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Amazingly, Democrats finally are willing to defund ICE ... after Customs and Border Protection killed someone
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Yes, it’s great that Senate Democrats have finally figured out that it actually is possible to vote against funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), albeit after another person’s dead.
By most counts today, enough Democratic senators now oppose funding ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS), to block it this week. Which could lead to a shutdown of multiple agencies wrapped up in that funding bill, or just block new funds for DHS, if it’s split off into its own bill.
But today’s coverage is likely not underscoring just how low Democrats are still aiming. If that sounds too cynical, even after everything I’m about to share, the only thing to keep in mind — as politicians talk about finally taking a stand against ICE and demanding change there — is that it wasn’t ICE that killed Alex Pretti.
According to the Department of Homeland (sic) Security, it was agents of an entirely separate DHS division: Customs and Border Protection (CBP). All of it, of course, was created out of the terror that the terrorism of 9/11 was intended to create, to make us turn on each other.
So, early Saturday afternoon, a couple hours after CBP killed Pretti, DHS posted that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.” Border Patrol, not ICE.
“The officers attempted to disarm the suspect,” DHS lied, “but the armed suspect violently resisted,” DHS more lied. “More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming,” DHS added, suggesting they needed time to come up with better prompts for ChatGPT to explain what they did.
“About 200 rioters arrived on the scene,” DHS said, without identifying where they had been rioting previously at 9:00 in the morning.
Here’s the statement from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to help illuminate just how disjointed the Democratic response is:
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New York, N.Y. – Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released the following statement on the appropriations bill following the shooting in Minnesota:
“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling —and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.
“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
What Schumer doesn’t explain is why Pretti’s death merits this stance, when Pretti’s death was entirely foreseeable beforehand. Why did they need a second corpse? (What’s that old Bush saying? Shoot me once, shame on you, shoot me twice, meet the new ICE, same as the old ICE? Something like that.)
The sad, horrifying reality is that some of these people are so dim that the possibility of entirely foreseeable things isn’t foreseen by them. Or they’re said fore-, five-, and sixseeable things won’t piss off enough Democratic voters to force their hands.
WEASEL WORDS Literally all Schumer is asking for is to vote separately on DHS funding. Incoherently, the complaint about a murder by CBP is that the bill won’t rein in ICE.
Ever since ICE killed Renee Good, a handful of Democrats have lamented that, oh, woe, last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) already gave ICE so much money that even defunding it entirely in 2026 won’t make a difference.
And, yeah, maybe! Yes, there are new agents, but not funding to pay the current ICE agents!
Plus, CPB’s $70 billion from OBuBBA is supposed to cover four years. And most of it is already earmarked for things other than giving Pretti’s killer an Employee of the Month bonus:
$46.55 billion — that’s most of it! — goes to the wall that Pres. Donald Trump can’t finish.
$12 billion — roughly half of the rest! — doesn’t even go to CBP, it reimburses local and state collaborators for local and state collaborating.
$6.2 billion for tech bros to give CBP new dehumanizing toys.
$5 billion for CPB facilities including border checkpoints like Nazis do — where anyone can be stopped for their papers, like Nazis do — and detention facilities hopefully not like full-on actual Nazis do.
$855 million for CPB getaway vehicles.
$673 million for biometric screening of kids who’ve been separated from their families, technically known as “bait.”
Only $4.1 billion is allocated — over four years! — for hiring and training not just CBP agents to disarm suspects and then shoot them to death, but for support staff to fill out the endless murder paperwork.
That leaves $2 billion in bonuses, which CBP agents will probably shoot DHS ten times if they take it away.
Subtract all of that — come on, Senate Democrats, it’s just math! — and you definitely don’t have enough to make up for the $17.1 billion CBP’s last budget had. Hell, I didn’t even mention that OBuBBA makes CBP hand out $1,000 bonuses to undocumented immigrants (if they self-deport).
Point being, CBP’s white underbelly is much more soft than ICE’s.
