Oh my the criminal gang thugs with all the weapons and beating up / killing people are the victims because people disrespect them while local government won’t help them hurt more nonwhite people. Cry me a few more tears. WTF reality are we living in! Everything Bovino the Nazi wannabee gets all the facts wrong, but that is the intent. There is no more truth, justice, and the American way. It is gang thugs trying to get their gang to the top of the heap and the public is just canon fodder for them. That a member of the public can be present and video their illegal activity must mean they are a US hating domestic terrorist who failed to instantly obey the lawless gang thugs. Notice the last paragraph, they moved the shooters out of the state just like they did with Jonathan Ross who shot Renee good. It is to protect the thugs from state laws charging them with the crimes they are doing. Hugs
Gregory Bovino applauded his agents’ actions in Minnesota, despite one citizen being killed by agents.
“We respect that Second Amendment right. But those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers,” Gregory Bovino said. | Angelina Katsani/AP
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino on Sunday said his Customs and Border Patrol agents are “the victims” after they shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minnesota.
In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Dana Bash pointed out that Bovino had repeatedly referred to Pretti as a “suspect” as he defended CBP’s training and de-escalation tactics.
“With respect, it feels as though in some ways you’re blaming the victim here,” Bash said.
Bovino replied, “The victim? The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The suspect put himself in that situation.”
Bovino said that Pretti had “injected” himself into a federal law enforcement operation and was “more than likely” on the scene to assault officers.
The federal agents, Bovino added, “prevented any specific shootings of law enforcement. So good job for our law enforcement in taking him down before he was able to do that.”
Pretti was shot and killed Saturday morning as CBP agents continued to patrol Minneapolis streets as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. He is the second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis to be killed by immigration officers in recent weeks. Renee Good was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer earlier this month in the city.
Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have questioned why Pretti was in an area where agents were on the scene to arrest a “violent” illegal immigrant and accused him of interfering with federal law enforcement operations.
“Let’s look at why he was there in the first place. Was he simply walking by and just happened to walk into a law enforcement situation and try to direct traffic and stand in the middle of the road, and then assault, delay and obstruct law enforcement? Or was he there for a reason?” Bovino said on Sunday.
Video footage of the moments leading up to the shooting and verified by several media outlets, including the New York Times, shows Pretti filming the scene with his phone. While federal officials assert Pretti was holding a gun, video of the incident does not appear to corroborate the allegations. The analysis from the New York Times concludes that agents did not identify Pretti had a gun until about eight seconds after they had wrestled him to the ground.
While Pretti did hold a concealed carry license, video footage of the shooting from multiple angles appears to show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, as he approaches a woman who had been shoved to the ground by agents.
“Are you saying it’s not okay for him to exercise his Second Amendment right, not to mention his First Amendment right to be there in the first place, and if you do you can be shot by federal law enforcement?” Bash asked.
“No, I didn’t say that, Dana. I never said that,” Bovino replied. “What I’m saying is we respect that Second Amendment right. But those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers.”
Bovino added he does not know if Pretti was unarmed at the time of the incident but said that agents believed he was in possession of one. “We heard the law enforcement officer say gun, gun, gun. So at some point they knew there was a gun,” he said.
Video footage does not appear to show Pretti holding a gun as he tried to help the woman stand. Still, agents surround Pretti and force him to the ground before opening fire.
Bovino said he doesn’t know how many agents opened fire, but that those involved “will more than likely be on administrative duty” and relocated out of Minneapolis.
Bash asks him straight out if Pretti had brandished his gun and Gregory Bovino dodges the question instead falling back to the talking points that they have all decided looks good for them. They claim he was interfering, nope he was filming them with his phone. They did not like that and attacked him for doing it. They killed a person in anger for that person filming their illegal actions. They want to be called police and pretend they have police powers but watch the videos again, one ICE thug lunges at a woman knocking her back and down for no reason except he wanted to feel tough and Pretti was trying to help her when another ICE thug peeper sprays him in the face at point blank range. Remember that at that close it can stop the breathing. Then they dog pile on him beating him while on officer steals his lawful gun. Then they shoot him repeatedly. Bovino wants to pretend that anyone filming ICE is interfering. He keeps saying ICE police and police action but that is not true ICE has no police powers. It is all lies to protect their need to remove nonwhites while he keeps saying they were there for a violent offender but they don’t say what offender, and then Bovino calls him a suspect and saying that just being there he was interfering. It makes no sense what he is saying. Well worth her questioning him to see how he shifts and lies. They want people to disappear and obey like, the victim he claims are the ICE thugs there. Damn. And they don’t want people to believe their eyes. Hugs
Notice these guys are in plain clothing, not uniformed. They could be any gang thugs. They were pepper spraying him in the face and he had turned away from them when the attacked him in a pack taking him to the ground. Look how they shove the woman around first, they are just angry men out of control. Hugs
I have posted on this several times. Remember right now the man gets no help from the government for what an ICE thug illegally did to this young man. He won’t be able to charge the mask men who did this act against him under the tRump fanatic administration. After all ICE lied about what happened and there is video to show it. I hope he has a good lawyer who is collecting the evidence and the minute that democrats are back in power they sue. Hugs
The event was not an isolated episode. The Washington Post on Friday reported the January 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, while in ICE custody, citing a medical examiner who believes his death to be a homicide. A fellow detainee said he witnessed Luna Campos being choked by guards.
Such incidents have come to characterise what is now the most aggressive immigration enforcement surge the city – and perhaps the country – has seen in decades.
The day before Good was killed, Washington announced the deployment of roughly 2,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. In the days following her death, an additional 1,000 officers from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were deployed to the city, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hailing its “largest immigration operation ever.”
