DHS Agents Really Don’t Want to Be Sent to Minneapolis Anymore

Federal agents in Minnesota aren’t happy with the backlash they are receiving after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good last week.

Ken Klippenstein reports that the Department of Homeland Security is having trouble finding agents to send to Minneapolis for its “Operation Metro Surge.” The department is asking for volunteers and telling agents to maintain a low profile.

“We do have personnel but some just don’t want to go,” one Border Patrol agent told Klippenstein. The same agent told Klippenstein that they disagreed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that Good carried out “an act of domestic terrorism” by attempting “to run a law enforcement officer over.”

“There is a video and she just lied,” the agent said, and added that there were others in the Border Patrol who agreed with him but were afraid to speak up. The agent was not optimistic about the volunteers who would sign up to go to Minnesota.

“Key word is it’s on a ‘voluntary’ basis,” the agent said. “If no experienced senior agents step up, they send the new guys straight out of the academy. Not a good idea.”

“In a nutshell, it’s ‘Us versus them’ on steroids and I think some Border Patrol agents are more willing to use force and not feel restrained when you got DHS leadership lying to cover for them. For example, Kristi Noem lying her ass off on what happened is like saying to the federal agents on the ground: ‘Go ahead and do whatever you have to do. We got your back. We will find a way to justify it,” added the agent.

A senior DHS official told Klippenstein, “There might be some immature knuckleheads who think they are out there trying to capture Nicolas Maduro, but most field officers see a clear need for deescalation.”

“There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around,” the official added.

The same official said that several DHS employees were worried about the growing backlash to immigration enforcement.

“The claim is that recruiting is up, but there is also dread that the gung-ho types that ICE and the Border Patrol are bringing in have a propensity towards confrontation and even violence,” the official said.