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Notes -
A woman in Minneapolis has been killed in an altercation with ICE. I don’t really trust any of the narratives being spun up. Here are
twothree angles:Angle 1
Angle 2 [Twitter] [youtube]
Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)
This is actually a fairly discussed type of shooting. Law enforcement confronts a person in a vehicle, the LEO positions himself in front of the vehicle, the person in the vehicle drives forward, and the cop shoots the person. Generally, courts have found that this is a legitimate shoot. The idea being that a car can be as deadly a weapon as anything.
Those who are less inclined to give deference to law enforcement argue that fleeing the police shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that usually in these situations the LEO has put himself in front of the vehicle.
I have a long history of discussing shooters in self-defense situations [1] [2] [3] and also one of being anti-LEO. However, I’m softer on the anti-LEO front in the sense that within the paradigm in which we exist, most people think the state should enforce laws, and that the state enforcing laws = violence.
The slippery slope for me: “Fleeing police shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“Resisting arrest shouldn’t be a death sentence”
“If you just resist hard enough, you should be able to get away with it”
People really try to divorce the violence from state action, but the state doesn’t exist without it.
Apologies if missed elsewhere, I have read through a fair number of the comments on this thread.
One tangential thought I have that I didn’t see posted, is that in the Rube Goldberg machine of tragedy that unfolded, Trump’s own culture-warring belligerence has played a part. Throat clearing, I think others have made a compelling case that the shooting was justified, and I think it’s idiotic to drive around looking to pick up an obstruction charge using your SUV.
Local news has confirmed ICE we’re looking for a Somali suspect, and this big push of ICE agents being deployed to Minnesota is downstream of Nick Shirley’s viral video that has the Trumo admin fired up.
But! This is all less than intelligent because Minnesota’s problems with the Somali community are numerous, but simultaneously, aren’t to do with illegal immigration. A majority of Minnesotans from the Somali diaspora are natural born U.S. Citizens, and the best stats I can find are that 87% of foreign born are also U.S. Citizens. This shouldn’t be unexpected; the civil war that led to the 1991 collapse of Siad Barre's regime is decades old news, and various charities and international aid organizations helped resettle refugees from the resulting crisis.
Also, Somalia is dirt poor and an ocean away. There’s no significant number of Somalis crossing the southern border and throwing up bogus asylum claims to secure economic migration under a false pretense and being released into the States to await an immigration court date in several months.
Of the 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota, upwards of 94% are U.S. Citizens, with varying immigration statuses among the remaining. Conversely, as of 2023 estimates there were an estimated 14 million illegal immigrants in the States.
Does the Trump administration have the right to send ICE where it wants to pursue any illegal immigrant? Of course. Is sending 3,000 agents into Minnesota to target Somalis an intelligent use of iCE? Not even if sending a message to the community so some members self-deport is the goal, no. There simply aren’t many illegal immigrants among the Somali community, especially when placed in context with the scale of the problem.
And now there’s a big partisan media shitstorm roiling.
What Minnesota needed to deal with its Somali problems, and was already getting, was feds running down fraudsters. Not a showy, aggressive ICE push.
In general I would agree. But, given what we've learned about the scale of fraud and corruption in the Somsli community, I think it's fair to do some investigating into whether any of those citizenship were obtained legally. Usually asylum doesn't automatically lead to citizenship even if you've been here a while.
Also, ICE seems to be expanding past ots original scope, and is now basically a full national police force. Not sure how I feel about that, but that's the state we're in.
I’m willing to bet that almost all of those citizens are, in fact, legal. Faking your way through naturalization is a lot harder than writing the wrong number on a welfare application.
But it’s beside the point! Roadblocks and manhunts aren’t “investigating” citizenship status. Those 3000 agents aren’t doing paperwork at City Hall. They’re showing the flag.
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