More to the point, if they were right and defunding ICE wouldn’t do anything, then they should demand much more in concessions! Democrats should be aiming as widely as possible, in order to (a) fucking hit something and (b) give them a better negotiating position from which to ultimately crumble and cave.
Hell, there’s no reason Democrats can’t use their DHS death-toll leverage to claw back some of that OBuBBA money.
So let’s look at how Democrats are reacting, with particular attention to their weasel words.
Democrats
In November, eight Senate Democrats helped Republicans end the federal government shutdown by voting for the funding that’s now helped kill Renee Good and Alex Pretti and others. Some of them appear unwilling to repeat their previous mistake, now that its easily foreseeable consequences are coming to pass, such as the passing of Good and Pretti. Here’s who those eight were:
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA)
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Sen. Angus King (I-ME)
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
As of Saturday, as far as I could tell, four of them were on record saying they’ll now oppose DHS funding: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV). To his credit, Kaine only needed Renee Good’s death to convince him, opposing funding after her death. Cortez Masto and Rosen required an additional Alex Pretti to convince them.
Rosen wrote Saturday that she has a responsibility to stop now what she said she had a responsibility to enable in November. “I’ll be voting against any government funding package that contains the bill that funds this agency, until…”
WEASEL WORDS “…we have guardrails in place to curtail these abuses of power and ensure more accountability and transparency.” What guardrails? Ensure how? Dunno!
Maybe we’ll find out after someone else dies.
Other Democrats
It’s hardly been clear where every Democratic senator was on the funding language released last week. And those eight who ended the last shutdown weren’t the only ones seen as possible yea votes this week for DHS funding.
Even Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a vocal cheerleader against DHS funding, is still staking out some pretty weak positions. “We could require [judicial] warrants for immigration arrests,” he said. “We could beef up training and require identification.”
Identification in the form of badges and visible faces is a good start, but hardly sufficient when agents are promised immunity and even fake investigations aren’t even faked. Luckily, most people now seem to understand that training goons who are deployed to do goonishness only results in better-trained goonishness.
Plus, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion that racial profiling is okay undermines any training. The opinion implied that law enforcement is free to operate off personal vibes. Which means the scareder federal agents are, the threatier non-violent protesters and observers will feel.
Not to mention, DHS is so bad at racial profiling that the last two profiles they killed were white.
Senate Democrats reportedly were meeting today to discuss the path forward. Here’s where some of them are.
Murray
When Alex Pretti was still alive, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), her chamber’s top Democratic appropriator, who negotiated the DHS funding bill, knew the hard truth about the impossibility of blocking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Five days ago, she wrote that blocking DHS funding would do nothing due to the OBuBBA allocation.
To her, talk about voting down DHS funding was crazy-people stuff:
“…not rooted in reality…”
“…the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need.”
Murray said funding was better because it included “critical guardrails and constraints.” The way to fight, she suggested, was to wait until November: “[W]e must take our fight to the ballot box.”
Her confident argument was apparently formed without even considering the possibility that more people could die. Because Murray flipped as soon as the next one did.
Or maybe Pretti himself was the problem, because with him out of the way on Saturday, Murray’s new hard truth looked more like our hard truth, if you looked hard. She posted, “I will NOT support the DHS bill as it stands. The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package.”
WEASEL WORDS As with Schumer, the only ask here is a separate DHS bill. And her vow to “continue fighting to rein in DHS and ICE” doesn’t even name-check CBP.
They’re setting the bar for victory low, presumably counting on us to accept any victory.
Slotkin
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) posted on Saturday, “I will be voting against the Dept. of Homeland [sic] Security funding bill this week.”
WEASEL WORDS There is no DHS funding bill. There’s a bill that includes DHS funding. But is she saying she’ll vote against that, and all the other non-DHS atrocities in it? Or just that she’ll vote against a separate DHS bill if there is one?
Slotkin — who rarely misses a chance to remind people of the strategery acumen she picked up in the CIA during its masterful operations in, um, Iraq — said she’ll be voting against the DHS bill “this week.” That was Saturday. The last day of the week.