Caught in the chaos of a raid, Minneapolis City Council president Elliott Payne said the presence of heavily armed agents in combat gear felt “like an occupying force”.
Rather than de-escalate, Trump has threatened to go further. On Thursday, he raised the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in response to civil unrest.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Trump wrote on social media, promising to “quickly put an end to the travesty”.
A minor pretext for a massive show of force
The starting point of the escalation was relatively innocuous. The Trump administration initially alleged financial irregularities involving Somali-run daycare centres in Minnesota as justification for the first raids. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, estimated at around 84,000, most of whom are US citizens.
The decision to target the Somali community echoed Trump’s own rhetoric. In December, he said Somalis should not be welcome in the United States, comparing them to “garbage”. DHS reinforced the message in a post on X announcing the end of a temporary protected status: “Our message is clear. Go back to your own country, or we’ll send you back ourselves.”
What followed bore little resemblance to a targeted investigation. Residents reported agents sweeping through residential neighbourhoods and the parking lots of big-box stores, stopping people seemingly at random to demand their immigration status. “Masked men” broke into a north Minneapolis home without a judicial warrant, arresting a 38-year-old Liberian man as his wife and 9-year-old stepdaughter were inside, local public radio outlet MPR News reported.
Operation “Metro Surge” has brought together a rarely seen patchwork of agencies far from the border: three-quarters are from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, AP reported, working alongside agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).
This blending of uniforms, mandates and chains of command made it nearly impossible for civilians to know who was stopping them, under what authority, and what rights they retained.
A symbolically progressive city
The scale of coordination reflects a strategy first developed at the southern border. Shortly after returning to office in January 2025, Trump declared a national emergency at the border, triggering a significant mobilisation involving DHS, ICE, CBP, the National Guard and US Northern Command.
With the events in Minnesota, the same emergency logic and the same mix of civilian and quasi-military forces are now being applied hundreds of miles from the border.
Minneapolis is the most dramatic example so far, but not the only one. Federal immigration surges have already taken place or are planned in cities including Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, New York and Los Angeles.
Trump has shown little interest in calming tensions, using florid and almost biblical language to describe the continuing operation.
“FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA,” he wrote on Truth Social. “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
Immigration attorney Scott Shuchart says Minnesota offered a perfect opportunity for the Trump administration, which was looking for an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act as Trump has threatened to do.
“The administration has been trying to pick this fight, trying to find a place [resisting] enough to have an excuse to declare an insurrection and use more force,” Shuchart said. “Minneapolis was the next target. It’s ideal for them – it has a large Somali immigrant population, and there is [Minnesota Representative] Ilhan Omar, whom Trump hates. His people are very angry and, frankly, racist.”
Unlike law enforcement agents like police, who are trained in de-escalation tactics, ICE officers appear to relish doing the opposite.
“They are escalating rather than de-escalating,” Shuchart added. “They need this. They don’t want unity: disunity is good for them. Trump has never tried to be more popular or to appeal to the other side. By continuing to feel victimised, he empowers himself politically.”
Minneapolis represents both a symbolic and strategic target: it’s a Democratic stronghold, a “sanctuary city” where local authorities limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and a place still nationally associated with protests against police violence over the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Minnesota is also governed by Tim Walz, the Democrats’ 2024 vice-presidential nominee.
According to DHS, the surge is part of a nationwide push to fulfil Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in American history. ICE has more than doubled its manpower in less than a year, from roughly 10,000 officers to more than 22,000, driven by an aggressive recruitment campaign.
To staff that expansion, barriers to entry have been lowered. Deportation officers must be US citizens, pass a background check and drug screening, and meet basic physical requirements. The job requires carrying a firearm and explicitly authorises the use of deadly force “when necessary”.
“New recruits often have minimal education and abbreviated preparation. The danger is that it attracts people who are more loyal to Trump than to professional law enforcement,” said Shuchart, citing far-right, pro-Trump militias such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
That broader lack of professionalism has fed into another flashpoint in the operation: the use of masks by immigration agents. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons said the practice is intended to prevent officers from being doxxed. But it actually “spurs dangerous impersonations, impedes accountability for officers who are engaged in misconduct, and undermines trust in law enforcement”, the Center for American Progress argued in a report released on August 2025, when hundreds of officers from nearly 20 federal agencies were deployed to the streets of Washington.
In a confidential bulletin circulated to law enforcement agencies last month, the FBI even warned that criminals across several states have been posing as ICE officers to commit robberies, kidnappings and sexual assaults.
A deliberate media blur
The confusion has been amplified online. High-profile right-wing influencers were granted privileged access to operations, blurring the line between the administration, law enforcement agents and partisan media.
Figures with large followings, including “Dr Phil” McGraw and Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, were repeatedly invited on ride-alongs and allowed to interview senior officials, producing content that framed enforcement actions as necessary and heroic. ICE’s own social media accounts actively promoted the operation, which the Washington Post has described as a broader “media machine” designed to project strength and deter resistance.
Pro-Trump influencer Benny Johnson went even further, wearing a Border Patrol tactical vest to observe a raid at a Walmart in the Chicago area alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. In a video posted on X, he praised the operation as “amazing”, highlighting what he called “wild scenes”.
I know many of the viewers on my site also go to Mock Paper Scissors. But for the few who may not this is a grand site full of news and entertainment. In the above postTG points out more lying about what ICE gang thugs faced when they illegally shot someone. The gaslighting of the DHS is so over the top nothing they say can ever be believed. In this case the gang thugs shot through a closed door in anger not caring who they might hit. These white supremacist militia gang thugs seem to have real anger issues and love that they can disregard every precept of civil treatment of others as they prowl in gangs looking for prey. Like all bullies one on one or more they are not so brave, but they travel in packs like hyenas. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 