How many more?
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First it was Renee Good on Jan. 7, then it was Alex Pretti on Jan. 24. Who’s next? How many more local, legal American citizens will be killed by federal agents before Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaves the Twin Cities and leaves the community?
Robert Zelenak, Fridley
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Apparently, the Second Amendment only applies to supporters of President Donald Trump. For everyone else, possession of a firearm is grounds for summary execution.
Howard Goldberg, Chaska
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To the administration’s spokespeople: If your agents didn’t do anything wrong, there is no reason for them to hide or lie. Allow local and state officials and professionals to participate in investigations.
Are agents trained to realize that almost anything they do or say is likely to be recorded? This is not 1963, when we had to develop Abraham Zapruder’s home movies to see what happened to President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. We need to have some belief that we are getting unedited information that has not been filtered by the Department of Homeland Security and various so-called “influencers.”
Jeffrey Hammergren, St. Louis Park
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This Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge in Minnesota is a violation. It’s a violation of the rule of law and the Constitution. It’s a violation of our neighbors and our neighborhoods. It’s a violation of state and our community, our norms and moral values. Our state and local leaders call for an end to this violation.
The Editorial Board of the Minnesota Star Tribune calls for a pause? (“An ICE pause is the only path to peace,” editorial, Jan. 25.)
Hope Melton, Edina
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Minneapolis does not need another symbolic standoff between state officials and the federal government. It needs a practical way to lower the temperature, restore public trust and protect public safety at the same time.
There is a deal available if leaders are willing to take it.
State officials should publicly commit to cooperating in the removal of violent felony offenders, regardless of immigration status. Not mass deportations. Not political theater. Dangerous individuals who make communities less safe. That single commitment would address one of the federal government’s central stated priorities and move the conversation from ideology to public safety.
In return, federal agencies should narrow their operations, coordinate in advance with state and local authorities and commit to transparent investigative timelines when force is used. That allows federal officials to say they are enforcing the law and state leaders to say they are protecting civil order and due process. Both sides save face. The public wins.
Just as important, the shooting demands a credible, independent investigation. Not one conducted solely inside the same agencies involved in the operation and not one litigated through news releases. An outside authority with full access to evidence and witnesses should be appointed immediately, with clear deadlines for public disclosure. Anything less will be viewed, fairly or not, as institutional self-protection.
Federal and state leaders also need to back away from preemptive rhetoric that declares the facts settled before the evidence is reviewed. That posture may play well politically, but it poisons public trust and makes future cooperation harder, not easier.
Pair a serious independent investigation with a short cooling-off period and a formal federal-state coordination framework, and the current crisis becomes manageable instead of combustible.
Cory Birkemeyer, Plymouth
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Border Patrol and ICE tin-soldier armies need to take a long, long break. Can I suggest a little more Marvin Gaye and Bruce Springsteen in the breakroom and little less Wagner?
Matt Walsh, St. Louis Park
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Perhaps the FBI should be put in charge of finding Republican politicians who actually represent Minnesotans, as they appear to have gone missing. There are Republican members of Congress who make statements defending the Trump agenda of imposing a federal invasion on our state but are completely absent from defending the right of citizens to exercise their most fundamental rights under our Constitution. The recent killings of two Minnesotans who were exercising those rights are the tragic results of federal actions undertaken by unlawful and unconstitutional means.
It’s time for our Republican congressional members to stand for the people they’ve been hired to represent. Instead of completely abdicating your role and responsibilities to an unchecked Trump administration, demand that immigration enforcement in Minnesota be done through lawful and reasonable means. This includes insisting that federal agencies allow state and local authorities to objectively investigate, in cooperation with federal agencies, the killing of Alex Pretti. Anything less is unlawful and not the “law and order” many Republicans claim to support.
Jayson Smart, Shakopee
Vice President JD Vance stated in his visit to Minnesota, “The reason why things have gotten so out of hand is because of the failure of cooperation from state and local authorities” (“Vance blames ‘failure of cooperation’ for chaos in Minneapolis,” Jan. 22). Those would, of course, be the same state and local authorities who have begged protesters to remain peaceful, pleaded for cooler heads in Washington to prevail and repeatedly asked for a dialogue with the president and/or other high-level officials to figure out how to end this occupation of our state, only to be rewarded with Washington opening baseless criminal investigations on them.
Which leads to the next quotes from Vance that raise the question, “How can’t the conservatives see how astonishingly detached from reality this is?!” He says, “I’d love to send those guys home,” and he’s here to meet with business leaders and law enforcement to “tone down the temperature a little bit, reduce the chaos” while calling the media and others liars for having the audacity to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement brutality in the form of photographs, video and firsthand reporting.
If Vance traveled all this way to tone down the temperature, wants “cooperation” from state and local authorities and believes that “cooperation” means anything other than “complete and total capitulation to our harsh, cruel policies,” then why on earth would he not meet with the governor while they were both a short drive away from each other? Did Vance stop by City Hall to find Mayor Jacob Frey was out for a jog in the extreme cold?
Or is it perhaps possible that maybe, just maybe, the federal government has invaded one of its 50 states, and the administration and other staunch believers in states’ rights have no interest in cooperation or compromise and want nothing more than blind obedience even, and especially, if they believe what’s going on is morally and constitutionally forbidden?
Adam Skoglund, Eden Prairie
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Here’s the thing: If you spray pepper spray in someone’s face, they won’t vote for you.
In Vietnam, we learned that we could win the shooting war but lose the political battle in the end.
Steve Houle, Clearwater, Minn.
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I see the Vances are looking forward to the birth of a new son. My hope for this child is that he will not have to grow up and live in the kind of world his father works so hard to create.
David Anderson, Minneapolis
Each year in Ely, our streets fill with license plates from far beyond Minnesota. I know because I have been paying attention. What started as a simple curiosity has turned into a kind of informal census. Since May, I have seen plates from 49 states and Washington, D.C. Only Delaware is missing.
Visitors come here from every corner of the country, hauling canoes, packing food barrels and preparing to disconnect from modern noise. They come because the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness offers something increasingly rare: clean water, intact wilderness and silence that cannot be manufactured.
Those license plates tell a story. This place does not belong only to Minnesota. It belongs to families from Texas who save all year for a canoe trip, to retirees from Maine fulfilling lifelong dreams, to young couples from the West Coast seeking their first taste of true wilderness. The Boundary Waters are a shared American inheritance.
That is why Congress’ vote to overturn the federal mining ban near the Boundary Waters should concern all of us (“U.S. House OKs repeal of 20-year BWCAW mining ban,” Jan. 23). Once water is polluted, it cannot be restored. Once wilderness is fragmented, it cannot be reassembled.
The steady stream of out-of-state visitors proves that protecting the Boundary Waters is not a local preference. It is a national responsibility. Congress should recognize what Americans already do when they travel thousands of miles to paddle these lakes and vote to keep this place whole for generations to come.
Kirsten McCluskey, Ely, Minn.
