Force Without Accountability
For weeks, officials and partisan defenders had managed to muddy the killing of Renee Good with false claims about where the agent was standing, how the vehicle moved, and what led up to the incident.
Pretti’s killing was different.
The footage was unmistakable. Agents threw him to the ground, beat him repeatedly, and then shot him while he was on his knees, posing no threat to anyone. After he collapsed, they fired several more rounds into his body.
Despite their best attempts to lie about what happened, the video was so disturbingly clear that it didn’t work.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a relatively new agency, created in 2003 by consolidating immigration and customs enforcement functions under the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration enforcement is split between two agencies: ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
That division matters because while public outrage has focused on ICE, CBP has been just as violent and just as lawless. Their operations blur together under DHS, especially with the current administration, and accountability disappears entirely.
Renee Good was killed by ICE.
Alex Pretti was killed by CBP.
Different uniforms. Same lack of accountability.
The Chicago “Midway Blitz” operation that terrorized communities and swept up dozens of people was CBP, not ICE. This is why abolishing ICE alone would not stop the abuse, because CBP is conducting the same raids, using the same tactics, and operating under the same leadership.
The militarization, flashbangs, tear gas, eagerness to escalate, and willingness to fire weapons at unarmed citizens are approved from the top.
Donald Trump placed Kristi Noem in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. Before her nomination, Noem published a personal memoir, which included an account of how she was angry at the behavior of her 14-month-old dog, so she took it down to a gravel pit and shot it to death. In that moment, she remembered how much she disliked one of her goats, so she went and grabbed it, dragged it to the gravel pit, then killed it too. That awful incident reveals a mindset where deadly force is the first response, not the last resort.
That cruelty is paired with corruption. As governor of South Dakota, Noem funneled money from a nonprofit into her personal company without disclosing it. She misused taxpayer funds to renovate the governor’s mansion with luxury additions and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal travel. When her daughter was denied a real estate license, Noem summoned officials to pressure them, and the denial was reversed days later.
This is the person now overseeing federal law enforcement agencies with virtually unchecked power.
Every time one of these incidents occurs, DHS rushes out a statement blaming the victim. ICE or CBP agents are always described as being “threatened” or “forced to defend themselves,” regardless of what the evidence shows.
In Pretti’s case, multiple camera angles show agents escalating the encounter, assaulting him, disarming him of a legal firearm he never touched, and then shooting him repeatedly. Noem still claimed he was brandishing a weapon and attacking agents.
When Marimar Martinez was shot five times during Operation Midway Blitz, officials claimed she rammed an agent’s vehicle. Once the case reached court and evidence was produced, it became clear that the agents initiated the confrontation. The charges were dropped. This is not an anomaly. It happens over and over again.
Of the 30 non-immigration federal cases brought in Chicago from that same operation, half have already been dismissed. The pattern is consistent. Lie immediately. Blame the victim. Hope the story moves on before the truth catches up.
This works because accountability is nearly nonexistent. Federal agents operate behind layers of secrecy, internal investigations, and levels of immunity that make prosecution rare even when evidence is undeniable. Without real consequences, escalation becomes routine.
Despite all of this, defenders insist that this brutality is necessary to remove violent criminals who supposedly flooded the country under Biden.
The data tells a different story.
Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at less than half the rate of U.S. citizens.
Roughly 14 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, not the 20 million or more repeatedly claimed. In 2024, eight in ten had lived here for over a decade. Less of an invasion and more of a long-term immigration issue that Congress has refused to address for thirty years.
Nearly three-quarters of people held in ICE detention have no criminal convictions at all. Many of the rest were convicted of minor offenses, such as traffic violations.
Arrests increasingly occur outside immigration courts, creating a Catch-22 where following the law gets you detained and avoiding court makes you illegal. When attending a court hearing becomes grounds for arrest, the government isn’t enforcing the law. It is sabotaging compliance with it.
ICE custody and enforcement operations saw 32 deaths in 2025, the deadliest year on record. In 2026, at least eight people have already died during ICE and CBP operations
This is quota-driven policing, incentivized to grab whoever is easiest, not whoever is most dangerous. Daily arrest targets forces recklessness over investigation, and guarantees that mistakes, abuses, and deaths will continue.
When federal agents conduct warrantless raids, shoot citizens, lie about it afterward, and face no consequences, the Constitution itself is under threat. Trump has already discussed using ICE agents at polling places to intimidate voters. That is not law enforcement. It is authoritarianism.
Abolishing ICE is unlikely with this Congress, and even if it happened, CBP would continue the same operations under a different name. Real change requires accountability at the top.
Kristi Noem must be removed, and MAGA politicians must lose their majority in the midterms. Until that happens, Congress must block funding for illegal and brutal operations. This violence must not be normalized.
History shows it will only get worse until we stop it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/deaths-ice-2026-