Warner
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) wrote, “I cannot and will not vote to fund DHS while this administration continues these violent federal takeovers of our cities.”
WEASEL WORDS Actually, that’s not terrible. The tricky part is, what would Warner accept as a guarantee these violent federal takeovers are over?
If this is all too depressing or rage-inducing, the point isn’t to make everyone hate Democrats. It’s great that they changed their tune! It means they’re responsive to widespread public outcry … and individual bloodshed.
It just means they’re slow. And, look, so are the people they represent! Most of the protest signs out there — you beautiful, beautiful people — are about ICE, not CBP, let alone DHS or the Justice Department. It takes time for understanding to dawn, inside and outside the U.S. Capitol.
Plus, if there is a separate DHS funding bill in the Senate, that will mean it has to go back to the House for another vote there. Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) reportedly was joining a House Democratic Caucus virtually meeting Sunday morning.
So House Democrats now get another shot at demanding more change. And we get another shot at telling House Democrats how we feel. Like the seven who voted to fund DHS last week:
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
Rep. Don Davis (D-NC)
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY)
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA)
Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME)
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX)
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY)
You can find your senators and representatives here.
So What Should They Be Doing?
So, if all my complaining is right about the inadequacies of the Democratic positions and rhetoric, what should Democrats be pushing for?
I don’t know! Fight and argue and advocate for what you think. All I know is no politician should ever feel they’ve done enough.
The (Most Recent) Victim
We’re learning more about the man federal officials immediately declared a “domestic terrorist,” a phrase which used to mean terrorizing the population the way federal officials are but now apparently means anyone helping a debilitated lady off the street.
Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American-born American citizen, appears to be a composite of traits liable to make him sympathetic in one way or many to virtually every cohort of the American populace.
Criminal record: Parking tickets.
Licensed nurse: His license was to expire in March 2026.
Gun owner: Permitted.
Government employee: That’s right, this domestic terrorist was subsidized with paychecks from the Trump administration, as a…
Caregiver for veterans: Pretti was on staff at the Veterans Administration, working at a Minneapolis VA medical center in intensive care, providing intensive care to America’s military veterans. This year, he would have marked ten years caring for veterans at the VA if a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent hadn’t shot him to death.
On Saturday, a video was posted of Pretti. In it, you can see Kristi Noem’s domestic terrorist pay tribute to a deceased veteran who had been in his care:
That video was posted by Mac Randolph, whose father, Terrance Lee Randolph, had just died. Mac hadn’t planned to post the video, but did so after Pretti was killed, explaining:
Never wanted to share this video, but his [Pretti’s] speech is very on point.
Also, my father’s final words to me were to continue to fight the good fight. He would be honored in Alex’s sacrifice, and ashamed of this current administration.
In my dad’s words, I encourage you all to continue to “fight the good fight.”
The (Most Recent) Lies
The work of trained and untrained observers — people going out there to document government crimes — has been absolutely vital to moving the political needle. Without the video evidence they risked their lives to get, people wouldn’t know what to think.
Instead, now they know what happened, and can decide what to think about what actually happened, not what Fox or President Donald Trump’s social media posts told them happened.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) launched a new website Saturday night. Its corrections include correcting Trump administration lies.
The site is literally called Combatting DHS Misinformation. The DOC specifically cited Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino lies about the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) quarry that was so important they killed Alex Pretti for, um, not protecting him.
Namely, the DOC said, “Because federal statements have repeatedly included inaccurate information about Minnesota custody and criminal records, the DOC reviewed available records to determine whether the individual referenced had any connection to Minnesota state prison custody.”
Now, I suppose it’s possible that CBP’s target, Jose Huerta-Chuma, has a record elsewhere, but in Minnesota:
He’s never been in DOC custody.
Has no felony record.
Has only misdemeanor traffic offenses.
“The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to release false numbers about ICE detainers in Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) has provided verified data and requested clarification. DHS has not responded,” the DOC added.
