Don’t Trust the FBI

I’m one of about three Americans who hasn’t rushed to judgement on the shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. The other two are expected to emerge from their comas soon and will pass judgement some moments later.

What I have are a lot of questions and zero faith that this Justice Department and this FBI will provide impartial answers. Donald Trump has taken only a year to destroy any semblance of fairness, dignity or competence in those institutions. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Petal are Trump sycophants who simply do his bidding. We know what the outcome of this “investigation” will be because Trump, as usual without evidence, declared it within hours of the incident. His Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem (in cowboy hat, no less) and Vice President J.D. Vance rushed to back up the boss. I haven’t seen comments from Bondi or Patel, but does anybody seriously think that they are going to pursue the evidence wherever it leads?

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has performed well here. He has been calm, reasoned and yet firm in contrast to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye who went off the rails with a profanity laced rant. Walz is insisting that Minnesota investigators be involved, but Trump has shut that down. He’s already reached his conclusion and he just wants the FBI to tell him what he wants to hear.

Here are the questions that I’d like unbiased answers to:

Why was ICE there in the first place? I assume they were there to arrest somebody, but who? Was it a dangerous criminal, which might have justified some higher level of alert, or were they just once again harassing some otherwise law-abiding person who was in the country without papers? Was this part of Trump’s move to use ICE to harass Somalis — his latest scapegoat group?

What was Renee Good doing? Her former husband has told the press that she had dropped off their child at school and was heading home with her new partner when they happened upon this ICE action. But was she just trying to get through or was she actively blocking the ICE officials?

Why did the ICE agent approach her car and attempt to open the door? That was a provocative act that escalated the situation. I can’t imagine a well-trained Madison police officer doing that. In any event, that officer seemed to have provoked the tragedy. We need to know a lot more about what happened earlier and why he took an action that seemed so ill-advised.

Why did the agent who fired his weapon, Jonathan Ross, have his gun drawn in the first place? Again, this seemed like an unnecessary escalation. If the first officer approached the car door as he did that would suggest that they didn’t think Good was armed, so why did Ross feel the need to point his gun at her?

Why did Good hit the gas in response to the agent trying to open her door? Did she just panic or was she trying to hit Ross? We may never know, but given her lack of criminal history or even activism it seems unlikely that she was trying to hurt Ross.

All of this matters because if the agents were trying to apprehend a violent criminal, if Good was actively trying to impede them and if they had reason to believe she intended to do them harm, either with a weapon inside her car or by using the car itself, then maybe there was a justified use of force.

But we’re not likely to get honest, unbiased answers to any of those questions. Trump has already made up his mind and so the FBI and DOJ have as well.

And in the broader context, liberals are right to ask what benefit there is in these ICE raids. It’s one thing to target violent criminals, but most of these actions have been taken against immigrants who aren’t criminals, who are working and paying taxes. Moreover, the manner in which these operations are being carried out is troublesome. Once again in this case we see heavily armed ICE agents wearing masks.

What’s clear to me is that we shouldn’t have to ask any of these questions because none of this should have ever happened. It has long made sense to create a path to citizenship for the 11 million people who are in the country illegally and don’t have criminal records. It is a fool’s errand to try to deport that many people, but a fool is what we have in the White House.