Trump officials confronted with Pretti shooting video at Senate hearing
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Acting ICE director Todd Lyons watches a video of ICE operations in Minneapolis during an a Senate oversight hearing Feb. 12. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) used video of the shooting death of Alex Pretti to grill top immigration officials about the use of force in a rare show of bipartisan oversight.
The big picture: The deaths of Pretti and Renee Good at the hands of federal agents catalyzed opposition to the Trump administration's heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics.
- "The administration said that, 'Yes, the officers were using deescalation tactics.' Nobody believes that," Paul, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee chairman, said. "No one in America believes shoving that woman's head and face in the snow was a deescalation tactic."
Driving the news: Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott committed to release the officers' body camera footage in the Pretti shooting, a standard practice when there's a use of force incident.
Zoom out: Public support for Trump's immigration agenda has plummeted in the year since his inauguration, with surveys showing that a majority of people don't support immigration agents' tactics in the field.
- A growing number of people also support abolishing ICE, the main agency responsible for arresting undocumented immigrants.
Between the lines: Paul and Peters demanded more clarity on the use of force policies.
- "The public needs to know too, if I go to a protest and shout something to people, could I be killed?" Paul said.
- Both Scott and acting ICE director Todd Lyons leaders said that simply yelling or filming officers is not a crime or assault on officers.
- Lyons took responsibility for surging more immigration officers to Minneapolis for Operation Metro Surge, which ultimately drew 3,000 agents for the mission. That led to the clashes with protestors.
What they're saying: "I think — and this is just my opinion — you need to look at what your rules are for drawing weapons because it appears to me, they're not using the same standards of [local] police," Paul said.
- "What we're advocating is that the men and women who are federal agents just follow the same rules local police follow. Our local police are highly professional," Peters said.
Zoom out: Senators quizzed Lyons on the training for new ICE hires. The agency aims to hire and onboard 10,000 new agents with an aggressive marketing campaign.
- Recruits have struggled to meet the physical fitness requirements and immigration law tests to make rank.
- Lyons said that training has been truncated from 75 days to 42 days by changing the schedule to 12-hour sessions six days a week from 8-hour shifts for five days a week. Lyons said there's also more on-the-job training.
- He also conceded that he would prefer agents not to wear masks but said the threats they receive are legitimate.
Bottom line: "My goal isn't to make it harder for you," Paul said. "My goal is to restore trust in the organization."
