ICE has regularly attacked protesters and bystanders who are simply recording, walking away and so on.
Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Much of the time they seem to believe trying to bait folks into an encounter
In my area all the non white folks don’t come to the bus stop anymore to pickup their kids. Their kids are instructed to race home after school. The schools now have lockdown protocols for ICE. Family businesses opened for decades closed because employees are afraid to come to work.
> They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Many of them are experienced and trained. The man who shot Renee Good served in Iraq, worked for Border Patrol for two decades and was literally a firearms instructor[1].
This is just what cops, reactionaries and psychopaths will do when they know that they have carte blanche to do anything they want, including murder.
No amount of "training" will fix this. It isn't an accident, it isn't incompetence, it is deliberate and wanton.
Yes. Stepping in front of cars to give reason to shoot occupants was a repeated pattern in the Border Patrol, while against standard practice for most law enforcement.
So assuming it's random lack of training when he does it again seem far too charitable.
He also has a history of doing exactly this before. It's the second time he was "struck" by a moving vehicle after purposely putting himself in his purported harms way. Who knows how many times he's practiced for this murder before.
If the video somehow didn't do it, the "fucking bitch" not even seconds after pulling the trigger would put any one of us away for murder.
It is so strange seeing local cops deal with crowds vs ICE. ICE is just looks like a mob milling about. Some taking time to argue with protesters, others wandering alone aimlessly.
Local cops dealing with protesters are organized, rarely trying to bait anyone into anything.
These numbers are hard to compare. It seems that ICE's killing rate in kills per serving man hour is outrageously high, but I don't have numbers on this.
They've already breached churches and hospitals to extract people. And they've already arrested 5-year-old minors. Its only a matter of time before they move to schools.
> ICE has regularly attacked protesters and bystanders who are simply recording, walking away and so on.
> Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on. The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it. The people "simply recording" are physically interfering with ICE going where they need to go to do what they're there to do. "Walking away" doesn't remotely describe anything I've seen.
As for the race issue, the ICE officers I've seen have been considerably more racially diverse than the protesters.
But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice. All of this is extremely clear in law. Please have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NosECXHMGFU.
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This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that. There's nothing objectionable or counter to guidelines in the above, and all of it reflects my true thoughts based on my actual experience of the discourse, the evidence available to me, the legal code I've researched, etc.
It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
You're being flagged for good reason, you're not a victim here.
You refuse to watch the videos, but you're still defending the regime. Why?
I question the moral integrity of anyone who would defend this administration without all the available info.
I'm glad you're being flagged, because I've been disappointed with how folks here have been surprisingly flaccid when it comes to condemning this regime. The day that I come here and find posts like yours in the majority will be the last day I visit.
I've been here since 2016. I have never, not even once, downvoted any comment on HN. Today I downvoted every single of that person's comment in this thread. That discourse does not deserve to be heard, much less to occupy attention and debate.
Can you please explain to me how it violates HN guidelines in any way? Or how any of it is untrue? For example, do you disagree that 8 U.S. Code § 1357, as cited, empowers ICE to arrest US citizens without a warrant in specific circumstances, specifically relating to obstructing them from doing their original job? Do you disagree that ICE are, contra the public claims of Walz and Frey, LEO? Did you see my submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596055, and can you articulate a problem with it?
I already explained repeatedly: I responded hastily based on priors, and then responded poorly to someone who insulted me.
When I initially said:
> All this stuff about permit cards, the victim's lack of criminal history, etc. is irrelevant. It is not connected to the motivation for the shooting. There is nothing to establish that the shooting was "solely for" that possession, and LEO denies that claim. There is no plausible universe in which the officer says "please show me the permit for that weapon", Pretti says "I don't have it", and the officer shoots. But that's the narrative you appear to be trying to push.
Do you think any of that is incorrect? Which part specifically, and why?
I just vouched for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748563 , which was flagged and killed. Do you think it violates HN guidelines? How exactly? Because I legitimately don't understand.
I assume the Renée Good shooting, which was three times.
Interesting the conflicting orders she received were not "lawful".
Her vehicle was across a single lane, prior to the shooting incident vehicles were freely passing, so traffic was not blocked by a common occurrence of a vehicle across a single lane of an icy road.
She was not stopping ICE or DHS from apprehending an immigrant, and the Federal Immigration agents had no authority to deal with traffic matters in MN.
All three of the things said don't accurately describe the Good incident (she was not shot five times; "not resisting" is not applicable if you imagine e.g. physically trying to prevent the application of handcuffs and clearly untrue if you take it to include fleeing; and the "federal investigation failing to bring charges" doesn't exist) so I assumed it wasn't that case. But I'll respond to your analysis of that case anyway:
> the conflicting orders she received were not "lawful".
They do not become "not lawful" at your say-so. And she was not "given conflicting orders". That is a propaganda narrative ignorant of basic law. Good was repeatedly told to move (in the initial encounter with Ross, before he begins circling the car, repeatedly refused, then significant time passed. Then she was told to get out of the car, presumably because she was under arrest for refusing to move.
