ICE and the Logic of Escalation Dominance

Again we have an ICE killing in which the Department of Homeland Security gets a story out first which, on its face, appears to describe an armed civilian in the process of committing a massacre of federal law enforcement officers. A tragedy is prevented only by fast thinking federal officers, this account claims, who shoot and kill the assailant before he can do any harm. As now happens 100% of the time, these early DHS narratives are willfully absurd and don’t survive contact with abundant video evidence emerging from the scene. My best current understanding is that the dead man, Alex Pretti, 37, was legally carrying a licensed firearm and was at the scene in some sort of observer status or perhaps there to place himself between ICE agents and those they were trying to assault or arrest. Video evidence seems to show clearly Pretti never brandished his firearm and actually used clear non-confrontation signals in his engagement with ICE agents. What’s more, video evidence appears to show that ICE agents had already confiscated Pretti’s firearm in a scuffle before shooting him multiple times.

In response to this latest ICE killing, a TPM Reader contacted me this afternoon and said that he thought Stephen Miller’s true goal was to have the U.S. military enforcing martial law in U.S. cities. Why else would they continue to escalate ICE’s tactics in the face of growing public outcry and majorities opposing ICE’s behavior?