Reaction
THE PEOPLE More people are against ICE than support it. (h/t) A poll released Saturday included these findings:
Abolishing ICE: 46% to 41%, including 76% of Democrats supporting abolishing ICE.
ICE tactics too forceful: 58% to 33%.
Disapprove of how ICE does its job: 57% to 37%.
Approve of ICE protests: 48% to 40%.
And that’s without most people understand that the way they don’t like ICE doing its job is the job. According to Politico, there are more than 2,300 cases in which federal judges ruled that ICE illegally detained people. That’s not bad apples, that’s an orchard of poison.
Here are some of the political responses.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She said, "Senate Dems should block ICE funding this week. Activate the National Guard. We can and must stop this."
Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL). She reminded House members now’s a great time to sign on to her articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). The top Democrat on the Homeland (sic) Security Committee said, “The Senate must vote against funding CBP and ICE. The House must immediately take steps to impeach Kristi Noem.”
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX). The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said Senate Democrats should “reject funding for ICE this coming week and demand an end to this madness.”
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) said she’s up for impeaching Noem and oh don’t forget to abolish ICE.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA). The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee was down for pretty much all of the above: “Kristi Noem must be impeached. ICE must be abolished. Democrats in the Senate cannot fund DHS.”
Other Democrats called for prosecuting the still-shy anonymous killer of Alex Pretti.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A pioneer in maritime murders, Hegseth for some reason decided to weigh in on Pretti’s death. In keeping with his history of badness at facts, Hegseth wrote of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) murder: “Thank God for the patriots of @ICEgov.” Which is like giving a Nobel Peace Prize to someone who didn’t actually win it.
More clarifying for the entire state of Minnesota, Hegseth tried his hand at math: “ICE > MN.” The obvious implication being that the federal government is superior to any state, not that it is composed of and dependent on the states. (E pluribus fuckem.)
Vice Pres. JD Vance. The man who told federal agents just two weeks ago that they have “absolute immunity” said on Saturday that other people were somehow more responsible even though they hadn’t just told federal agents they had “absolute immunity.”
“This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis,” Vance wrote, because that’s where Trump has focused his wrath. “It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”
It’s true that “far left agitators” — which now includes the majority of the country — have been working with local authorities to ensure that the protests are peaceful. Pretti, of course, wasn’t even protesting, let alone agitating, when they killed him. He was helping a woman off the street: I.e., domestic terrorism.
Hilariously and emasculatingly, on the same day Vance was blaming Democratic officials — who have urged only non-violent measures — for federal agents killing someone who wasn’t violent, Vance’s congressional counterparts were ignoring him.
House Homeland (sic) Security Chair Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) said Saturday that he wants to see the entire class of Trump Homeland (sic) Security clowns in his office after school.
Garbarino wrote to ICE leader Todd Lyons, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, and Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow to schedule their appearances before his committee.
The hearings themselves won’t do shit, of course, but they do reinforce what anyone who’s seen ICE and CBP snuff videos can tell for themselves: This is about a federal government tasked with inflicting terror in the name of order, which is what the name of order is always invoked to inflict.
And the more people the Trump administration kill, the easier they make it for the, ahem, less empathetic or imaginative among us to see themselves bleeding out on the asphalt.
\Remember, a six-month-old baby stopped breathing and had to be hospitalized because his parents driving him home got stuck in a traffic block caused by federal agents. Everyone can see themselves in that scenario.
Here are some of the constituencies waking up today to see themselves in Trump’s crosshairs.
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES As a federal worker, Pretti was one of 820,000 AFGE members. AFGE President Everett Kelley said, “Our union is heartbroken.” He blamed Trump for Pretti’s death, but urged members to remain peaceful, “even as we are rightly angry.”
AMERICAN NURSES ASSOCIATION A statement from the organization said, “As incidents with federal law enforcement continue to rise across the country, we are deeply concerned for the safety of nurses…”
CYCLISTS Angry Catfish, a Minneapolis cycling shop, posted this:
Surly Bikes @surlybikes.bsky.social
OUTDOORSMENPEOPLE Pretti reportedly was described co-workers as an outdoorsman. On top of that, he was a gun owner…
Gun Nuts Realize They Were Nuts
Firearm fetishists got a rude awakening Saturday that at least they could wake up from on Sunday, unlike lawful gun owner Alex Pretti.