It is the same as how an ordinary local police officer who tells you to leave a property because you're trespassing, is entitled to arrest you (which entails you not leaving) if you repeatedly refuse to leave.
> Her vehicle was across a single lane
It was perpendicular to the road, and parked. That's obstruction. The fact that cars could get around does not mean they "were freely passing". And as you point out, the road was icy; that makes this situation more dangerous, and the blocked lane a more serious obstruction.
> She was not stopping ICE or DHS from apprehending an immigrant
She was significantly impeding them, in a manner that can very easily be argued to meet the necessary standards in the relevant legal code.
> and the Federal Immigration agents had no authority to deal with traffic matters in MN.
8 USC 1357 makes it clear that they can make arrests for federal crimes committed in their presence. This includes obstructing them, which is by definition done in their presence and is a federal crime by virtue of the fact that they are federal officers. And as LEO they can generally issue lawful orders. The fact that she's in a car doesn't somehow deny them jurisdiction. They aren't "dealing with traffic matters"; they're dealing with obstruction of justice.
> The people "being dragged out of vehicles" have been refusing lawful orders and then being arrested for it.
"Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"
— Martin Luther King Jr.
> But no, being a citizen does not, in fact, matter if you are breaking federal law in the presence of a federal agent, and that law includes obstruction of federal justice.
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
— Henry David Thoreau
> All of this is extremely clear in law.
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Amongst other stuff you just said.. not everything a law enforcement officer says is a lawful order by definition. If they are running around harassing, assaulting and arresting people with a due cause that’s still illegal.
> I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on.
Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. That seems an obvious assumption. Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
> This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that.
> It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view.
I don't really agree with the flags but this casual dismissal of "you just don't like it" is not helping you to understand the actual reasons others may have to flag (and downvote, which I do agree with). For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling regardless of said someone's self-perception of their commentary. You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
> Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?
All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
> Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity.
In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest?
> Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning?
The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes.
> For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling
I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines.
"The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault.
(For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.)
And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too.
And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452.
It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith.
But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them).
I did research this story.
And I already previously reported back (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force).
I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human.
Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito.
> You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.
I see why your post was flagged. You argued that the Good shooting was justified by referencing a video in which "laywer" (who has links to paypal and patreon, I guess his law career is going great) among other things called her in his words "motorist who was blocking traffic" (ignoring that some other SUV easily drove past Good's car in the same video a few seconds before) and where he said the officer was "trying to get from in front of the car" while the officer clearly was trying to block the car's path while approaching the car. If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires. It's clear he wanted to kill the driver. And that's not a justification
> Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification.
Don't forget ANY video you see on social media has incentives for something or something else.
Your objection to this boils down to a simple disagreement with the findings, and unjustified ad hominem. (There is no good reason to doubt that Nate the Lawyer is in fact a lawyer: he asserts so and makes appropriate disclaimers on his channel, he clearly shows reasoned legal arguments, he's been interviewed by others who accept the claim, he is accepted by all the other well-known lawyers on Youtube, etc.) I could have posted different analyses by other lawyers; most of what I've seen has been rather more strident and more at risk of offending those who think the shooting unjustified. In fact, as far as I can tell, LegalEagle is the only prominent lawyer on Youtube who disagrees that the Good shooting was justified, repeating a common pattern. Whereas many other Youtube lawyers concur that the Pretti shooting is at least problematic.
I hope you'll pardon me for not hiring a lawyer and paying just to get an opinion and copy-paste it to HN.
Flags cause posts to be hidden from logged-out public view. They warrant, therefore, that a comment violates guidelines and needs to be censored rather than simply being disputed.
Consequently, "you argued [something I disagree with]" doesn't become a reason to flag a post in itself.
----
As for the substance of your disagreement: I'm not going to get into my disagreements on things I've already repeatedly rehashed, but this argument is new to me:
> If the officer was trying to unblock the road he would not block the car. If the officer was trying to stop the car he could shoot the tires.
First off, no, the point is that he was responding to a reasonably perceived threat of death or serious injury. It has nothing to do with either of those things.
Second, now that she has blocked the road and repeatedly refused to leave (including the interaction with Ross before the other officers arrive), she is being detained, and probably under arrest. That is a response to the obstruction, which is a federal crime (because they are LEO being obstructed) committed in the federal officers' presence, giving them the right (as LEO) to perform an arrest under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357 (a)(5). That's what was going on before she initiated the 2-point turn. The agents' presumed desire to have a clear road does not obligate them to take actions that would lead to a clear road; and it especially does not obligate them to let someone go free after committing a crime.
Third, it would have been quite impossible from his vantage point as the car starts moving forward, because the hood of the car would be in the way. He could only possibly shoot at the tires once he is will clear of the vehicle to its side; even then, he was struck and knocked off balance which would have made it quite difficult to aim with that intent.
