ICE Officer Prosecuted

Finally, someone found the spine to do what is needed.

An ICE officer has been charged by Minneapolis officials with assault for “brandishing a gun.” Of interest, my most popular post ever on Bluesky demands that we start prosecuting ICE employees that violate people’s rights.

It is absolutely WILD to me that up until now, ICE officers have not yet been charged for any of the many crimes they have committed with impunity. In fact, I would suggest, they have often exercised this impunity because we have not made them sufficiently afraid of breaking the law.

This has been a triumph of the tip-toeing lawyererly class over basic sense, and in my opinion, over the law itself.

As a JD that graduated from a fancy law school myself, I can testify that the tendency among many elite lawyers involves a paranoid aversion to risk, particularly when the levels of risk are hard to assess. This means an unwillingness to break legal ground, which has been an enormously stupid and cowardly way to approach the ICE issue. After all, this kind of widespread, federal oppression doesn’t have a perfect precedent–and so any sufficient response will be “unprecedented” as well.

The truth is, while the Supremacy Clause does grant the federal government significant latitude to carry out its tasks, it does not preempt the bill of rights. And it is unlikely to preempt large swaths of the neutrally written criminal code as well.

It is also the case that Trump and his corrupt cronies respond to only to power and costly pushback. If we continue to resist and protest and rise up and push back, and if the our state legislatures write the right laws and the courts work in tandem to put the fear of god in his minions, we can make them realize that they are increasingly likely to face prison for their corruption and oppression. And we can win.

Too bad our legislature Washington State seems to be ruled by this tip-toeing type. After all their rhetoric about existential threats to democracy, they did incredibly little to create novel tools to push back on the Trump administration.

Washington did pass a nothingburger of a bill that allows someone who is harmed by a masked ICE officer to sue if it is found that the ICE officer has violated their civil rights. How does that protect us now? Where are they supposed to sue from? Ecuadorian Prison? Alligator Alcatraz? Given that the feds will pay the fine on behalf of the abuser, how does this create a real deterrent to abusive ICE agents? I would have voted for this bill, but I would have fought for amendments to turn it into something with teeth.

Washington State didn’t choose to exclude ICE officers from public employment, punish collaborating companies by pulling contracts, create a criminal face make ban, or a host of other options they were given. They didn’t shut down Republican’s implicit veto power over bills (or at least there being many good bills) by stopping their ability to run out the clock on floor time, or find ways to sequester federal funds, or even pass a funding bill that would cover the immense healthcare cuts on their way.

It’s past time for new leadership in Washington State. As a reminder, I’m running for office, and if you have a few bucks to chip in, it would sure make a big difference.