Keeping ICE within the law: Our Constitution doesn’t allow federal agents to enter homes forcibly without a judicial warrant

It blows my mind that MAGA is not all up in arms about the fact that law enforcement is now seeking to enter homes without a warrant. You have a president questioning why someone should have a firearm. At least the NRA made a stink about that one. Trump complained about overreach of law enforcement under Biden and politicization of the legal system. Trump has taken to this at a whole other level.

The ICE move to go without warrants reminds me a lot of when Elian Gonzalez was apprehended in a predawn raid by a SWAT team. I would posit that "unreasonable search and seizure" includes not only warrantless searches (with rare exceptions), but also the use of force out of proportion to the known threats of the person(s) to be apprehended. Sadly, both sides of the aisle will do it as long as their side gets to do the door-kicking and hire the SWAT teams, and a fair number of people are dead and buried because of it.

And really, even apprehensions in public ought to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. OK, granted, when protesters are physically fighting with officers, things are going to look ugly from time to time, so you need to cut officers some slack, but to use the death of Alex Pretti as an example, I'd take a very close look at the officer who simply shoves a protester into the snowbank. If she deserved arrest, yes, arrest her, and yes, Pretti might have responded very badly to that as well. But it strikes me that that was a needless escalation.

Bert made some good points in the above post. What he says reaffirms my idea that someone can support ICE doing their job while not supporting ICE overstepping while doing their job (ICE or any other law enforcement agency). Both can be true. What really concerns me are the extremes on both sides- from abolish the agency on one extreme to let the agency have unlimited power on the other extreme. Noem used to be my governor, but some of her statements have been unhelpful in that they seem to land toward the unlimited power extreme- even if that was not her intent, words mean things and her words did not lower the temperature.

What else also concerns me about Noem and the administration in general is their quick response to a situation by labelling people in some way. "The individual was brandishing a weapon", they are a "domestic terrorist", the intent was to kill as many ICE agents as possible..... She had no clue what she was saying, just pushing a narrative to justify something. I think saying her statements are "unhelpful" is being generous. In reality, too many are just outright lies.

...if it's outright lies, or just "fog of war" early statements, but Noem ought to be walked over to the chalkboard and write "They do investigations for a reason" about 1000 times.

Whether it was lies or fog of war, a wise leader is quick to listen and slow to speak. Noam should have learned that by now. Sadly, many other politicians seem to ignore that advice as well. It seems it is becoming more and more of an epidemic in our society.

I think part of it is the speed of social media and the lack of willingness to reach "across the aisle". And while I criticize the administration in this thread it is quite pervasive across the spectrum. Why can't we say, "we are investigating with great transparency and when we know more we will let the facts articulate the situation and the outcome". We are so stuck on this mindset of winners and losers that we need to paint the other side as the loser. The protestors should have more respect, but we have to reach across the aisle, and work together to deliver respect - on both sides. The agents should not let their temper get to them. It was quite clear that the agents lost their temper given the outsized response and what appears to be anger with the protestors. I get that. It is tense. But our law enforcement need to be able to keep anger in check, deal with people screaming in their faces and focus on de-escalation instead of enforcement by force. They should work with local PD to help with crowd control. The whole situation is a breakdown because people won't sit down and talk, and I think at the root of it, is a rigid ideology.

"They should work with local PD" may be the single most clueless thing ever posted on this site. They ARE working with local PD in Florida and Texas and Georgia and Oklahoma and a bunch of other places where state and local government officials don't forbid local PD from working with them. That choice isn't available to ICE in the current mess and faulting them for not doing something they can't control says a lot more about you than it does about them.

Robert Byers is correct that, sadly, many local police departments do not honor ICE retainers, and a good portion of what's been going on is what ICE encounters when they try to apprehend illegals with non-immigration-related convictions out on the streets.

But that noted, I think Trump has squandered a golden opportunity to win the hearts and minds of Americans by simply forcing his way in. I would think that he'd have done far better, and gotten much more help, if he'd had ICE back down under the threats of the protesters, and then go on national TV and tell the world that protesters in Minneapolis were fighting to keep known rapists and thugs on the streets--and then ask "are violent men so rare in Minneapolis that we need to import than from other countries?".

Yes, I'm saying a lot of those protesters are blithering idiots, so let them speak and prove it. Then the people that live around there will start to stand up and say "with friends like you, we don't need any enemies--can you go somewhere else, please?".

Bert, although I disagreed with how you said it last week, I agree with what you just posted here. Good points. I wish the officials in charge in MN and at the federal level could dialog back and forth about these issues like we do here.

Regarding why there is no dialogue, I look to the political communications I get from candidates, and there is a huge level of vitriol that is going to torpedo chances for dialogue. You treat people as the enemy, and then act shocked, shocked! that they treat you as an enemy. We need to recover the virtues of saying "I disagree" instead of "the radical leftists of ......".