Tag: ice

You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.

The plan was never to become an ICE agent.

The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent. Who wouldn’t be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the country’s most vulnerable residents without consequence—all while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

The ICE expo in the Dallas area, where my application journey began, required attendees to register for a specific time slot, presumably to prevent throngs of eager patriots from flooding the event and overwhelming the recruiters. But when I showed up at 9 a.m., the flood was notably absent: there was no line to check in and no line to go through security. I walked down nearly empty hallways, past a nearly empty drug testing station, and into the event proper, where a man directed me to a line to wait in for an interview. I took my spot at the end; there were only six people ahead of me.

While I waited, I looked around the ESports Stadium Arlington—an enormous blacked-out event space optimized for video game tournaments that has a capacity of 2,500. During my visit, there couldn’t have been more than 150 people there.

Hopeful hires stood in tiny groups or found seats in the endless rows of cheap folding chairs that faced a stage ripped straight from Tron. Everything was bright-blue and lit-up and sci-fi-future angular. Above the monolithic platform hung three large monitors. The side monitors displayed static propaganda posters that urged the viewer to DEFEND THE HOMELAND and JOIN ICE TODAY, while the large central monitor played two short videos on loop: about 10 minutes of propaganda footage, again and again and again.

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Anti-ICE protester blinded by federal agent during demonstration in Santa Ana, family says

A young protester narrowly avoided being killed but was left permanently blind after a Department of Homeland Security agent fired a nonlethal round at close range during a Santa Ana protest last week, according to family of the victim.

Jeri Rees said her 21-year-old nephew, Kaden Rummler, underwent six hours of surgery and that doctors found shards of plastic, glass and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, including a metal piece lodged 7 millimeters from a carotid artery.

“That could have cost him his life,” Rees said.

“But now, for the next six weeks, he can’t sneeze or cough because it could do a lot of damage.”

She said doctors did not want to remove the shrapnel near the artery out of fear that it could kill him. She said her nephew also suffered a fractured skull around his eyes and nose and that doctors said he had permanently lost the vision in his left eye. She said the Homeland Security agent was a few feet from her nephew when he fired the weapon.

Several videos of Friday’s incident were shared on social media. One video shows demonstrators, who were protesting the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good, throwing orange safety cones at the agents, who were standing guard outside the Santa Ana federal building.

The video cuts to three agents approaching the group before one agent tries to take a young person into custody, prompting at least three demonstrators to try to intervene. The person taken into custody was identified by friends as Skye Jones.

In the video, at least one agent appears to fire nonlethal rounds at the crowd, hitting one woman in the leg before aiming and striking Rummler’s face.

The video shows Rummler dropping to the ground after being shot, holding his face as the crowd retreats. The same agent then drags him by the hood of their jacket; they appear to be choking, grasping at the jacket binding their neck as blood pours from their left eye.

Another video shows Rummler inside the building, lying on the ground bleeding while agents fire what appear to be pepper balls at the back of the head and neck of a man trying to record the incident with his cellphone.

Rees said her nephew told her that the agents pressed his face against the pool of blood and did not immediately call paramedics.

“The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye,’” she said, recalling what her nephew told her.

Friday’s violent clash occurred just two days after a federal immigration agent fatally shot Good, a Minnesota mother of three. The slaying sparked public outcry, nationwide protests and scrutiny of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said the agent was acting in self-defense.

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‘We Need To Kill These People’: Left-Wing TikTok User Calls For ‘More’ Violence Against ICE Agents

A left-wing TikTok user urged his followers to “get violent” and to “kill” United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in a video that rapidly spread across social media Monday.

Resistance to ICE enforcement has grown more and more violent nationwide, with agents fired on and targeted in multiple states amid increasingly heated rhetoric. Tensions have only escalated further in the wake of Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Minnesota resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent during an enforcement operation in Minneapolis.

The TikTok user, who posts under the username monkeydbeans0 and uses they/them/theirs pronouns, said ICE agents are just mall cops and Proud Boys and cited Good’s death as justification for his call to murder federal agents.

“I’m just going to come out and say it. I don’t really care about the consequences anymore. I don’t care. We need to kill these people,” the green-haired TikTok user said. “There’s — there’s just no alternative.”

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Dem Rep. Vindman: ‘Irony’ with Iranians Protesting, ‘What We See with ICE’ in U.S.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) said that the United States should “support the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom and independence.” And the Iranian people are “protesting, largely peacefully, on the streets, and they’re being attacked and murdered. And I think there’s an irony, obviously, in what we see with ICE on America’s streets.”

Vindman said, “Well, first of all, I think we all recognize that the Iranian regime is an authoritarian regime that is suppressing its people. And I recognize that in my own family experience, we fled from a Communist authoritarian regime, and we need to support the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom and independence. They’re protesting, largely peacefully, on the streets, and they’re being attacked and murdered. And I think there’s an irony, obviously, in what we see with ICE on America’s streets.”

He continued, “But just to stay focused on Iran, I think it means putting enormous pressure on the regime so they recognize that suppressing their own population through violence is not going to work.”

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Assaults On ICE Are ‘Highly Coordinated,’ While Local Law Enforcement Told to Stand Down

The Department of Homeland Security has surged federal law enforcement personnel into Minneapolis amid what officials describe as a sharp escalation in violence against officers operating in the city, which has been designated a sanctuary jurisdiction, according to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

McLaughlin said the deployment was necessary because sanctuary policies in Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota restrict cooperation between federal agents and local law enforcement, leaving DHS officers exposed while carrying out immigration enforcement operations.

