Illegal Immigration Ethics Train Wreck

Another Day in Minnesota, Another I.C.E. Shooting, Another Freak-Out and Battle of Narratives…

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Here is how the New York Times is framing the incident right now:

The authorities in Minnesota on Sunday were investigating the killing of a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident by federal agents, despite resistance from Trump administration officials who sought to cast blame on the victim and local Democratic lawmakers.

The victim, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive-care nurse and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record who held a legal permit to carry a firearm, local officials said. Federal officials, without presenting evidence for the claims, sought to portray Mr. Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” who was armed and wanted to “massacre” law enforcement officers…Mr. Pretti was shot dead on Saturday during protests against the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Videos analyzed by The New York Times show no sign that Mr. Pretti pulled his weapon during the encounter with federal agents in which he was killed, or that they knew he had one until he was already pinned on the ground…

Federal authorities said the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Border Patrol, would lead the federal shooting investigation. But senior Homeland Security and Justice Department officials claimed it was already clear that Mr. Pretti and local officials were to blame for the shooting.

The killing of Mr. Pretti in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood prompted a new round of protests in the city, where tensions have reached a breaking point after weeks of aggressive federal immigration action. Increasingly, U.S. citizens have taken to the streets to protest what many have described as a military-style occupation of an American city. At least 1,000 people gathered for a vigil for Mr. Pretti in Whittier Park on Saturday night despite subzero temperatures.

Mr. Trump and administration officials cast blame on local lawmakers, who are Democrats, for the unrest. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and other lawmakers of allowing “lawlessness” to spread and made a series of demands, including for state officials to turn over voting records to the Justice Department. In response, Mr. Walz’s office said that federal agents had “brought chaos and destruction to our state.”

Observations:

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Calling “A Friend”! Tell Us Again How The New York Times Is Non-Partisan, Fair, and Trustworthy…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Yeah, I’m trolling. So sue me.

A mob of Minnesota pro-open borders, anti-Rule of Law, insurrection-minded, Jacob Frey toadies and crazies invade a church service and harass parishioners on the pretense that the minister supports immigration enforcement, and the framing of the event by the nation’s alleged “newspaper of record” is to call the trespass and mass assault a “protest” and to focus on I.C.E. tactics when the issue is anti-I.C.E. tactics. The immigration control agency was not involved in this criminal act in any way, yet it is in the headline.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

For readers new to Ethics Alarms, “A Friend” is an unfriendly, denial-soaked ex-commenter here who banned himself from the comments, an act that is addressed specifically in the blog Comment Policies. Unlike even the most disrespectful and defiant bannees of the past, who typically issue a one or two finals shots and then sink into the obscurity they so richly deserve, this jerk has adamantly refused to comply with the site’s owner and moderator, me. Thus for years he has repeatedly blog-bombed posts with comments that I have to delete while also sending me emails that also go directly to spam, because he is somehow convinced that he’s smarter than everyone else. You know,

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Wisconsin’s Governor Perfectly Exemplifies The Pro-Illegal Immigration Mob’s Logical, Legal and Ethical Disconnect

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Ponder this brief news item from the state’s WBAY. I’ve footnoted it for reference and easy mockery:

“MADISON, Wis. (WBAY) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says he’s “very concerned” about immigration officials targeting farm workers, [1]especially as ICE arrests ramp up across the Midwest.

“Evers says his team is keeping an eye [2] on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s presence in the state.

“According to the most recent data, a University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers survey found 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms is performed by people living in the country illegally. [3]

“’I can probably say in my sleep [4], our state will be destroyed economically if suddenly we decide anybody undocumented [5] is going home or has to leave [6]Wisconsin,’” Evers said.

“‘When asked if ICE is welcome in Wisconsin, Gov. Evers said he doesn’t see the need for the federal government to come here.'”[7].

“He believes the state can handle immigration enforcement itself.” [8]

Riddle me this: How many internal contradictions can one fit in a single news article?

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Ethics Quote of the Day: “Adams Rib”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I see something in you I’ve never seen before and I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I hate it…Contempt for the law, that’s what you’ve got — it’s a disease, a spreading disease -… You think the law is something that you can get over or get under or get around or just plain flaunt. You start with that and you wind up in the…Well, look at us! The law is the law, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad the thing to do is to change it, not just to bust it wide open! You start with one law, then pretty soon it’s all laws, pretty soon it’s everything.”

—Adam Bonner, assistant district attorney, played by Spencer Tracy in the great Hepburn-Tracy comedy “Adams Rib” (1949). The lines were written by the movie’s screenwriting team, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon

I was re-watching the film this week because I needed a laugh, not because I expected to be yanked kicking and screaming into the into 2026 Anti-I.C.E. madness. But Tracy’s impassioned speech shocked me out of my amusement: When did that rational, pure American, self-evident and irrefutable statement about the society’s crucial fealty to the Rule of Law become controversial?

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, Ethics Villain Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Gaza)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

We will know that the nation is recuperating from The Great Stupid when voters no longer elect anti-American members of Congress like Tlaib and her fellow infiltrator, Rep. Omar. This week Omar and similarly corrupt Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal chaired a so-called hearing, completely partisan and without balance or dissent, regarding lawful activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minnesota and the death of activist Renee Good when she interfered with their efforts, almost running over an agent with her car. Tlaib decided it would be an ideal time to pitch a hissy fit over the image above, Department of Homeland Security recruitment post.

