The ex-chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Monday the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good demonstrated that the Trump administration was placing agents in situations they’re not prepared to face — and he criticized the administration’s response in the aftermath.
Former acting ICE director John Sandweg months ago questioned the “unprecedented” speed that Trump was deploying forces to to implement his immigration crackdown, and he told Politico last week’s fatal shooting was the result of lowered recruitment standards, rushed training and dubious priorities.
“From my perspective, a couple of things have been done,” Sandweg told Politico. “We’ve shifted tactics. We have officers engaged in a lot more traffic stops now than we previously did. We have officers now confronting these protesters, something that ICE very, very rarely did before. We pulled Border Patrol agents up off the border, where they operated in a completely different environment, and put them in an urban environment … We’ve put our officers in a very difficult position.”
Sandweg, who led ICE from 2013 to 2014, said the agency’s politicization was not helpful, and he said the administration’s rushed response to Good’s killing in Minneapolis further undermined public trust in its mission.
“What’s the point of the investigation?” he said. “We’ve already announced this was a justified shooting, right? ‘No mistakes were made. We followed our training perfectly.’ ‘She was a domestic terrorist trying to kill people’ — I don’t know how you could possibly draw that conclusion at that stage. What was she doing that day? What were her intentions? Are there signs that she was actually trying to kill an officer, that she was in that state of mind that day? 37-year-old mothers don’t typically try to kill federal officers.”
“But you can’t get [evidence] unless you’re executing search warrants on her phone, getting into her email communications, interviewing people who knew her,” Sandweg added. “In any event, the irresponsibility is not only rushing up to the public and giving them information that isn’t vetted, but it also undermines the investigation … I just can’t imagine anyone’s going to have confidence in that investigation anymore.”
Good’s shooting and the administration’s response has done longterm damage to ICE’s credibility, Sandweg said, and he added that the situation would most likely get worse as its operations become increasingly politicized.
“Stop announcing these operations,” Sandweg said. “This is so bizarre to me. How high-profile [it is], we announce weeks in advance that ICE is coming to town. Candidly, that just puts the officers in greater jeopardy. You’re telling all the potential targets, ‘We’re coming to get you next week.’ I mean, what?”
“I think we need to de-escalate,” he added. “But unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’re doing that.”
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