By Steve Levy
Two weeks ago, we editorialized about what we considered to be a justifiable shooting of Desiree Good by an ICE officer who had a reasonable belief that her flooring her SUV toward him placed his life in danger.
Two weeks later, there was another shooting by ICE officers of a man they were wrestling with when trying to make an arrest.
This is an entirely different set of facts that warrant impartial review.
With this, as with other issues, a legitimate newspaper should seek to call balls and strikes and not be part of a red team or a blue team. Unfortunately, too many newspapers and elected officials fall into that latter category.
We try to be different and let the facts guide our opinions.
When we first heard of this shooting, we were led to believe that the ICE officers had shot someone with a gun. We surmised that the victim had been brandishing that gun, putting the officers in fear for their lives.
But the initial viewing of the videos does not seem to confirm that scenario.
We see ICE officers seeking to arrest of a woman, who is interfering with them. They had every right to do so, including pushing her to the ground. Then we see the victim wrongly interfering in trying to prevent the arrest. An altercation ensues and the victim does not submit to the efforts of the police officers to arrest him, which they had every right to do.
But it appears to be a seven-on-one confrontation in which it would be likely that the officers would have been able to subdue him.
We then see one of the ICE officers pull out a gun and shoot several times.
At this point, it does not look to be justified. However, we must reserve our final judgment until we receive testimony and possibly other videos. Was the victim reaching for his gun? It doesn’t appear so, but let’s wait and see.
Did one of the officers see the gun and yell “gun,” which might’ve prompted another officer to act precipitously — or with merit?
We don’t know all these answers yet, but we do know this is a troubling incident and that we should not just automatically be defending the ICE officers simply because we believe they have a right to be in Minneapolis and carry out their duties of deporting those who came here illegally.
Two things can be true at the same time.
One is that the ICE officer may have acted inappropriately. The other is that ICE should be in Minnesota, and in other cities, seeking to remove the over 10 million people who came over the border illegally over the last five years.
It can also be true that sanctuary cities are an abomination that leads to these confrontations.
It can also be true that the elected officials in Minnesota — from Governor Tim Walz, to Attorney General Keith Ellison, to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — have been acting in grossly irresponsible ways, at times crossing the line into possible insurrection, when they claim ICE has no right to be in their city because they don’t share the city’s values. They are also prohibiting their officers from assisting fellow law enforcement in ICE by at least participating in crowd control.
The confrontations are occurring not because ICE is doing their job, but because the resistance — which is organized by fa-left billionaires, including those from Communist China — are fomenting the confrontations with the hope that these type of high-profile incidences will occur, thereby putting pressure on ICE to back off and allow the millions of illegal aliens who came over the border to simply stay here forever. The ultimate plan is to legalize them and have them vote and become a new base of the Democratic Party that will give them electoral superiority for the next generation.
The resistance believes it is justified to create this kind of chaos. If they can gum up the works to this extent to prevent ICE from deporting child molesters and rapists, imagine how hard it will be for ICE to deport the illegal aliens who haven’t committed further crimes since they crossed our border without authorization.
So, as we continue to monitor and editorialize on the efforts of ICE to correct the invasion that occurred under the Biden administration, we must keep an open mind and never adopt an attitude that ICE is always right and the protests are always wrong.
Unless you let the facts guide your judgments, you lose credibility. Too many in the media today pick a side and root for their team like a defense attorney would do so for his client, be he guilty or innocent. That’s not what the media is supposed to do.
Editorialists, of course, are going to have subjective opinions and are going to be slanted more to the right or to the left, but the ultimate end product should be truth.
In this case, it looks like the truth may be that the officer did not engage in a justifiable shooting, and it can also be true that ICE must continue on its efforts to enforce our immigration laws, and that local residents and authorities should not interfere with the mandate that was given to the administration in the 2024 election.