ICE Detention and Enforcement Tactics

Minnesota officials, led by Attorney General Keith Ellison, and House Judiciary Democrats are pressing the Justice Department for records and answers after DOJ lawyers reportedly told its Civil Rights Division not to investigate the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge and state investigators were blocked from evidence access. The lawmakers allege DOJ ordered investigative targeting of Good’s widow and unusually gave ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations lead responsibility in the Pretti case rather than an independent or FBI review—actions that coincided with the Minnesota BCA’s withdrawal from the Good probe and a federal order preserving evidence in Pretti’s case.

Video and medical records show masked, unmarked Border Patrol agents boxed in and repeatedly rammed a white van during an Oct. 23 Houston stop — injuring the driver’s 16‑year‑old U.S.‑citizen son, who was treated at a children’s trauma unit, while the seized phone later surfaced sold in a Walmart lot and DHS’s account that the driver rammed a federal vehicle conflicts with the footage, prompting a local probe. The incident arrives amid a broader Trump‑era escalation in interior enforcement — financed by GOP tax-and-spending changes that helped swell ICE ranks (to about 22,000) and fund billions for enforcement — as joint operations and pressure for mass deportations bring high‑risk tactics once used at the border into U.S. cities and stoke political and legal controversy.