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ICE arrest of 5-year-old in Minneapolis sparked fresh outcry.
A five-year-old boy coming home from preschool was reportedly apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in his driveway on Tuesday. The superintendent of the boy's school says ICE used the boy 'as bait.'
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The truth?
"ICE was conducting a targeted arrest of an illegal alien by the name of Adrian Arias. During the arrest, Arias fled on foot, abandoning his child. So an ICE agent stayed behind with him, while another agent took off after the illegal alien dad. ICE said they tried multiple times to get the woman in the home to take custody of the child, but she refused. And Arias demanded that the child stay with him. So the little boy was allowed to stay with his father and the two were transported together to an ICE facility in Texas. Not ICE's choice - the parents."
Arrest of Adrian Arias and Child
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I've seen plenty of other videos like this over the past week, but there's no need to recount every single one. The point for me is the pattern, not any one incident.
I mentioned the Tangle email - last week I was frequently checking my inbox, awaiting the latest Tangle newsletter, just hoping they would cover this topic, and they delivered. The "left vs right" summary was good context but Isaac's personal take really resonated with me. He said many things that I had been feeling but didn't best know how to express. Here were some key points that really stuck with me:
"This is America, so this incident jumped straight from the phones of observers into the partisan wringer, with everyone lining up on their respective sides with their respective polarized takes.
When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, one of the things that struck me was that I could see myself in him - a young dad, political commentator, a podcast host, someone who does public events. As a result, I did my best to emphasize his humanity. Here, again, this killing hits home. My wife is a mom in her thirties and a public defender in Philadelphia. In the last few months, some of her clients have been snatched up by ICE while attending scheduled immigration hearings. What if she got caught in the middle, or responded with fear in a way that police viewed as "resisting" or "interfering"; would millions of people jump to the conclusion that she deserved to be killed? For the crime of standing between ICE and an immigrant alleged to be here illegally? These feelings are tough for me to shake. What are we even doing here?
Regardless of the minute details, which we could debate and interpret in all kinds of partisan ways, what's very, very plain to me is that this woman was not a "domestic terrorist".
The "Charlie Kirk" paragraph hit close to home with me. My wife drives through this intersection every day coming home from work. She works with low to no income patients that are primarily minorities. Naturally, one's reaction to a situation changes significantly when a loved one could be caught in the metaphorical or literal crossfire of this mayhem, if you simply warp a situation by a couple hours or a few miles.
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Isaac usually gets it right, which is why I respect Tangle and wanted to subscribe you to this important publication America needs now more than ever. But I think the equivocation of Charlie Kirk with an anti-ICE protester is a bit extreme. Charlie Kirk built an entire national organization committed to dialogue and peaceful debate, and for that he was targeted, shot and killed by a 22 year old who claimed:
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"I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated away." He confessed immediately after the shooting, instructing his roommate to check a note under his keyboard stating, "I [have] the opportunity [to] take out Kirk and I'm going to take it."
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It was a premeditated murder. Only one person had died in Minneapolis at that point, and Renee Good was NOT simply, "caught in the middle, or responded with fear in a way that police viewed as 'resisting' or 'interfering'."
No way in hell did Good deserve to die, and nobody in their right mind would call her a "domestic terrorist", but neither can anybody deny that she was "resisting" and "interfering" in a lawful ICE operation. I hope that if I or any other family member - or one of my black or Mexican friends - is challenged by a police or ICE officer and asked to stop their car and step out of the vehicle, they will quickly and quietly shut down the car, keep their hands visible at all times, make no sudden moves, but quickly exit the vehicle. I am 99.9% certain they will not be shot. And Renee Good would still be alive today if she hadn't listened to her wife shouting at her to "Drive, baby, drive!"
I've worked with, helped, and employed blacks, Mexicans and people of all colors, races and backgrounds my entire life and have never had a problem with any of them nor they with me. I hope you believe me when I say that my beliefs, opinions, decisions and experiences have never been influenced by any kind of racial or cultural animus.
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Hours after Renee Good was killed, there was an incident involving ICE at Roosevelt High School, just blocks away from the scene. Many reports claimed that "ICE showed up to detain teachers" at the school. From what I've read, that isn't true - ICE agents were chasing a suspect and it ended near the school.
They ended up detaining a special ed assistant for interfering, but it wasn't a citizenship check. They didn't roll up to arrest teachers, as many were claiming. Their detainment goals are irrelevant to the trauma and fear it caused the students that day. You can debate the ICE officers' actions that day - whether they should have pursued the suspect, whether they should have detained the teacher, on and on, but that fear was real.
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Absolutely! The fear was real - I would have been very afraid if I had been in that school during this incident. But who is responsible for the fear? Should criminals figure out that they can run into a nearby school and police and ICE agents will simply drive away, not wanting to scare students and teachers? It's unlikely that the suspect was simply an immigrant with an expired green card. Should the degree of the charge determine law enforcement's actions? Maybe he just parked in a handicap space, stole a few lottery tickets from a Holiday station, grabbed some girl's purse, or perhaps molested a child or raped a teenage girl.
If a special ed assistant interfered with the arrest, should there be no consequences? And if the suspect escaped after the authorities gave up and drove away, how much should that concern the faculty, the students and the neighborhood? Is the community safer if the suspect escapes? And who are some of the people who have been arrested by ICE agents (or as Walz calls them, the "Gestapo") in Minneapolis so far?
ICE Arrests Made in Minneapolis
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