DHS said, “The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Legally carrying legal firearms and legally not carrying ID are now probable cause for suspicion of intended mass murder!
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for California’s Central District Bill Essayli added helpfully, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”
The National Rifle Association — with perhaps more experience than any other group in lying about gun rights — quickly recognized Essayli’s lie about gun rights, responding: “This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong.”
Apparently tipped off by the fact that the man’s name is literally “Essay Lie,” the NRA added, “Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
Gun Owners of America said, “[W]e condemn the untoward comments of U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm.”
The Reload founder Steve Gutowski joined the right-wing pile-on against Essayli, saying, “This is an insane claim. You’re arguing merely being armed in public is justification for police killing you?”
Nice. Now do being in a hoodie armed with Skittles.
And, of course, none of the gun groups are advocating doing the thing they claim gun rights exist for: Using guns in self-defense against a tyrannical government.
No Justice, No ICE
Congressional Democrats have already passed funding for Pres. Donald Trump’s personal law firm, the Justice Department, vewy, vewy quietly.
It was the Justice Department, funded thanks to Democrats, that successfully fought to strike down a judge’s order reining in federal agents in Minnesota, an order that might have saved Alex Pretti’s life.
That same Democratic-funded Justice Department was already busy covering up The Epstein Files and is now allocating some of its funds to the coverups of The Jonathan Ross Files and The Whoever-Killed-Alex-Pretti Files.
Minnesota and Hennepin County on Saturday night sued Attorney General Pam Bondi (and many others) to stop the federal, Democratic-funded coverup. Specifically, the suit asked a judge to prevent the destruction of Pretti evidence by the United States Justice Department, which historically has focused on destroying evidence in the killings of Black people.
A Trump-appointed judge agreed and issued a restraining order against the Democratic-funded agencies covering up DHS killings.
And it’s the Justice Department that told Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) Saturday that he can have his state’s peace back if he just surrenders to the Justice Department on every other front where the state is lawfully challenging federal edicts. Bondi is literally using the threat of federal agents to force Walz to make policy changes:
Forcing the state to hand over voter rolls, so that the Democratic-funded Justice Department can decide whether to challenge any of the state’s registered voters.
Forcing the state to drop legal sanctuary laws, which do not violate federal law, they just bar local law enforcement from helping federal goonery.
And, yes, congressional Democrats already voted to fund all of this and more when they approved Justice Department funding. But there’s no reason they can’t claw all or some of it back — and impose real reform on the “Justice” Department — as part of its demands for funding DHS.
We Are Not Afraid. Okay, Maybe We’re a Little Afraid But We’re Showing Up Anyway.
We can’t know what gave Alex Pretti the courage to walk toward armed and belligerent federal agents the way he did Saturday. But as a blogger, I’m honor-bound to speculate.
I suspect Pretti knew that his intention was to help. He knew he didn’t pose a threat, because he just wanted to help.
And it’s not just Pretti displaying courage, rising to the challenge of those who would keep us down. Millions are showing up to protest. Witnesses are stepping forward to testify against Trump’s private army, as one did in the lawsuit to preserve evidence.
Conversely, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on some level know that they’re not helping, so they understandably assume that average, everyday Americans don’t like what they’re doing. Which is correct. Which makes them defensive and afraid.
Which is as it should be.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” — Alan Moore, V for Vendetta.
Recommended Reading
The Minnesota Star Tribune has made its live-stream of events free for the same reason TFN is always free: It’s important stuff! (And in TFN’s case, we’re always free because every day Newsfuckers who can afford to do so decide to support TFN with a paid subscription.)
Optional Viewing
SNL is rarely great. Saturday was no exception. But as TFN knows painfully well, no one’s great all the time. So here’s SNL being okay on ICE. Which is okay!
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