For Trump, Deprofessionalizing Government Is a Feature

The killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in a Minneapolis suburb has prompted a familiar debate over civil disobedience and government policing of the sort that typically follows these incidents, in which justification of the use of force, or lack thereof, depends on your political stance. There is, however, an aspect here that everyone ought to be able to agree about regardless of where they stand on the libertarian-to-authoritarian spectrum: ICE behaves highly unprofessionally.

All you have to do is look at them. Cops wear matching uniforms. So do soldiers. Cops identify themselves and drive clearly marked vehicles. Soldiers even identify themselves to the enemy if they're captured in battle. ICE agents -- assuming the unidentified, masked dudes terrorizing cities are actually ICE and not rapists and kidnappers masquerading as government deporters -- wear a hodgepodge of off-the-shelf vests and insignia, cruise around in rented vehicles, and illegally change their license plates daily to avoid accountability.

ICE's defenders argue that agent Jonathan Ross was justified in using deadly force against Good because she was a "domestic terrorist" who had "weaponized her vehicle," in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and he had to defend himself. Policing experts who have examined videos of Good's death point out that a properly trained law enforcement officer never should have been standing in front (or behind) her car in the first place -- in other words, he shouldn't have been in a position to make that determination. Noem's intemperate description of a dead American, a mother of three, reminds us that her administration only cares about U.S. citizens who voted for Trump and support his policies.

Other aspects of the videotaped encounter point to an organization for whom professionalism appears to be an alien concern.

In the videos, Ross and his colleagues rapidly escalate a situation that, let's bear in mind, begins with an unarmed woman sitting in her car, smiling. Sure, she's sarcastic. Sure, her car is parked diagonally, partly impeding traffic. It's easy to see why ICE agents might feel irritated -- that, after all, is one of the goals of a passive-resistance tactic like ICE Watch -- but law enforcement officers are supposed to calmly refrain from reactions based on feeling triggered or provoked. Good may have been annoying. She certainly wasn't dangerous.

Multiple agents race toward Good's car. Why the urgency? She hasn't moved in minutes. They shout. Why not talk normally? They shout conflicting commands -- one tells her to leave, while another orders her to "get out of the fucking car!" One agent should do the talking, to avoid confusion and to avoid a fight-or-flight response. Cursing conveys hostility and raises the temperature. Federal officers should not swear at the public who pays their salary.

Inexplicably, because Ross was injured last year when he did the same thing and police are trained never to do it, one of the agents reaches through Good's car window to try to open her door. Good does what many people would do in such a situation, especially if one is a woman and the intruder is a heavily armed masked male: She pushes the gas. Never mind Good; the agents endangered themselves and others with their reckless actions.

As a coda to an episode epitomizing unprofessionalism, someone -- Ross or another agent -- is heard shouting "fucking bitch" as Good begins to move.

This sound is captured on video that should not exist. Ross was holding his personal cellphone to record the encounter. His other hand holds his gun. But he was wearing a body camera. "Now that we can see he's holding a gun in one hand and a cellphone in the other (hand) filming, I want to see the officer training that permits that," Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, told NPR. Why did Ross constrain himself, unless it was to create images he could control and edit?

Adding to the chaotic impression created by manic, masked, armed men running around the suburbs in unmarked vehicles in search of anyone who looks vaguely Latino, the ICE paramilitaries allowed Ross to flee the scene.

As Good sat in her car dying, they refused to allow a physician bystander to attend to her.

"It'd be unprofessional to comment on what I think happened in that situation," border czar Tom Homan, a former ICE director, initially told CBS News. Noem, as well as the president and vice president, stated within hours of the shooting that Good was at fault and a "domestic terrorist," and that the ICE agent was blameless. A few days later, official government social media feeds were calling for citizens to defend ICE.

That the Trump administration falls short of basic standards of professionalism is beyond dispute. The question is, are Trump's hiring managers incompetent? Or is the deprofessionalization of government an intentional tactic deployed by the first president to have neither political nor military experience? If ICE -- the agency receiving the biggest pay increase and hiring the most new workers -- is an indication, the answer is clearly yes. Just about any thug over age 18 with a pulse can get hired by ICE: drug addicts, gangsters, white nationalists, criminals, illiterate morons.

As the Nazis learned in the 1930s, underqualified workers, especially very young ones and those on the margins of legality, are likelier to be malleable. They'll probably be willing to bend the law. Knowing that they're overpaid and given more responsibility than they deserve -- and that they'd never find as good a job anywhere else -- ICE recruits may not be intelligent or kind or thoughtful, but they will be loyal. They'll do what they're told, no matter how violent or unethical.

The Trump administration will require this blind obedience as they segue from imprisoning illegal immigrants to jailing American citizens.

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Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

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