A federal judge in Illinois has had enough of ICE agents body-slamming, macing and shooting people with pepper bullets with no apparent justification. Judge Sarah Ellis on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order blocking federal agents from shooting less-lethal projectiles and chemical irritants and “using force, such as pulling or shoving a person to the ground, tackling, or body slamming an individual.” The ruling—which is in effect for 14-days—came after a slew of incidents involving ICE agents apparently running amok.
In Chicago, CBS News reporter Asal Rezaei was driving away from an ICE facility when a masked ICE agent shot at an open window of her car with a pepper ball gun. The pepper ball sprayed inside, burning her face and causing her to vomit. ICE agents stationed on the same facility’s roof later shot pellet balls at a pastor standing outside among protestors (laughing while they did so, the man later told CNN.) He was hit in the head, collapsing to the ground—and as he was being administered aid, ICE officers followed up by spraying him with chemical mace.
In Portland, an armored gas-mask wearing male ICE agent was shown on video blasting a chemical spray directly into a 19-year old girl’s face—from inches away, and with no warning—as the girl spoke to agents, displaying no physical threat to them.
And in New York City, the agency reinstated an male ICE agent captured on video grabbing an unarmed woman outside an immigration court and throwing her violently to the ground in a WWF-style body slam. A DHS spokesperson had initially called the man’s actions “unacceptable” and confirmed he had been taken off the job pending a “full investigation”—which apparently didn’t take long.
Aside from this brief vacation from duty given to this agent, there do not appear to have been any investigations opened by the agency or the Department of Justice opened into the federal agents’ conduct. To the contrary, DOJ and DHS leadership appear to be cheering on the misconduct.
The shooting of Asal Rezaei in Chicago, however, has reportedly caused the Illinois State Police and Broadview Police Department to investigate—and offers a path towards holding ICE agents accountable for violence and misconduct.
Since the mid-20th century, Americans have largely grown used to seeing federal law enforcement protecting against illegal actions by state officials. During the Civil Rights era, many states—particularly Southern ones—were seen as enablers and perpetrators of violence against Blacks and civil rights activists. Images of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson sending federal troops and US Marshals to protect students who were integrating Southern universities in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama are well-known. But less well-known is the state of Mississippi’s prosecution of the Chief U.S. Marshal (on charges of disorderly conduct) for having ordered the use of tear gas against rioters who sought to violently block the enrollment of James Meredith, a Black student, at “Ole Miss.” The charge was dismissed by a federal court but serves as an example and reminder that states have the power to prosecute federal officers.
While the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause—which basically says that if a state law and federal law conflict then the federal law wins—sets up a legal hurdle such prosecutions must clear, it does not provide blanket immunity for federal law enforcement. Indeed, the use of state criminal laws against federal law enforcement dates back to the 1800s. More recently, Idaho prosecutors in 1992 sought to charge an FBI sharpshooter for the accidental killing of anti-government separatist Randall Weaver during a stand-off near Ruby Ridge, Idaho after George H W Bush’s DOJ declined to prosecute him. And in 2020, US Park Police officers in Virginia were prosecuted by the state’s then-Democratic attorney general after killing an unarmed motorist—though the case never went to trial following the election of a Republican attorney general.
Besides the Supremacy Clause argument, cases like the current criminal investigation in Chicago will also be subject to DOJ efforts to remove or transfer them to a federal court. Such efforts will stall criminal cases even for years as in the case of California v. Mesa, which addressed a postal worker charged in 1985 with misdemeanor manslaughter for hitting and killing a bicyclist while driving a mail truck.
These more well-known cases notably reflect both what noted legal scholar and former U.S. Solicitor Seth Waxman has referenced as “historical periods of friction between the federal government and the states.” We are undoubtedly in such a period now, considering the Trump administration’s clear desire to allow its federal police to act with impunity. It’s a role reversal for federal law enforcement to be seen as the wrong-doers in need of state correction. But correction is what is needed because policing without accountability is policing without justice.
The post Opinion: Trump’s DOJ Won’t Police ICE. It’s Time for the States to Step Up appeared first on The Daily Beast.