“So what’s happening with Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota is it is a sanctuary city, so DHS law enforcement, we’re not allowed to engage with their local law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.

“We’re not allowed in their jails, and local law enforcement are not allowed to respond to backup to our officers.”

According to McLaughlin, those restrictions have coincided with what she described as a coordinated campaign of violence against federal officers.

“So what we’ve been seeing is a highly coordinated campaign of violence against our law enforcement officers,” she said.

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‘Who is hiding behind these masks?’: Investigators want to know whether ICE is employing former Jan. 6 defendants, demand docs about ‘violent rioters’ hired by DHS

As controversies involving federal immigration agents pile up in multiple cities, congressional investigators are demanding to know whether the Trump administration has hired anyone who was previously pardoned for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a four-page letter on Monday, House Judiciary Democrats put the question directly – and in plain terms – to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?” the letter begins.

In the letter, Maryland Rep. and ranking member Jamie Raskin details how some in the orbit of Jan. 6 have since come to work for the DOJ itself in high-profile positions. Among such employees are pardoned ex-FBI supervisor Jared Wise, who now serves as senior adviser in the office of the Deputy Attorney General. Raskin also makes reference to “J6 enthusiast and defense counsel” Ed Martin, who currently serves as Associate Deputy Attorney General and the head of the DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group.”

Still, those references – to Wise and Martin – merely preface Raskin’s overarching concern.

“We know that some participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have been rewarded with high-ranking positions in the Department of Justice,” the congressman said in a press release. “However, it remains unclear how many more have been invited to join the ranks of this Administration, including among the masked Department of Homeland Security agents and officers that have dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, shot, and killed citizens and non-citizens alike in communities around the country.”

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No, ICE Agents Do Not Have ‘Absolute Immunity’ From State Prosecution

According to Vice President J.D. Vance, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis cannot be prosecuted for it by Minnesota officials. “The precedent here is very simple,” Vance declared. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action—that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

But the precedent is not actually so simple. In an 1890 case known as In re Neagle, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a federal marshal named David Neagle was “not liable to answer in the Courts of California” after he fatally shot the would-be assassin of a Supreme Court justice named Stephen Field during an attack on Field that occurred on a train traveling through California (Neagle was present as Field’s official bodyguard). “Under the circumstances,” the Court said, Neagle “was acting under the authority of the law of the United States, and was justified in so doing.” Therefore, “he is not liable to answer in the courts of California on account of his part in that transaction.”

Vance may have been thinking of In re Neagle when he claimed that ICE agents possess “absolute immunity” from state prosecution. However, In re Neagle was not the Supreme Court’s final word on the matter.

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Antifa TikTok Agitator Urges Armed Leftist Militias to ‘Fight’ ICE Agents

Radical TikTok agitator Danesh Noshirvan has crossed a dangerous line.

The Antifa-aligned mega influencer is now openly calling for organized, armed left-wing militias to confront ICE agents and federal law enforcement in America’s largest cities.

Framing ICE as “Trump’s racist army,” Noshirvan urges followers to physically block agents and force them out of communities. The rhetoric is not abstract. It is operational. It is coordinated.

And it comes from a figure already tied to dark-money networks, digital harassment mobs, perjury, and federal sanctions.

This is not protest. It is incitement—packaged as “accountability,” powered by bots, and aimed at igniting street-level conflict.

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Renee Good’s Minnesota ‘ICE Watch’ group shared manual detailing how to fight arrests, launch ‘a micro-intifada’

The Minnesota ICE Watch group of which slain Minneapolis protester Renee Good was a member shared a detailed manual providing instructions on fighting police officers to free arrested radicals from their grasp, comparing each “de-arrest” to a “micro-intifada.”

The “de-arrest primer” manual was reposted on Instagram in June by MN ICE Watch, part of a loose collective of agitators who teach members how to disrupt law enforcement officers performing their duties, including ICE agents.

Neighbors have told The Post that Renee Good had regularly attended meetings with the local chapter and had received “thorough training” from the group.

The manual — which says on the front cover it was published in the spring of 2024 — outlines four tactics for interfering with arresting officers, such as the best kind of grip to use while yanking someone in custody out of their hands, or even suggestions on “pushing and pulling an officer” off of an arrestee.

“Technically speaking for pushing off form you should have a low center of gravity and a wide base and push up explosive power with your head up at all times if possible,” the instruction guide reads.

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Chaos Erupts as Hundreds of Somalis Storm ICE Operation at Strip Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota

Hundreds of Somalis stormed an ICE operation in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Monday after a Somali news station live streamed the raid.

ICE agents were surrounded by hundreds of Somalis blowing whistles and protesting as the officers conducted a raid on a Somali-owned business in a strip mall.

“ICE out! ICE out!” the mob of Somali protestors shouted.

Ice agents deployed tear gas to disperse the protestors after they blocked their vehicles from exiting the parking lot.

Democrat State Senator Aric Putnam was spotted amid the chaos trying to act like a barrier between the protestors and federal agents.

“Don’t even get close,” Putnam says as he pushes back on the protestors.

“It’s a stressful moment, a really intense confrontation. It’s a reasonable response when you see this in your neighborhood,” Democrat State Senator Aric Putnam said.

“The idea that you need 50 people with weapons and tear gas, and I’m not speaking real well because I got a little bit of pepper spray, those things are not needed for a normal, regular, authentic, genuine law enforcement operation,” Putnam whined.

According to CBS News, at least two people were arrested during the protest.

“Federal agents arrested one person as part of the raid, and later, two protesters in the parking lot. Many of the businesses there are run by the Somali community,” CBS reported.

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