by zahlman | 2026-01-25 22:19:05+00:00
> Hi @zahlman - we are here to figure stuff out - less to demand answers to rhetorical questions!

Sorry for the delayed response. I put this aside and then of course more things happened.

I don't know who "we" are, but your questions sound very rhetorical despite this disclaimer.

It comes across that ICE are functionally being expected (because it would otherwise be impossible to do their job) to do double duty as riot police, which is presumably not part of their training.

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1. Regarding the main question of "determination if that's lawful behaviour".

The most important objection here is that you establish physical force, and you make a case for protected speech, but you do not establish that the force is "for" (i.e., specifically in response to) the exercise of protected speech. The simple fact of making a free-speech statement at the time that you do something else wrong, does not excuse the other wrong. In this case, that wrong is physical obstruction. To the best of my knowledge, nothing happened to the protestor shown in the video at :33 with a subjectively very offensive sign (also reported on in many other sources) — which is as it should be, because that protester didn't cause a similar obstruction. (But I will note that when similar language is used online by right-wingers, it commonly is incorrectly called a "death threat" in an effort to suppress that speech.) You can also see that people who are more to the side, and who don't have the same kind of obstructive body language, are not dealt with as harshly.

I don't think an "enforcement action underway" is required, because the officers are on duty and still clearly have a vested interest in getting from point A to point B (even if point B is just their own facility — the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Henry_Whipple_Federal_B... if I understood correctly?), and it appears that protesters are physically attempting to prevent that from happening. The knocked-down man has his hands spread out and appears to be walking towards the line (although there is barely any context after the jump-cut to the incident).

You'll also notice that starting at 7:07, the producer of the video goes up and deliberately antagonizes someone with a "Police - Homeland Security" vest on, proposing the theory that the other agents in olive drab might "not have their papers". And nothing happens to him at all, as he exercises his protected free speech in a more or less responsible manner. This follows on from a segment where they're directly asking the agents for their papers (even as someone in the background shouts "You're supposed to be de-escalating!"). And again nothing bad happens.

They have one incident of physical force (shown on two separate occasions) being used in the entire video, which is clearly cut down from a lot more footage, interviewing a crowd full of people holding inflammatory signage; and they have themselves directly approaching officers and talking to them; the only person getting knocked to the ground is the one who clearly did something beyond simply speaking freely.

Conclusion: If the man in the beanie were being pushed "for exercising protected speech", you would expect many other things to have happened in this video that didn't actually happen. If, on the other hand, he is being pushed for physically obstructing officers who are making a show of their right to not be physically obstructed, you would expect to see pretty much what you actually do see. This is not a good way of doing things (the right way is "you're under arrest for obstruction of justice", and physical force only if arrest is resisted), but I don't see a 1A violation. (The video presenters also appear at times to be trying to make something out of the agents exercising their own 1A rights by "filming and laughing". It's also fun watching them interview masked protesters about why they think the agents are masked, but I digress.)

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2. Regarding other quibbles with your comment.

When you say "they're Immigration not Police" you are factually incorrect (and so are Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, and possibly other Minnesota officials when they make similar arguments). ICE agents qualify as federal LEO; this is extremely well established and any number of readily-searched sources will explain this. They are even explicitly given power of arrest in federal statute (in particular https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357), which in limited circumstances extend as far as arresting US citizens without a warrant.

It doesn't make any sense to refer to the agents' dress as "camouflage". It doesn't have any particular pattern, camouflage of this sort would make no sense in an urban environment, and there is really no question that everyone can clearly see the agents. As you say, "as if it's a royal procession"; they are not in the slightest attempting to hide their presence.

You say "with no ICE vehicles being impeded" as if to imply that there is no obstruction to the officers, but this is not a valid argument. The officers are still physically impeded if they are walking and someone blocks their walking path.

This is the same sort of rhetorical game that was played when NYT asserted that Jonathan Ross was not "run over" by Renee Good, and then others treated the NYT analysis as proof that he was not struck by the vehicle at all.

To be clear, there is abundant evidence that Ross was in fact struck by the SUV. You can see it in the angle NYT is analyzing; they went through frame by frame to make it look as if Ross' feet are planted beside the vehicle at some point, but that's just where they happened to be as he tried to regain his balance. In the footage from behind the SUV you can clearly see him stumble and try to regain balance. This is also consistent with how his own cell phone footage goes way off target slightly before the shoot, because he no longer has the control needed to keep his left hand pointed at the vehicle. And it would be rather difficult to get a bullet hole in the front windshield like the one shown, firing right-handed, if the vehicle had fully cleared him. And while hospital records haven't been released as far as I can determine, there's good evidence that he was indeed checked out at hospital. ("Internal bleeding" technically could describe a bruise, which would be within the sort of puffery expected of the Trump administration.) And then there's the fact that a CNN analyst agreed early on that he was struck, and later they interviewed Good's former father-in-law and he also agreed.