If you don’t live in the 7th Ward you might have missed this latest and greatest horror of the ICE occupation, as described in Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer’s newsletter. Some of it has been reported elsewhere, but not stated as baldly.
It is becoming apparent that even in its own most fundamental terms – that Operation Metro Surge was intended to rid Minneapolis of the “worst of the worst” – the enterprise not only failed, but actually has turned drug dealers and the like back out on the streets.
Between flawed arrests and lack of enough prosecutors (remember the 14 members who resigned because they will not be party to illegal or unconstitutional actions?) the U.S. Attorney’s Office is beginning to voluntarily dismiss serious drug crime cases.
Thomas Homan has told us that Operation Metro Surge resulted in about 4,000 arrests. Since ICE, Border Patrol and Homeland Security have lied to us about many other things, this might be a lie as well. But we have learned elsewhere that only about 14% of the arrests were of people who had committed violent crimes. Now we’re learning that even some, and perhaps many, of these will be returned to our community because of the flaws and illegalities of the ICE operation.
CM Shaffer also speculates that “next, we may see the fraud cases that (ostensibly) started this whole mess begin to falter” as a consequence of too few prosecutors.
Certainly the greatest outrage of the ICE occupation was the murder of two good people exercising their legal rights under the First, Second and Fourth Amendments. In second place is wholesale denial of Constitutional rights to hundreds of others of our neighbors. But a close third has to be this Alice-in-Wonderland result, that even the claimed original intent of the occupation has not only not been met but things may have been made worse.
If the feds had the integrity to take responsibility for their operational failures, and for their jack-booted trampling on the Constitution, they would provide, at their expense, additional prosecutorial resources over the next six to 12 months so that all the valid cases could be tried.
But they don’t and they won’t.
I am not certain I am understanding your point, but I am pretty sure I agree with you. I don’t think there is “behavioral evidence” that ICE intended to rid Minneapolis of the “worst of the worst.” But that was their own rhetoric. Their actions are indeed more revealing than their words.
Let’s start with a question about an assumption. What behavioral evidence was demonstrated to suggest that Operation Metro Surge was intended to rid Minneapolis of the “worst of the worst”? Actions are more revealing than words.