Days after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) goons shot Alex Pretti ten times while he lay face first on the ground, Richard Luthmann and I squared off about Trump’s immigration policy.
My argument was that the Trump administration was violating constitutional rights in pursuit of a policy which is doing little.
Since the DHS goon squad was deployed into cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and now Minneapolis, Trump and his supporters have implemented and made arguments against the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, and 14th amendments.
First Amendment
Since Pretti’s death, MAGA’s media allies have settled on a narrative- he died because he showed up near DHS goon activities and “interfered.”
The most shameful attempt was made by Megyn Kelly.
I know I'm supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pretti, but I don't. You know why I wasn't shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.
Except, filming is a basic constitutional right, and by interfering, Megyn meant standing on a sidewalk.
A DHS goon ran to Pretti. The goon pepper sprayed a woman, then him, then he and six other goons threw Pretti to the ground, before they put ten bullets into Pretti while he lay face first.
Megyn followed up that shameful analysis by claiming we should outlaw whistles.
Using a whistle to alert people of law enforcement activity is a protected form of speech, something a former lawyer should know.
Megyn isn’t worried about the constitution. She’s frustrated that citizens have frustrated Trump’s efforts to implement his agenda.
So, she wants those actions made illegal.
2nd Amendment
After Pretti’s killing, MAGA reached for anything to justify a bad shooting.
They settled on his gun because he was packing-legally.
They started using arguments the left has used. President Trump was the worst, “I don’ like that he had a gun.”
His gun was concealed; he never brandished it, and the DHS goons didn’t know he was packing until he was on the ground.
Americans have a 2nd amendment right to carry firearms, and Trump sounded like the leftists he claims to oppose.
Others claimed that he carried a gun while breaking the law. These same conservatives claimed he was impeding law enforcement- presumably by standing on the sidewalk.
These second amendment reaches were done in support of creating a narrative which would justify this killing.
4th amendment
Last week, we found out that DHS has a memo instructing its goons that traditional warrants were no longer necessary to enter a home.
Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.
The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.
The shift comes as the Trump administration dramatically expands immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of officers under a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping enforcement tactics in cities such as Minneapolis.
Rich agreed that this memo violated the fourth amendment. The so-called administrative warrants are issued by DHS.
That’s not how the fourth amendment works. A judge, neutral and detached, is the decider, not the agency which wants to enter the home.
The argument made by proponents of this policy is that police who have an arrest warrant can enter a home where they have probable cause the suspect is staying without a subsequent search warrant.
In DHS’s case, they have to have a final removal order, also signed by a judge, but Rich explained that with an arrest warrant there is a significantly shorter time proximity than a final removal order, which can take months or years.
8th Amendment
Early in Trump’s term, he sent over 100 Venezuelans to CECOT in El Salvador, one of the worst prisons in human history. As CBS 60 Minutes and others documented, most of these men were not gangbangers and were sent there based on flimsy evidence.
Even if most needed to be deported, the punishment for being in the country illegal is deportation and not being sent to CECOT.
The administration has rarely answered questions about why these men were sent there, but they violated their rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
14th amendment
These men’s rights to due process were also violated.
Early on, Federal Judge James Boasberg ordered a plane to turn around carrying some of these prisoners to CECOT.
A US federal judge has questioned why the Trump administration failed to obey his order halting the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, ordered deportation flights to be turned around on Saturday night.
White House officials argued in a court filing that they did not defy the ruling. The argued in part that because Boasberg’s order was made orally rather than in written form, it was not enforceable - and that the planes had already left the US by the time it was issued.
Boasberg has ordered the administration to give further details about the deportations by noon (16:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
Judge Boasberg ordered that plane to turnaround because the men on it were being deported before their deportation cases had finalized.
Trump was also violating their 14th amendment rights along with their 8th.
As I said in the broadcast, to what end is the administration violating so many rights.
Minnesota has less, per capita, illegal immigrants than Florida and Texas.
Rich correctly pointed out that both of those states have no sanctuary policy, whereas certain localities do not cooperate with DHS.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (MDOC) is not one of those localities; it honors all detainers. It turns over every criminal that DHS asks for.
According to DHS statistics, approximately 3,000 people have been detained since the start of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
There are over 20,000,000 illegal immigrants in the US; Trump is slightly ahead of Obama’s deportation numbers, and he’d need to keep this pace up for twenty years to remove all illegal immigrants- assuming no new ones show up.
This is a show of force against his political enemies- Governor Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and Somali Americans- designed to terorrize a state.
