Another Reminder (After Trump's ICE Killed A US Citizen)

Remember, I am not a lawyer, just a concerned citizen.

Let's start (as we should always start) with the Constitution.  Specifically the Amendments.

This one:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...

And this one:

No person shall be ... compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

Note that it says "The right the people" and "No person" and not "The right of the citizens"  and "No citizen." 

That means they apply to everybody. 

8 U.S. Code § 1357 says:  

Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant—

(1) to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States;

(2) to arrest any alien who in his presence or view is entering or attempting to enter the United States in violation of any law or regulation made in pursuance of law regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion, or removal of aliens, or to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest, but the alien arrested shall be taken without unnecessary delay for examination before an officer of the Service having authority to examine aliens as to their right to enter or remain in the United States;

Note that it only applies to "any alien" or any "person believed to be an alien" - and only within the limits of asking about his "right to be or remain in the United States."

ICE has no legal authority to interrogate any US citizen and certainly no authority to demand entry into that citizen's house/apartment or make a demand for that citizen to exit their vehicle.  

Trump's ICE agent killed a US Citizen.

 

A Reminder (About DHS After Trump's ICE Killed An American Citizen)

H/T to Huffpost:

The explicit, publicly available policies of the Department of Homeland Security for use of force and deadly force and the 1989 and 1985 Supreme Court cases Graham v. Connor and Tennessee v. Garner, support that reality — along with the locally relevant Minnesota State Statute 609.066.

Let's go dig a little deeper the DHS Department Policy Use of Force document, shall we?

It contains this: 

Unless further restricted by DHS Component policy, DHS LEOs are permitted to use force to control subjects in the course of their official duties as authorized by law, and in defense of themselves and others. In doing so, a LEO shall use only the force that is objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him or her at the time force is applied. [Bolding in original]

And this:

DHS LEOs should seek to employ tactics and techniques that effectively bring an incident under control while promoting the safety of LEOs and the public, and that minimize the risk of unintended injury or serious property damage. DHS LEOs should also avoid intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.

And this:

As soon as practicable following a use of force and the end of any perceived public safety threat, DHS LEOs shall obtain appropriate medical assistance for any subject who has visible or apparent injuries, complains of being injured, or requests medical attention. This may include rendering first aid if properly trained and equipped to do so, requesting emergency medical services, and/or arranging transportation to an appropriate medical facility.

And this:

A DHS LEO may use deadly force only when the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to the LEO or to another person.

And this:

Fleeing Subjects: Deadly force shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject. However, deadly force is authorized to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject where the LEO has a reasonable belief that the subject poses a significant threat of death or serious physical harm to the LEO or others and such force is necessary to prevent escape. [Underline in original]

And this:

DHS LEOs are prohibited from discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle, vessel, aircraft, or other conveyance unless the use of deadly force against the operator is justified under the standards articulated elsewhere in this policy. Before using deadly force under these circumstances, the LEO must take into consideration the hazards that may be posed to law enforcement and innocent bystanders by an out-of- control conveyance.

So the shooter should not have put himself in a position where he might have to use deadly force and Trump's ICE crew should have rendered medical care to the woman one of them just shot. They should not have shot at the car if they thought shooting it would stop the woman from fleeing.

Trump's ICE killed an American citizen. 

Orwell Still Matters

The Frame from Orwell

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Our reality right now.

Trump: 

The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer...

JD Vance: 

“I’m not happy that this woman lost her life,” he said of Renee Nicole Good, 37, who was fatally shot during a confrontation with ICE officers Wednesday. President Donald Trump has said that Good was "resisting" orders and "viciously ran over the ICE Officer" during an immigration-related operation in the city.  

Noem:

Today, in an act of domestic terrorism, an anti-ICE rioter weaponized her vehicle against law enforcement.

None of any of that was, in fact true.

The CBC:

Good turns her front wheels to the right and her vehicle starts to move forward. At that point, the third officer appears to be less a metre in front of the driver's side edge of the SUV's hood.

The officer then pulls his gun and fires what appears to be three shots into the vehicle. Even as he fires the first shot, the front of the vehicle has clearly passed him as it turns right and he is shooting as he stands beside it.

Trump's ICE agents kill an American citizen and then blame her for it. 

In doing so they're telling you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

 

 

Trump's ICE Kills American Citizen

This was inevitable.  Still is.

From The Guardian:

Federal agents shot and killed a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Wednesday. 

Ilhan Omar, the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman, said the victim was “a legal observer” of action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which had sent a surge of agents into the city in recent days tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. 

A witness to the incident, Emily Heller, told local media that the victim was shot in the face multiple times. Heller said she saw a car blocking traffic that appeared to be part of a protest against the ICE operation, and heard an agent telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here”. 

