Rather Than Investigate The Alex Pretti Murder, The DHS Investigated Minneapolis Activist Groups

from the maximum-cruelty,-zero-accountability dept

Two murders in less than a week. That’s how the surge went in Minneapolis — a city targeted because the city and state were run by members of the opposing party. It was political persecution pretending to be a public safety effort. Trump and his administration buddies amplified accusations of government funding fraud. Trump himself made it clear it didn’t really matter whether the accusations were true or not: as far as he was concerned, Minneapolis was overseen by leftists and overrun by “garbage” people from “shithole” countries.

The Minneapolis surge was nothing more than pure bigotry that targeted the city’s sizeable Somalian community, most of who were in the country legally. When regular people started pushing back because they were filled with normal human emotions rather than the high-octane bile that propels the GOP, immigration officers increased the violence of their response to heckling, hassling, and literal whistle-blowing.

First, immigration officers killed Renee Good, falsely claiming she had “weaponized” her car and was trying to run over government agents. Then they murdered Alex Pretti, an off-duty health care worker who was simply trying to prevent a female Minneapolis resident from being swarmed and pepper sprayed by the DHS’s masked kidnapping squads.

Neither murder has been investigated by an independent law enforcement agency. In both cases, local agencies that normally respond to killings perpetrated by federal officers were locked out. Then the FBI was told to drop any investigation it might have momentarily thought about performing, before being ordered to prevent sharing of any information with Minneapolis authorities.

You’d think the DHS would want to tick a few boxes on the kill sheet and declare its subordinate officers free of guilt or even legal liability. But the DHS couldn’t even be bothered to get its CYA on. Instead, it followed up the Alex Pretti murder by opening investigations into pretty much any left-leaning, pro-people activist group operating in the Minneapolis area.

In one instance, officials used administrative subpoenas to obtain more than three years of financial records from the Sunrise Movement, an environmental action group, and a labor union, the Communications Workers of America. That time frame went well beyond the civil unrest in Minnesota, which was prompted by the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to the state during the winter.

In another, investigators scrutinized three years’ worth of wire transfers made by the nation’s biggest health care workers union, the Service Employees International Union, in what they referred to as an inquiry into “domestic terrorist financing.”

What the fuck? And if some commenters might want to claim something about “anonymous sources” or whatever Facebook Reel they watched recently, these claims aren’t from people unwilling to speak on the record. They’re from a discovery motion filed by someone currently suing the government. And that possibly means there will be even more bad news delivered in the future.

What’s discussed here looks like Trump administration flailing. Trump has long contended that “antifa” is an organized movement, rather than the shorthand used by people united (and not in the RICO sense) by their opposition to fascism. And Trump has been extremely fascist the second time around. No doubt he feels this is a threat to him and his MAGA faithful, but there’s no real threat posed to the safety and security of the nation.

But this administration will never let the facts get in the way of a good time.

So far, none of the organizations targeted by the homeland security inquiry, conducted with the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, have faced charges. And yet, as the investigation moved forward, prosecutors showed grand jurors a PowerPoint slide asserting that 18 groups — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the country’s largest federation of labor unions — were part of a conspiracy to impede the work of immigration officers in Minnesota.

In a better world, we could blow this off, just like any court should when presented with this “evidence.” But that’s not the world we live in. This ridiculous charade has resulted in 15 people being charged. And efforts in other states that follow the same “antifa is terrorist group” thought process have resulted in convictions under terrorism statutes — something that turns misdemeanors into federal crimes with minimum mandatory sentences of ten years or longer.

Then there’s this question, which will never be answered honestly by this government:

Former federal prosecutors questioned why homeland security officials took the lead in a case that would typically be overseen by the F.B.I. 

If I may be so bold (and who’s going to stop me?) it’s two things. First, the DHS is perhaps more compromised than any other federal agency considering Trump’s constant focus on expelling migrants from countries where whites are the minority.

Second, the FBI no longer has the manpower to engage in these flights of dangerous folly. Whoever hasn’t been purged by Trump and Kash Patel has been reassigned to pitch in with the mass deportation effort. That leaves very few investigators available to process the paperwork in hopes of turning Trump’s wildest antifa fantasies into enough of a reality that prosecutors might be able to slide a few indictments past some grand juries.

What’s immediately clear is that this is politically motivated. What’s also clear is that no agency in the federal government is willing to engage in internal investigations… unless they’re trying to hunt down leakers and whistleblowers. The murders will go unsolved, so to speak. Immigration officers continue to internalize the “zero accountability” assurances they receive daily from the Trump administration. Gunning down Americans in broad daylight is no longer considered a bug, but a feature of the administration’s anti-migrant activities. But advocating for rights and equity is apparently so un-American that the DHS has to get involved.

Filed Under: alex pretti, antifa, cbp, dhs, ice, mass deportation, minneapolis, operation puppet master, trump administration

Companies: communication workers of america, sunrise movement