Trump is throwing ICE agents under the bus
We are getting closer and closer to accountability but it is still not nearly enough.
The execution of 37 year old ICU nurse Alex Prey has brought a political firestorm upon DC. And now Donald Trump is quite literally trapped in a corner.
We are multiple days away from a government shutdown on January 31st.
The only way to stop this shutdown is to remove the funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Remove the funding for Kristi Noem. And remove the funding for ICE agents to have more means to inflict terror on US citizens.
Democrats have all the leverage and I am all for it.
Trump has no way out. Either the government shuts down in three days, which would nuke the Republican party heading into the midterms, or he gives Democrats what they want.
Two federal immigration agents involved in the shooting death of Alex Prey have been placed on administrative leave.
This is Donald Trump making concession after concession desperately trying to avoid a shutdown.
Think about the timeline:
He demoted Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino immediately.
He reassigned Kristi Noem from interior deportations to the border to hide her.
He threw Stephen Miller under the bus by saying “no one” in his administration would call Alex Prey a domestic terrorist.
He is trying to distance himself from the awful cover up he started.
But you know what? Administrative leave is not enough.
Paid time off is not enough for people who executed someone. I want them investigated. I want there to be consequences in a court of law within the next 30 days.
The Cover Up Failed.
The worst part is they didn’t follow protocol before, during, or after the shooting.
Gregory Bovino explicitly said they put the agents back on the field in a different state right after the shooting.
Bovino: “All agents involved in that scene are working not in Minneapolis but in other locations that’s for their safety... there’s this thing called doxing.”
That clip got 5.6 million views because of how bizarre it was. They want to keep rogue agents “safe” by sending them back out to hunt people?
Now even Stephen Miller is acknowledging it was a “possible breach of protocol.”
That is wild coming from him. This is the same guy who called Prey a “would-be assassin” just days ago.
You don’t get to call people terrorists and then say “oops maybe we breached protocol” when the polls tank.
Here’s the play:
Democrats have the ultimate leverage right now.
Health care prices for Americans are skyrocketing because Trump let ACA subsidies expire. And where does he want that money to go? To ICE operations.
It is so easy for Americans to be radicalized against this system when it isn’t working for them.
Democrats are coalescing around a demand list for the DHS funding bill:
Require judicial warrants for immigration arrests. (The Constitution already says this but okay).
Mandate federal agents identify themselves.
Require DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations.
Limit the mission creep of federal agencies.
We went from 800 agents in Minneapolis to 3,000 agents. That needs to stop.
Trump is obsessed with leverage. And right now Democrats have all of it.
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They’re going to need a bigger bus. There’s absolutely nothing more important right now than releasing the names of those who murdered Alex.
PRETTI, not Prey