Markwayne Mullin’s goal, he told senators in March at his confirmation hearing to replace the failed Kristi Noem as the Homeland Security secretary, was to keep the department and its blood-stained Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency off the nation’s front pages.
Now he’s failed too.
Front pages and screens in the last week have been full of the news that two more people, two fathers, are dead at the hands of trigger-happy immigration agents. ICE, the Homeland Security Department and the Trump White House yet again rushed to blame the victims for endangering the agents’ lives, only to retreat when videos seemed to show the opposite.
But what’s nearly as damning for the feds as the killings themselves is this: The deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, in Maine come six months after three immigration enforcement shootings in Minneapolis, including those that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and not one federal agent has been held accountable.
Until recent days, the Trump administration thwarted all efforts by Minnesota officials to investigate and possibly prosecute the killers, not even confirming the shooters’ names. As the Pretti family’s lawyer, Steve Schleicher, said in a statement on Monday evening: “No family should be required to beg federal authorities to do their job.”
Since Donald Trump regained the presidency 18 months ago, at least 22 people have been shot at by federal immigration agents and six of those have been killed. Separately, more than 50 people have died in ICE custody or detention centers, a death toll far exceeding those of past years. This week, following Salgado Araujo’s killing, Mexico filed complaints with the Justice Department and is weighing civil lawsuits for the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals in ICE custody.
So, Mexico seeks accountability but the United States does not. It’s a global embarrassment.
The Trump administration’s stonewalling of justice is an inversion of the rule of law in the civil rights era, when authorities in Southern states failed to act against racist abuses and murders and the federal government stepped up. Now, sadly, states are having to fill the void of justice to protect their citizens and residents from their own federal government, from lawless agents hell-bent on meeting their quotas for mass deportations. Minnesota filed an unprecedented lawsuit that’s pending.
Whether for states or individuals, the legal hurdles to taking on the federal government or law enforcement officials are daunting, though not impossible with lots of time and money. In the short term, however, public shaming can have an impact on even the seemingly shameless president.
After the shootings and protests months ago in Minneapolis, Chicago and elsewhere, the administration ceased its high-profile surges of thousands of armed agents into cities. Noem as well as peacocking storm trooper Gregory Bovino lost their jobs. ICE operations went on, to be sure, but they were intentionally lower key and didn’t involve fatal shootings. Until now.
In politics, as the saying goes, timing is everything. And this tragic moment offers a couple unique opportunities for shaming and, as a consequence, some accountability.
As always with Trump, hopes must be kept in check. On Tuesday, for example, White House border czar Tom Homan, speaking from the White House, confirmed on Fox News that ICE agents had been ordered to end vehicle stops of suspected undocumented people temporarily; both Salgado Araujo and Guerrero, like Good, were shot in their cars (Guerrero alongside his wife and 3-year-old daughter in Bluey pajamas, Salgado Araujo beside his brother and fellow construction workers).
By early Wednesday morning, Trump blocked even that meager step, objectingon social media: “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job” and “we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
But Wednesday morning also was the occasion of the Senate hearing on the nomination of Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general and Trump’s former (still?) personal lawyer, to be the A.G. And the question of his confirmation comes as Republicans are fighting to keep their slim Senate majority. Just a handful of votes — here’s looking at you, Maine Sen. Susan Collins — could defeat him. That would send Trump a message.
There are plenteous reasons not to confirm Blanche, as I’ve written. He’s the man behind the Epstein files cover-up, vindictive prosecutions of Trump enemies and Trump’s $10-billion lawsuit against the IRS, litigation that was purportedly “settled” in exchange for a $1.8-billion slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and tax immunity for the Trump family. This week a federal judge skewered that suit as having been filed for “improper purpose”: the president’s self-dealing.
On top of that sorry record, Blanche is the architect of Trump’s ICE impunity.
A small but critical mass of Republican senators has on occasion bucked Trump, either because he engineered their defeats or retirements or because, as in Collins’ case, he’s unpopular in their state as they seek reelection. Collins, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is more culpable than most Republicans in Congress for the billions that ICE has received under Trump. Since Guerrero’s death on Monday, she’s issued her typical scripted expressions of concern — not about him and his family but mostly that it was “unfortunate” that the ICE agents weren’t wearing the body cameras she helped fund.
She must do more: Vote against Blanche and urge others to do the same.
Conventional wisdom says that Republicans won’t vote against a man so close to Trump. But that’s exactly why Blanche should not lead the Justice Department. The people’s representatives in the Senate could see that he doesn’t.
As one of Salgado Araujo’s sons said: “Even though my government, my federal government, took away my father, we the people will bring justice.” Busting Blanche would bring at least some.
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