Coin Press - US immigration agents face backlash after Minneapolis killings

The deaths of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, on the streets of Minneapolis in broad daylight "should raise serious questions within the administration about the adequacy of immigration enforcement training and the instructions officers are given on carrying out their mission," said Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska.

Minnesota's Democratic Governor Tim Walz said Sunday the Trump administration needs to "pull these 3,000 untrained agents out of Minnesota before they kill another person."

Minneapolis has become the latest epicenter of Trump's immigration crackdown -- a top domestic priority this term -- with the Department of Homeland Security's federal agents carrying out patrols and raids.

Thousands of masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have been roving Minneapolis streets, despite protest of local leaders and residents in the wake of the killings and conflicts that occur in the course of their enforcement activities.

"These untrained, masked agents aren't making communities safer -- they're occupying cities, inciting violence, and violating the Constitution," wrote New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, in a post on X.

- 'Streamlined training' -

A national recruitment campaign for ICE -- promising $50,000 bonuses for new signups amid a flood of increased Congressional funding -- has seen the controversial force more than double in size, rising to 22,000 from 10,000, according to DHS figures.

The glut of new recruits has caused the standard training course to be shortened from five months to 42 days, causing backlash and accusations of under-training agents before giving them firearms.

DHS in a statement released Thursday defended the changes, saying it "has streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements without sacrificing basic subject matter content."

The six-week training program focuses on "arrest techniques, defensive tactics, conflict management and de-escalation techniques, extensive firearms and marksmanship training, use of force policy and the proper use of force," DHS said, denouncing the criticism as "smears and lies."

However, a report in US magazine The Atlantic said one ICE official found many candidates who became agents under the expansion "would have been weeded out during a normal hiring process," with some appearing physically unfit for the demands of the job.

- Unprepared -

Even with the critiques of poor training, federal authorities have said the agents who shot and killed Good and Pretti were veterans of the force, with multiple years under the belt.

John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under former president Barack Obama, said the lack of preparedness for ICE and CBP agents, especially when faced with protesters, "created a very high-risk situation."

He added that dispatching Border Patrol agents to control crowds in Minneapolis "is just so far outside of their normal experiences. They work at dawn in the middle of the Arizona desert, in the middle of the night."

"There's a thin line between what constitutes impeding a federal officer doing his job and what is protected First Amendment activity. But we're using Border Patrol agents who just never have to encounter that," he continued.

"You put those agents en masse in a city like Minneapolis, you encourage them, you talk about 'absolute immunity,'" Sandweg said, referencing Vice President JD Vance's characterization of the agent who shot and killed Renee Good, "you talk about how these are domestic terrorists they are confronting, how everything that impedes them is a crime, and -- I hate to say it -- this is what you need to expect to happen."

C.Smith--CPN