‘I’m Embarrassed’: ICE Agents Speak About the Shooting in Minneapolis

In the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week, Trump Administration officials jumped into a whole-hearted defense of the ICE agent responsible. The Department of Homeland Security maintained that Agent Jonathan Ross “dutifully acted in self-defense,” and promised to send hundreds more agents into the city despite widespread protests against the agency’s operations. But behind the scenes, current and former ICE agents have expressed concerns about the agent’s conduct, about the agency’s operations in Minneapolis, and about a broader push by the Trump administration to aggressively recruit more agents. Read more: Fatal ICE Shooting Sparks Scrutiny of Killings in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown “I’m embarrassed,” one former ICE agent with more than 25 years of experience told TIME. “The majority of my colleagues feel the same way. It’s an insult to us, because we did it the right way to see what they’re doing now.” ‘Problematic’ When asked about the deadly shooting that sparked mass protests in Minneapolis and across the country, both the current and the former ICE agent expressed their reservations about Agent Ross opening fire three times.  “If you feel for your life and you’re in imminent danger, you know, policy says you could fire at that vehicle if there’s no other recourse,” said a current ICE agent with more than 20 years of experience in the agency. “If someone is able to make the argument that she was trying to hit him, he feared for his life, and all he could do was shoot…then sure, he can justify it that way. 
But I think when you look at it a little bit more, it’s … very problematic for him,” the agent said.  The DHS told TIME that Good had “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” But videos of the incident contradict that account. They appear to show Ross positioned to the side of Good’s vehicle when he fired three shots that killed her, with her wheels turned away from him. Both the former agent and the current agent also questioned why Ross was assigned to this operation in the first place, given a previous injury involving a driver at the wheel of a vehicle just a few months before the confrontation with Good. “That, to me, has red flags all over it,” the former ICE agent said. “So when this person took off, I’m sure that prior incident came to mind, because he’s an experienced officer. And then he just reacted, in my opinion, not in the correct way,” the former agent added.  Last Monday, the Trump administration deployed roughly 2,000 agents from ICE to the Twin Cities area amid a growing fraud scandal at day care centers run by Somali residents. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media that the agents are there to conduct “ a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.” The current ICE agent pointed out that while the pretense of the immigration operation in Minneapolis is to investigate welfare fraud, neither border patrol officers nor ICE agents in charge of deportation, also known as Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers, are trained to investigate financial fraud.  “None of those skills were asked for when they sought out volunteers, or when they pulled people, it was just… we just need people to go out there and flood the area,” the current ICE agent said.  “You would bring in a team of HSI special agents who have done that before, who have investigated that type of fraud,” he added, referring to Homeland Security Investigations, an agency within DHS. The surge in Minneapolis is part of a broad nationwide push by the Trump Administration to meet President Donald Trump’s aim to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history.”  To meet that goal, ICE has doubled its manpower from 10,000 to 22,000 in less than a year, thanks to its aggressive hiring campaign. To respond to the massive surge of new officers, ICE has shortened the training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia from 13 weeks to six weeks, NBC first reported. The former agent called that a “recipe for disaster.” “You can’t train someone to do all the basic law enforcement stuff, let alone the law. Immigration law used to be a five or six-month course at the academy. How do you know that people are here legally unless you know the law?
You use Google?” the current ICE agent said.  The former ICE agent also said that this rushed training could lead to a domino effect as more senior ICE agents plan for retirement, and the new recruits, who didn’t have as much legal and enforcement training as previous generations, fill the gap. Some retired agents have also been invited by ICE to rejoin the force, but according to the former ICE agent, the risk of going back outweighs staying retired.  “The biggest concern is jeopardizing your pension. And then, of course, violating the law.
If you’re ordered and you know that you’re violating the law and you say no, then you stand a chance of being terminated. And then you jeopardize your pension,” the former agent said, adding that some officers are asked to work for 16-hour shifts six to seven days a week. “For most of us, it’s not worth it.” Even before Good’s shooting, public support for the agency has been dropping sharply. A YouGov poll conducted the same day as the shooting killing found that 52% of respondents now either somewhat or strongly disapproved of how ICE was handling its job, compared to 39% who somewhat or strongly approved. For the first time, more people now support abolishing the agency than oppose it.  Asked about the public’s biggest misconception about ICE, both the current and former agent said that ICE, like all government agencies, is at the mercy of the Administration. “Where was all this energy when the election was happening? Everyone knew this was what the Administration was going to do,” the agent said, adding that for the most part, the agents conducting deportations and arrests are not breaking the law.  “You’re putting people in a position where they have to quit and try to find work in a really bad job market.
So they justify themselves, and they say, hey, it’s legal, and as long as I’m not violating rights or doing something immoral or illegal, I’m going to do it because this is what the American voters voted for.”