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in – like his midriff was on her bumper – and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller told MPR News, a Minneapolis public radio station. 

The woman has been identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a US citizen and mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.

More from NPR: 

NPR and MPR have reviewed multiple videos of the shooting taken from different vantage points and posted to social media. The footage shows multiple officers near an SUV stopped in the middle of the road. One officer demands the driver exit the vehicle and grabs the car handle. The SUV reverses, then begins to drive forward, which is when a different officer near the front of the car pulls his weapon and fires into the vehicle. Three gunshots are heard, as the firing officer backs away from the SUV. Moments later, the vehicle crashes.

You can see it here:

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A post shared by MPR News (@mprnews)

 

She was not blocking the road.  She was trying to drive away.

Trump's ICE killed her and then tried to say she was at fault because this was an act of domestic terrorism.

It was. The ICE shooters are the terrorists. 

President Gaslight Spins A Tall Tale

From The New York Times:

On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.

You can find it here. 

Axios has some much needed corrections:

The page, which is headed by sprawling images of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and members of the select committee that probed Jan. 6, reads that Democrats "staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election."

• Election officials have maintained a lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud.

As does CNN:

The website champions Trump’s controversial claim that then-Vice President Mike Pence “had the opportunity to return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification,” during the joint session of Congress that day, but chose not to “in an act of cowardice and sabotage.”

Pence himself, legal scholars from across the political spectrum, and many of Trump’s aides and advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have said it would be would have been blatantly unconstitutional for the then-vice president to refuse to certify the 2020 election.

Casting Pelosi, then the Democratic House speaker, as a primary villain of January 6, the White House site seized on comments she made in an HBO documentary, where she said, of security at the Capitol: “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”

“They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” Pelosi said in the clip. 

That remark doesn’t prove Trump’s oft-repeated claim, which he said again in a speech Tuesday, that Pelosi turned down his supposed offer for an advance deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops. Pelosi has always denied having received such an offer, and the president – not the House speaker – is in charge of the DC National Guard.

And now some truth:

The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit.

The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. 

Anything else is a lie. 

 

 

Happy Anniversary!

Hey, remember this?

This really happened - 5 years ago today

Just show that to any MAGA who said that "the police let them in."

But there's more to the story.

Namely this: 

A man who crushed D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges with a police shield on Jan. 6 was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison on Friday.

Patrick McCaughey III, who was dubbed #ThePinman by online sleuths, was present during some of the worst violence inside the lower west tunnel, the spot where presidents emerge during inauguration ceremonies. McCaughey was sentenced by Judge Trevor McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee who previously delivered the only full acquittal for a Jan. 6 defendant to date and has imposed more lenient sentences than other judges in the Capitol riot cases.

On the other hand:

In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, denounced President Trump’s decision to pardon January 6th insurrectionists, including those who violently assaulted law enforcement officers. In his remarks, Durbin read from an NPR article, describing in detail the crimes committed by the insurrectionists.

Including:

Durbin spoke about Patrick Edward McCaughey III’s violent assault on police officers on January 6. McCaughey was convicted for using a police riot shield to crush Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal doorframe to the point of Hodges bleeding and crying for help.

“‘If I were there much longer being assaulted in such a way, I knew that it was very likely I wouldn’t be able to maintain my consciousness,’ Hodges testified. ‘Your actions on January 6 were some of the most egregious crimes that were committed that day,’ federal judge Trevor McFadden told McCaughey before sentencing him to seven years in prison,’” Durbin read. 

Repeating his refrain, Durbin said, “Mr. McCaughey received a ‘full, complete, unconditional’ pardon from Donald Trump on Monday.”

So yea, Happy Anniversary. 

 

 

Remember This?

From the AP (only 34 or so days ago):

Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Hernández was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press. The bureau’s online inmate records also reflected his release.

The release of Hernández — a former U.S. ally whose conviction prosecutors said exposed the depth of cartel influence in Honduras — comes just days after the country’s presidential election. Trump defended the decision aboard Air Force One on Sunday, saying Hondurans believed Hernández had been “set up,” even as prosecutors argued he protected drug traffickers who moved hundreds of tons of cocaine through the country.

He was found guilty in a court of law:

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was convicted on drug trafficking charges Friday in a Manhattan federal court.

Hernandez, who served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, had been charged by U.S. authorities with drug trafficking and weapons offenses that linked him to tons of cocaine imported into the United States over the last two decades. Prosecutors say he accepted bribes from El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel and other drug networks to line his own pockets, finance his political campaigns, and commit electoral fraud to win two presidential elections.

In exchange, prosecutors say, he protected drug traffickers, including his own brother, Tony Hernandez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in the U.S. in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.

He got a Trump pardon.