ICE gets serious
Evidently, a subtle but effective change in the rules of engagement for ICE officers was made at some point early in the week. On either Monday or Tuesday, the rules were modified to allow officers in encounters with “protestors” to respond with nonlethal means on their own authority and without waiting to be physically attacked or manhandled. Simply being confronted by loud, belligerent, or threatening agitators is now enough.
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It’s unknown whether this modification was sent down formally or merely by word of mouth. The media hasn’t mentioned it, but of course they wouldn’t. If they even noticed something had changed – doubtful – they’d be unlikely to make any report that might discourage the mob from taking to the streets.
All the same, beginning midweek, a number of encounters were ended before they began with liberal application of pepper spray, which have been widely broadcast on new media. My favorite is this one, in which a belligerent college-age “activist” demands that the agent “look at me when I talk to you” before being doused with go-away juice, which he does immediately.
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Now, that one shows some signs of being an AI production – the scenario is a little too perfect in the “don’t be this guy” mode, there doesn’t seem to be anybody else around, and so on. But there are plenty of others that pass the plausibility test, such as this one, in which a woman named Aliyah Raman (wonder where she’s from) after blocking the intersection, shouting at ICE agents, and refusing to move on, is sprayed and dragged from her car. At this point she starts screaming that she’s “disabled,” which raises the question as to what she was doing there in the first place.
This next video features two cases, one in which a protestor gives an ICE agent the finger only to earn a hosedown for himself and his sidekick as well. The day previously, a woman beating a drum in the faces of ICE cops (a favored tactic of the suburban Left) earns a spraying along with what appears to be her husband (or maybe girlfriend, who knows). Both begin whining for water to rinse their eyes. The host, a relentlessly cheerful guy named Len, helpfully points out hat they’re standing amid mounds of snow that would more easily and more effectively remove the pepper residue than water. (This video also features a protestor being knocked on his butt after attempting to block an ICE SUV.)
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The are plenty of others available as well, clearly showing that ICE has run out of patience. How far this escalates is anybody’s guess, but escalate it will, since neither Walz nor Frey are backing down in their efforts to provoke the rioters, and are in fact being joined by members of the city council.
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