment to set aside the law in a particular case. In the other, you have a sufficiency for at least a local rejection of the legitimacy of the law in general.
Since even the larger state is founded upon the acceptance of a sufficient subset of the localities, when you start seeing that kind of local rejection pop up at scale, the whole model has to be re-examined. Some new negotiation might make the model acceptable to more of the polities of the people, as for example not having an agency that shoots people in the street regularly might make the general order more acceptable to more of the local polities that make up the whole. If not, you might reach a sufficient set of rejections that you reach Declaration of Independence territory, and the whole has to be rejected and (potentially) replaced.
The problem with your construction is that under our constitutional structure, Federal law supersedes local law. The locals don't get to impose their will--their disregard for law--outside their locale.
DeleteIt's also the case that the only places law enforcers are "shooting people in the street"--and it doesn't happen "regularly"--are in those places where a violent, noisy majority are attacking law enforcement personnel, often violently, often in the street, when they're not trying to trap law enforcers inside a building and then trying to burn the building down. Unjustified shootings by law enforcement in those cases are rare and a testament to the general restraint the law enforcers demonstrate. Generally no one would get shot if the "mostly peaceful protestors" weren't acting lethally toward law enforcement.
It's also not established that that violent set is a significant fraction of the local population. They're just getting the large majority of the publicity, and they're getting it via a self-professed completely biased press for whom there are not two sides to a story, which censors facts that contradict its position, and in which masquerades opinion as many of the facts in its "news" writing and broadcasting.
Even the videos that are selected for publication are carefully edited for the purpose. That doesn't approach what's sprayed around the social media.
Eric Hines
It's also the case that the only places law enforcers are "shooting people in the street"--and it doesn't happen "regularly"--are in those places where a violent, noisy majority are attacking law enforcement personnel, often violently...
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't seem to have been the case here. There were no protests in the street at the time of this shooting; it was a quiet morning in what I understand from the people I know from Maine (several coworkers happen to be) to be a quiet town. They were all quite shocked by the event.
I think the Renee Good event can be explained as 'a series of bad decisions by everyone involved,' and so to some of the other protestor deaths; but at some point, if we're just explaining away every killing as 'well they must have had it coming,' we are just accepting that armed agents of the state can kill people in the streets whenever they decide to do so. That's not something that I can or will accept. Nor is it something that I think is illegitimate for anyone to protest, especially when they are joined by a strong majority of their fellow citizens -- even locally.
First, a bit of housecleaning: I said "violent, noisy majority;" I meant to say "violent, noisy minority."
DeleteRegarding the "case here," defensive shooting doesn't require an in-progress riot; it only requires an imminent, real time threat. That may or may not have been the case here; conflicting witness reports abound, with no evidence published. Apparently the agents involved weren't wearing body cameras as they hadn't yet been issued. Even were the particular shooting unjustified, though, the isolated incident wouldn't disprove the basic situation. ICE agents, in the vast main, aren't at all running around shooting people in the streets.
I'm at a loss to identify this "we're" you cite as explaining away every killing as "well they must have had it coming".... I haven't seen anyone in this thread making that argument, which as conclusory as it is badly dismissive and uninformed.
Eric Hines
Yes, it's fair to ask who I meant by that. I was speaking of 'the right' as a whole; 'we' in that very broad sense shouldn't simply adopt the rhetorical form that seeks to find a way to excuse these things. If always every time the point is to find a way to talk around it, then 'we' in that sense are accepting a thing that I cannot.
ReplyDelete...'the right' as a whole....
ReplyDeleteI disagree here, too (there's a surprise). The Right abhors violence as much as anyone--in the current environment, far more so than the Left who, from Party leaders on down to individuals, actively promote violence against anyone who disagrees with them.
There are some to the far right who do speak as you suggest regarding "who cares, they deserved it," but they're extremists and not at all representative of the Right as a whole. These are not easily distinguishable from those promoting violence against the Right, except by their intended targets. (Which supports another, undeveloped, theory of mine that political view isn't so much a linear affair as it is a circle or a tight spiral. That's separate from this thread, though.)
Eric Hines
I daresay ICE standing down will only encourage violence from the leftist agitators. If they aren't addressed, this will continue. They want people to get shot. It's good for their movement, or so they think anyway.
DeleteI should add, that because the enemy gets a say in any potential conflict, I'm not sure there is a good solution to this. It's hard to stop violence when that is in fact what they want and are ginning people up to have happen. Provocateurs are hard to control or deal with in a system such as ours.
Delete