Fourth, the law admits the possibility (which I agree with Nate is likely to hold up in court) of justifying shooting at Good specifically because of a self-defense argument. That argument could not apply if Ross managed to get out of the way and then started firing after that point. (It does cover shooting multiple times, including from the side, because human reflexes and police training to fire multiple shots come into play; the shots can easily be argued, with abundant precedent, to represent a single decision to fire the weapon.) And it certainly could not apply to shooting the tires of the vehicle. In general, LEO don't shoot at tires, for many good reasons that are easily looked up (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=can+officers+shoot+tires).
> All such video has been third-person perspective, so no.
Do you think it is not worth considering?
> This is effectively intimidation.
I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases.
> I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word).
I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all.
The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
You are consistently condescending throughout the above (thus, this is my last reply) and have repeatedly misrepresented my meaning (for example, I did not "try to hide behind things I call factual analyses"; where I call things objective fact, they are actually objective fact that I either have established or can easily establish, and where I don't, they are opinion to the extent that common sense would interpret them as opinion). Most importantly, you continually conflate flags with downvotes. I consistently, explicitly, extremely clearly was specifically complaining about flags and not about downvotes; the argument
> Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric.
is blatantly misrepresentative. I said the word "flag" over and over and over again and did not talk about downvotes; and I referred to the effects of flagging (a comment in my history that is [flagged] in the view presented to me cannot be seen even with a direct link in a private browsing tab; a comment that is downvoted, even to -4 but without flags, can be).
You scold me for lack of reading comprehension, and then condescend to me about the "learning" process, but you overlook a central point that I made abundantly clear and attack a strawman.
And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation.
> I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged
Again setting aside downvotes because I did not complain about downvotes:
That is unfair treatment. It does not violate HN commenting guidelines to express that conclusion. My conclusion is justified by extensive research and by prior general awareness of how LEO operates and what happens at protests. It is not at all "thoughtless" to say so; I put considerable thought into this, and have brought forward large amounts of evidence and reasoning. It is frankly offensive to tell me otherwise.
I am simply not "thinking" about the specific matter of whether other people will have a strong emotional reaction to being told that the thing they consider murder might in fact be legally justified. Because I care about truth; and because HN (in principle, to my understanding) only tolerates these submissions because of the potential for actual discussion, which involves people disagreeing about things.
You've made it abundantly clear, by this, that no matter how I actually went about it, you would consider it inappropriate to make comments that suppose that ICE agents (citizens with due process rights, BTW) might not have committed murder, and would consider that it's inappropriate that comments making any argument of that form are permitted to remain publicly visible (again: flagging, not downvoting); only concurrence is okay.
And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.
Tell me what legal rationale ICE had to detain and kidnap a 5 year old US citizen.
Tell me the legal rationale for ICE abducting an employee from a Target beating him up and dropping him off bruised and covered in blood at Walmart at miles away.
ICE has been turned into a paramilitary political
mafia to harass and harm the administrations political opponents and racial outgroups.
They've repeatedly been found in federal court to have violated the constitutional rights of citizens and non-citizens alike but Congress has shown no spine to reign in the executive which has willfully spurned these rulings.
Turn the blind eye to this at your own peril. History has shown that fascism does not stop acting only against people that you disagree with
> Tell me what legal rationale ICE had to detain and kidnap a 5 year old US citizen.
They did not "kidnap" the child. Detaining someone is not the same as arrest. I saw sensationalists talking about the kid being "in cuffs" which is objectively false. An officer stayed with the child because he was abandoned by his father, the target of the operation who fled the scene. The alternative would have been to abandon the child, and face the "separating immigrant families" rhetoric that we've seen in previous news cycles.
> Tell me the legal rationale for ICE abducting an employee from a Target beating him up and dropping him off bruised and covered in blood at Walmart at miles away.
I genuinely have no idea what story you're talking about, but I assume it involves resisting arrest and/or obstruction of justice. I am quite confident that I would find the use of the word "abducting" entirely inappropriate; note that you don't get immunity from arrest simply by being in one particular building or other.
> The appropriate reaction to being admittedly ignorant about a topic is looking it up or requesting a source.
What you quoted implies a request for a source. It is not unreasonable to state my priors. That is not "a priori deciding". Your insult is uncalled for and contrary to HN guidelines.
Even people just driving through their neighborhood have been dragged out of their vehicles and apprehended. Citizen or otherwise doesn’t seem to matter.
They aren’t professionals and operate with neither the training, nor the will to obey the law.
Much of the time they seem to believe trying to bait folks into an encounter
https://www.reddit.com/r/ICE_Raids/comments/1q7u4kz/ice_agen...
https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1q7y43s/cbp_poin...
In my area all the non white folks don’t come to the bus stop anymore to pickup their kids. Their kids are instructed to race home after school. The schools now have lockdown protocols for ICE. Family businesses opened for decades closed because employees are afraid to come to work.