A lone English soldier in his red tunic stood post in front of Boston’s Custom’s House. ‘Lobster back’ was yelled, words were exchanged, things heated up, a crowd gathered. Tensions between colonists and soldiers was high. The colonists thought of them as occupiers. When all was said and done that March 5, 1770, three Bostonians were dead and another two would die of wounds in days to come.
The captain, who summoned additional soldiers to face down the hostile and aggressive crowd, and eight other soldiers were later arrested and jailed after the acting governor of Massachusetts called for an inquiry after the shooting. Seven months later Captain Preston stood trial for murder. The question was whether he ordered his soldiers to fire. Testimony by witnesses suggested he did not. The jury acquitted him.
A little over a month later, the eight soldiers were tried for murder. After a record 9 days of testimony, six of the eight were found not guilty. The remaining soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter verse murder. That is they had been provoked. They were offered the “benefit of clergy,” basically proving they could read a verse in the Bible, and were branded on their thumbs verse a jig at the end of a rope.
Bostonians were proud that they could provide a fair trial, that the accused were able to have defense lawyers, one of whom became president of the United States, John Adams, and that the jury of citizens were fair and impartial.
Four years later, however, the English Parliament removed the ability of colonial governments to conduct any judicial proceedings against crown officials who allegedly committed a capital offense while supposedly upholding the law or quelling protests. It was one of several acts known as the Intolerable Acts enacted following the Boston Tea Party in 1774. The Administration of justice Act as it was formally known, was nicknamed the ‘murder act’ by colonists. In short time, America exploded in Revolt in 1775 and declared independence in 1776. 250 years ago, to be exact.
Now, during the 250th anniversary celebration of our independence from capricious rule, Trump and his administration officials have basically reimagined the Administration of Justice Act by repeatedly claiming that federal law enforcement officers have absolute immunity for acts committed to uphold the law or quell protests of ICE operations. Rule by decree instead of representation has overtaken our government. Congress has become a debating society of half-wits and imbeciles.
The feds have stifled local and state officials from investigating two homicides committed by ICE or Border Patrol agents. Following the last homicide, Border Patrol and ICE agents who participated in the assault on, dog pile on, and shooting of Alex Pretti, fled the scene, leaving the crime scene unsecured.
Immediately, Trump advisor, and architect of these brutalist occupations of American cities, Stephen Miller, labeled Pretti an “assassin.” The director of the Border Patrol, defended his agents, saying that Pretti intended to shoot ICE and Border Patrol agents without any evidence other than Pretti was carrying. He was. He had a concealed carry permit but did not draw his weapon or attempt to draw his weapon. Video evidence suggests an agent had taken Pretti’s gun moments before a single gunshot rang out, followed by a barrage of gun shots directed at a prone, non-resisting Pretti.
Another heinous and unprovoked murder by Trump’s masked agents.
As every day passes into tomorrow, ICE and Border Patrol Agents look and act more like the reserve police battalions that followed the advancing German army in to Poland at the start of the second world war than true law enforcement officers. These reserve police officers, recruited from Germany’s working classes, slaughtered millions of Jews.
These reserve police officers, who Daniel Goldhagen argued in Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust were conditioned to kill, and willingly did so. Goldhagen wrote, “Simply put, the perpetrators having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say “no.””
My point is not that ICE and Border Patrol Agents are Nazis, although, like the German death battalions, they are armed like soldiers, dress like soldiers, think like soldiers, and act like soldiers. The things they do lack, however, are martial discipline and apolitical ethos of real professional American soldiers and well-trained law enforcement.
It is this militarized police mindset, paired with Trump and his administration’s psychologically conditioning, that has caused ICE and Border Patrol agents to act in similar ways that the reserve police battalions behaved: Occupy supposedly ‘enemy’ cities (Trump’s words not mine), execute orders without question, and if need be, kill for ideological reasons. They have turned ordinary men and women into real and potential killers. Recall Trump’s speech to his assembled generals not so long ago.
Trump and rightwing conservatives have engaged in a pattern of excluding, stigmatizing, and humiliating migrants, especially migrants of color. Dehumanizing them like the Nazis did Jews. Trump’s claims of Haitians eating pets and his recent denigration of all Somalis as low-IQ are examples of this conditioning. It does not help that the Supreme Court conditioned citizenship and legal presence in America with whiteness.
It takes more than conditioning, however, to make ordinary people kill. Neo-ICE and Border Patrol agents must be raised in a family and community environment that leads them to believe and tolerate what Trump and his acolytates openly spew every day. Racism and white supremacy are alive and well in many corners of America. It is blasted from Fox News broadcasts every single day. It takes a village to raise a kid, it also takes a village of racists to raise a kid to become a killer.
Americans must not only condemn the individual actions of ICE and Border Patrol agents but the men and women in leadership — from Trump, to Vance, to Miller, to Bondi to Noem, to Bovino and downward – who articulate, condone, and encourage gratuitous violence and protect the murderers in the name of white nationalism. When ICE treats migrants and protestors like Noem treats her dogs, we must do what we can to stop the madness.
Get ICE and border patrol battalions out of our cities. Retrain them, fire the zealots, and sack their leadership, including Bondi, Bovino, Noem, Miller, and Patel. Most importantly, to diffuse the tension, let local and federal agencies jointly investigate the homicides of Good and Pettri, and if charges are warranted, let a local jury decide their guilt or innocence. That is the American way.
The alternative is revolution.