“We will have our home again!” the Congresswoman said as she displayed the photo. “What does that evoke in you when you see this? It literally, when I see it, as a Muslima, as a Palestinian, as a child of immigrants, I see that this is something that is evoking like I’m not welcome here.”

Well….

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What’s the Ethical Way To Deal With Minnesota?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Perhaps the best rejoinder to anyone who wants to condemn an acquaintance for voting for Evil Donald Trump is to gently (or not so gently) remind said fool that the alternative was to put Minnesota Tim “Knucklehead” Walz a heartbeat from the White House. Showing the impeccable judgment he displayed on the campaign trail, this incompetent allowed massive fraud to take needed funds from law-abiding Minnesotans, admitted that he did nothing about it because he didn’t want to upset the Somali voting block most responsible for it, decided to end his quest for re-election because he knows he’s going to eventually have to face the metaphorical music, and now is trying to go out with a bang by inciting deranged Minnesotans to fight Federal officers in defense of illegal immigrant criminals, among others.

Good plan!

Yesterday, some commentators observed, Walz may have “crossed the line.” Gee, ya think?

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Comment of the Day: On the I.C.E. Shooting Ethics Train Wreck ( “Friday Open Forum, Depicated To Major Tipton”)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ace EA commenter Ryan Harkins, as he often does, flags the ethics conflict in the current escalating controversy over President Trump’s mass deportations, a.k.a, “Enforcing the immigration laws after a rogue Presidency refused to do so for four years.” The point he raises is not only a valid one but an important one, not just regarding this issue but others. I’m going to append a fairly long addition to Ryan’s excellent work, but first of all, here is his Comment of the Day from “Friday Open Forum, Dedicated To Major Tipton…”:

***

Here’s my concern about the situation we’re in. I would liken it to inconsistently disciplining your children. If you only irregularly discipline your child for a particular infraction, the child learns that most of the time, he can get away with that infraction. When that infraction is then punished, the child reactions disproportionately because he’s used to getting away with the infraction, and he believes that if he makes noncompliance painful enough, it will discourage further disciplinary action.

That seems to be the case we’re in with illegal immigrants. We’ve been very poor at enforcing our immigration laws, and so many said illegals and the communities around them grew complacent about the laws not being enforced. When the laws are enforced, it comes as a great shock, and the immediate reaction is to scream about how unfair it is. And to a certain extent, I do agree that it is unfair. It is unfair to cultivate the expectation that a law won’t be enforced, only to turn around and enforce it. But it is unfair because of cultivating that expectation, not because of the subsequent enforcement.

The significant problem is the whiplash effect of enforcement/non-enforcement depending upon who is in charge. We’ve run the gamut of no enforcement (even inviting in illegals), to soft enforcement, to promises of citizenship, to harsh enforcement. To anyone watching from outside the country, it is like dealing with a schizophrenic or someone suffering from multiple personality disorder. Worse, because we keep seesawing back and forth, the expectation right now is that by keeping up a defiant stance against the current administration, illegals and their allies can simply wait for the winds to change and go back to their lives as they’ve been.

I know this aspect of the situation glosses over the deliberate effort of radicals to the destabilize the nation, the outrage over the money spigots that are being closed, the efforts to import in reliable Democratic voters, and the genuine concerns over destabilizing families that had, admittedly against the law, put down roots and became productive members of their communities. But it is a serious problem that we seem to be lurching one direction, and then back the opposite way, with every swing of political power. This has been exacerbated by most policy changes coming from executive orders, which are easily undone, rather than congressional legislation, which is much harder to walk back.

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Further Ethics Observations On the I.C.E. Shooting In Minneapolis…#1: The Right and Wrong Isn’t In Question [Updated and Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

The Trump Administration, I.C.E., and those standing for the enforcement of the law are in the right, with the ethics of this incident and its context entirely on their side. The pro-open borders Left, including the “resistance,” radical progressives (but I repeat myself…) and the Democrats as well as the leadership of sanctuary states and cities, are entirely wrong in theory, practice and conduct. The group in the wrong, which includes much of the news media, is primarily responsible for the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good. However, she was part of that group herself, and bears some of the responsibility for her own death.

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Ethics Observations on the Hampton Inn I.C.E. Freeze-Out In Minnesota

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Surely you have heard about this craziness (and ethics breach) by now; it was mentioned in the comments to this EA post yesterday. A post on the official Homeland Security X account revealed that reservations made at the Hampton Inn in Lakeville Minneapolis, a suburb about 25 miles south of Minneapolis, by I.C.E. officers had been cancelled with a message suggesting that they were not welcome at the hotel chain. The DHS post included a copy of the email with the sender and recipient redacted; indeed, it stated the property would not host immigration agents.

In an abundance of caution, I decided to wait to determine “What’s going on here?” What was going on here is that a bunch of rogue woke morons decided to grandstand in anti-Trump, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-Somali immigrant scoundrels Minnesota, where they think up is down, black is white, War is Peace and unethical is ethical.

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Unethical Quote of the Day: LA Mayor Karen Bass

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Well, in a way, I think it’s sad….”

—-Astoundingly incompetent LA Mayor Karen Bass, on CNN’s  “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer

She was responding to a CNN report about Hispanic-Americans joining I.C.E. in record numbers. Knowing Bass (see this infuriating idiot’s EA dossier here) and the pro-illegal immigration party she belongs to, can you guess why LA’s woke Mayor thinks the development is “sad”?

Why, they’re betraying their own kind, you see! You know, like when inner city blacks tell police about murderers, muggers and rapists in their neighborhood who are the same color they are. Imagine doing that to your “own kind”!

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