Senators pressed immigration officials on Thursday to answer for some of the aggressive tactics used against immigrants, protesters and bystanders in the field, including the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.
Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul and ranking member Gary Peters showed video at a hearing of federal agents of the events leading up to the January shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti. They asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott whether the methods used by the agents in the video were standard and intended to deescalate.
Scott said it depends on the situation on the ground. Paul and Peters disagreed.
“No one believes shoving that woman’s face in the snow was deescalation,” Paul said. “You guys have got to figure it out,” he added, referring to deescalation tactics.
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The hearing took place the same day the Trump administration announced an end to “Operation Metro Surge,” which deployed thousands of federal agents to Minnesota. But the operation coming to a close won’t end the push for more information and accountability for the killings of Pretti and Renee Good, another 37-year-old shot by a federal immigration agent.
In both cases, Trump administration officials immediately went on the defense, saying agents shot Good and Pretti in self-defense and accusing them of being terrorists. Although officials softened their language on Pretti in the time since, the federal government has continued to block local law enforcement from investigating the deaths.
The agency heads said Thursday that they had no knowledge indicating Good or Pretti were domestic terrorists. But they declined to criticize Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for their statements on the matter.
“I don’t know what information they had at that time. I’m not going to speculate why they said what they said,” Scott said.
Paul recommended that immigration agencies review their officer training and policies, suggesting that the tactics used by immigration agents do not meet the same standards as those used by police officers in similar situations.
“Some of this stuff is inexcusable,” Paul said. “My goal is to restore public trust. If you don’t admit that there’s a problem, we aren’t going to get anywhere.”
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego criticized ICE personnel for loose handling of guns and use of non-lethal weapons in ways that Lyons conceded were sometimes against training and agency protocol, including using a pepper spray canister as a blunt force weapon used to beat Pretti.
“The fact that there are consistent mishandlings of weapons, use of escalating force above what is necessary, and there still hasn’t been any command decision and directive about how to fix this is concerning,” he said “Any other agency, any other law enforcement, any other military would say ‘do not do this.’”
Lyons said over the last year, the agency investigated 37 cases of excessive force, and that ICE agents are held accountable for any illegal or improper action.
Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the ability of the FBI and DHS to conduct an independent investigation into the killings, and pushed the officials on whether they believed it was possible. Lyons said he does, despite acknowledging that the statements of Noem and Miller put their finger on the scales.
“There is just a huge trust gap, absolutely zero trust, in this administration being able to conduct an independent investigation into these killings,” Sen. Andy Kim said.
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