It wasn’t surprising to learn that there was more to the story of the 5-year-old detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis last week than met the eye. The heartrending picture of the frightened boy in his winter hat being led into a dark vehicle by a masked officer sparked a visceral response. But as it happened, the boy was alone in a vehicle because his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot upon seeing the officers. And when the officer attempted to return the boy to his home, his mother and whomever else was inside refused to open the door. Only then was he led by the hand to the vehicle.
Predictably, the evocative image went viral on social media, along with false context spread by liberal journalists that the child was being used as “bait” for the parents. No evidence has surfaced to contradict DHS‘s version of events, not that it matters to President Donald Trump‘s opponents in the press. The young boy’s terrified face made for a perfect propaganda tool, and they wielded it with glee behind crocodile tears.
The incident was a flashing red warning for an agency that is losing the war for hearts and minds. Images matter, in this media environment more than ever. Yet so far in Trump’s second term, ICE’s attempts to clean up the mess from Joe Biden’s calamitous open-border policy have been marred by sloppy optics and amateurish messaging. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem‘s brash, cowgirl attire and hard-line rhetoric frequently scares off normal voters who might otherwise be sympathetic to the cause of cleaning up the streets. And ICE’s communications staff habitually shares weird and dark memes on social media, the kind that lend credence to Democrats’ characterizations of the agency.
Saturday’s shooting of left-wing agitator Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and Noem’s response epitomized the agency’s reckless incompetence. Multiple videos show that Pretti appears to have been another progressive agitator with a cell phone camera. A scuttle occurred between a different officer and protester pairing, and Pretti lunged forward in the action. Four officers proceeded to detain him face down on the ground as Pretti resisted. At one point, an officer appears to disarm Pretti of the pistol he’d been legally carrying. Moments later, for reasons that remain unclear, a Border Patrol agent drew his gun at Pretti as the other officers held him down, and fired multiple times, sending his body instantly limp.
As with the shooting of activist Renee Good two weeks earlier, the chaotic scene will take some time to parse out. Did the one officer who shouted “gun” trigger the shot, even though Pretti had already been disarmed?
But having viewed multiple videos of the Pretti shooting multiple times, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to justify the shooting morally. Legally, perhaps, but only because the legal standard for a law enforcement officer is so low and highly subjective — for a shooting to be lawful, an officer needs only to have a reasonable perception of an imminent threat of deadly force. Pretti was being held down by four muscular men and had been disarmed. The court of law may acquit the officer, but the court of public opinion will almost certainly convict him along with the broader effort to carry out sweeping and often reckless deportation operations.
True to form, Noem sealed the agency’s PR catastrophe at a press conference hours later by labeling Pretti a “domestic terrorist.”
“Fearing for his life and the lives of those around him, the agent fired defensive shots,” Noem told reporters. “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”
Not to be outdone, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller took a similarly extreme position in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, posting on X, “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.”
Of course, more information will surface in the coming hours and days that will shed light on why the agent opened fire. But no one who has seen the videos believes that Pretti was a “would-be assassin” who intended to “inflict maximum damage.” Certainly not while he was being held down on the concrete by four much larger ICE agents.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE FATAL SHOOTING INVOLVING BORDER PATROL IN MINNESOTA
DHS is in dire need of a reboot one year into Trump’s second term. The righteous mission of removing dangerous, undocumented foreigners from our streets is at risk of becoming permanently tainted.
A change in rhetoric and leadership is needed. For the sake of the agency, to say nothing of the country, Noem might have to go. Maybe Miller, too.