Two Killings and the Rule of Law: Will the Center Hold?

By Ann Woolner for the Georgia Lawyers for the Rule of Law

In the last two weeks, federal agents shot to death two U.S. citizens on the streets of an American city, setting off alarms for all to hear. Their rain of bullets struck not only flesh. They tore through the Rule of Law.

When law enforcers act lawlessly and their superiors immediately claim the lawlessness justified, it’s a sure sign that the Rule of Law is collapsing. When that happens, people fear their supposed protectors, and chaos ensues. It’s beyond time for someone to tell border patrol and immigration agents that attending a peaceful — albeit noisy — demonstration is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They need to know that resisting arrest is not punishable by death. It only rises to a felony offense when it is violent, and then it’s punishable with prison time, not execution. And then only after the accused has been found guilty at trial or by admission. That’s due process and the Fifth Amendment promises it.

Top officials in the Trump administration at first called Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists bent on killing immigration agents, although videos that captured their last moments show otherwise. Even if the ICE and Border Patrol agents who killed Good and Pretti felt threatened when they pulled their triggers, that would be an issue for a jury to decide, assuming prosecutors charge the agents and bring them to trial. But prosecution appears unlikely. High level officials immediately concluded, with no investigation, that the killings were legally justified. Six federal prosecutors investigating Good’s death resigned in the face of demands that they delve into her background and forgo an investigation into the agent who killed her. This has all the markings of a government cover-up, not a search for truth as justice demands.

The Minneapolis deaths happened in the midst of a seeming free-for-all for federal agents unleashed in Minneapolis. Immigration and border patrol officers had been blasting pepper spray into the faces of peaceful protesters and lobbing tear gas to break up crowds. People have been tackled and arrested for filming officers, a constitutionally protected activity. Last weekend agents in Minnesota broke down the door of a U.S. citizen in the middle of the night while his 4-year-old grandson watched, in tears. Without an arrest warrant, agents cuffed the man and pulled him into freezing temperatures wearing only his underwear, sandals and a blanket over his shoulders, videos show. The man told the Associated Press that officers drove him to a remote spot and held him for more than an hour. They eventually realized he was an American citizen with no criminal record and took him back home, without apology.

The outrages multiply.

And when a judge orders the administration to follow the Constitution, this administration has simply ignored the rulings. Immigration officials “have failed to comply [with] dozens of court orders,” Chief U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in Minneapolis wrote in an order Monday. The “extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is … extraordinary”, wrote Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee. As a result, people who have “done absolutely nothing wrong” are denied their constitutional right to seek freedom from unlawful detention, the judge said in his order.

America is starting to resemble the chaos W.B. Yeats described in his 1919 poem, “The Second Coming.”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . .
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

There must be an independent investigation into these killings.

Ann Woolner retired as a legal affairs columnist for Bloomberg News and, before that, for American Lawyer Media which includes The Daily Report in Atlanta. She is not a lawyer.