Irish Examiner view: Alex Pretti video from Minnesota makes nonsense of Bovino's claims

The ICE crackdown in Minneapolis and other US cities is on the wrong side of history

Alex Pretti was shot dead by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Saturday. Picture: Michael Pretti/AP 

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command... And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.” 

It was hard not to think of this quote from Orwell’s polemic against totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four, while watching the charade of US border patrol official Gregory Bovino claim that Alex Pretti, the nurse shot dead after being subdued by a horde of ICE agents, was coming at them with a gun and “intending to inflict maximum damage”. 

As the videos of the situation sow, Pretti had a phone in one hand filming ICE actions and his other raised and open. He had gone to the aid of a protester who had been pepper sprayed, only to be swarmed by ICE, forcibly subdued, and shot multiple times.

It is disturbing footage that one might expect to see smuggled out of an authoritarian regime that has cut off internet access, like we’ve seen just recently in Iran.

That his subduers retreated en masse immediately after, leaving his body lying still on the ground, suggests that at least some of them may have realised they have strayed onto the wrong side of history. Not just strayed — rather, jumped boots first over the line. 

US Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino in Minneapolis. Picture: Angelina Katsanis/AP

Bovino, however, does not see himself as being such. Referred to as “commander at large” of the US border patrol, though that isn’t a real rank, he has adopted the heavy greatcoat and a military uniform more reminiscent of a Second World War officer. You know the ones. They were also on the wrong side of history.

But the bald lying in the face of all evidence is a trademark of the Trump regime, which is engaged in an increasingly savage crackdown on immigration which is, in turn, increasingly being turned against innocent citizens and residents.

Such is the way of authoritarianism — and where military or paramilitary forces become police, eventually the people become the enemy. And if in doubt, make up some outlandish story that shows government agents were being set upon by alleged terrorists or criminals. 

The reality is that there are great swathes of the US population who will swallow it without critical thought, leaving the videos of protesters as a testimony to the falsehoods of the regime and its oppressive behaviours. The Party has said it, therefore it must be true, especially if it matches up with existing prejudices against anybody who isn’t exactly like them.

Pretti, as we know, isn’t the first protester to have been killed in Minnesota, where ICE is officially cracking down on illegal Somali residents in particular, and where children as young as two have been taken into custody. 

As reported in the Washington Post, a private autopsy of Renee Good, shot dead in her car by an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, just two weeks ago, had three gunshot wounds, including one to the head. US officials have described her as a “domestic terrorist” who was driving her car at her killer, who was supposedly firing in self defence. Video footage of the incident seems to show him standing out as the car slowly turned to drive away from him up the road.

Meanwhile, sheriffs in Minnesota — epicentre for the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd — have reported that many of their off-duty officers (US citizens) have been harassed by Ice agents, including being cornered and ordered to hand over papers — the most common factor in almost every case being that the officer in question was not white. 

ICE officers — masked, emboldened, lightly trained, and heavily armed — are living up to every allegation of being fascist thugs and tools of oppression.

As Amnesty International official Amy Fischer said at the weekend: “From deadly street operations to the torture, neglect, and other abuses documented in immigrant detention facilities, ICE has repeatedly violated human rights while facing virtually no consequences.”

Members of the agency might do well to remember that the Nuremburg defence, “we were only following orders”, did not get German soldiers off the hook, even if it did lessen the punishments. 

They might do well to remember, also, that authoritarian regimes have a tendency to collapse in on themselves, often with brutal results for regime officials and collaborators in legacies that may be felt for years. 

Tyranny, it is sometimes said, is unnatural because it requires a great deal of effort to maintain, an effort that is ultimately unsustainable. It’s worth noting, however, that there are no guarantees that replacement regimes will be any better, and that there is no substitute for the administration of a state through proper law, order, and justice.

Minnesota is on the brink, as outlined by our reporter Sean Murray, who has been covering the situation first hand.

Indeed, it would seem that every day America as a whole pushes itself further and further toward the brink. Whether it can ever recover remains to be seen.

As Murray notes: “Minnesotans have had enough. Small acts of resistance against the might and power of the federal government being brought to bear on their city are all adding up to more than the sum of their parts. 

"But there’s only so much they can do when, in the words of state governor Tim Walz, ‘you ask for peace, we give it — and we get shot in the face on the streets’.”

Minnesota has a population roughly equivalent to that of our republic, and indeed the state itself is only a small bit larger than the entire island of Ireland. 

In American terms, it’s relatively small. It’s possible that it’s been targeted with particularly savagery because its governor, Walz, was the Democrat candidate for vice president during Kamala Harris’s run for the White House. He has been an outspoken critic of the Trump regime, as have other Democrat governors who have resisted ICE encroachment, such as California’s Gavin Newsom and JB Pritzker of Illinois.

Yet it increasingly seems, and feels, like Minnesota may end up the spark that ignites something far more. You can only push people so far before they push back, and sometimes in unpredictable ways. As it is, there are reports of militias being set up as sort of local defence chapters against ICE.

A chapter of the Black Panthers, for instance, has been providing armed defence against ICE in Philadelphia, though there has been no violence between the groups, America is increasingly, perhaps irrevocably, polarising. 

Opinion polls mean nothing to a president who — quite apart from signs of a rapidly deteriorating mental state — operates without respect for the law or people, and indeed  who operates without effective checks and balances against his authority.

The midterm elections, which are expected to go heavily in Democrat favour and thus nullifying Trump’s support in the legislature, could be a defining point for how America goes. 

We watch with bated breath, and no small measure of anxiety.