Apparently, President Donald Trump didn’t like how the shooting of Alex Pretti was playing out on television. So he wanted to divert attention, like he had successfully done with the Epstein files release (until Friday, more than 60 days late).
Make Greg Bovino the scapegoat.
Replace Bovino with a man who accepted a bag containing a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents. The Trump Department of Justice dismissed the 2024 case against Tom Homan, the administration’s ‘border czar.’ From The Intercept:
“As ICE’s acting director during Trump’s first term, his big talking point was that all undocumented people — criminal record or not — should live in fear that the government is coming for them.”
Kevin R. Johnson, a UC Davis professor, speaking about Homan to the LA Times: “He’s a relatively aggressive immigration enforcement type…If he’s your peacemaker, it’s unclear to me whether he’s really going to make peace.”
Musical chairs, not substantive change.
On Friday, the DOJ arrested former CNN journalist Don Lemon and three others with civil rights violations for documenting a protest at a Minneapolis church. Earlier in the week, a federal judge rejected a criminal complaint against Lemon, but the DOJ indicted him on Thursday in Minneapolis and arrested him in LA where he was “covering the Grammy Awards.”
“[In addition,] records show that the federal magistrate judge found there was no probable cause to charge Levy Armstrong and [Chauntyll Louisa] Allen on FACE Act charges, and they instead face a single count of conspiracy against constitutional rights, a statute with roots in the post-Civil War era” (emphasis added).
Oh, and in case you missed it last week: the White House posted a digitally altered picture of Armstrong to Twitter/X which made it appear as though she was bawling while initially being arrested. She was, in fact, calm. The image also made it appear that her facial skin tone had been darkened.
The fact that DOJ had refused to open civil rights investigations into the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good (investigations after shootings are SOP) tells you all you need to know about this hypocrisy. DOJ finally announced later on Friday that it is opening a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death but not Good’s. The two Border Protection agents have yet to be identified.
“Federal officials have excluded Minnesota investigators from assisting with reviews of both shootings, leading to a state lawsuit that seeks to require evidence of the Pretti shooting be maintained.”
The DOJ has made it clear it’s in the we’re-not-backing-down-game:
As The New Republic also notes, “Bondi has started sharing the names and photographs of protesters arrested in Minneapolis—in violation of Department of Justice rules… DOJ policy expressly prohibits releasing mug shots of defendants charged with federal crimes.”
Overreach and pretense, SOP for today’s DOJ.
As with Greenland at Davos, the Trump Administration has sought an “off ramp” from headlines by meeting with the governor and mayor and then asserting that a new deal had been made … and we’ll tell you all about it in a few weeks.
Look, there’s been no reduction in ICE or BP agents. There’s no public plan for a drawdown. In fact, DHS is acting like nothing has changed.
According to an interview with Gov. Tim Walz, he expected a ‘major drawdown’ of troops by Thursday. “If we don’t see a massive change here,” Walz told Homan, “I have no choice but to go back and tell my folks that you’re not doing it.”
DHS isn’t doing it.
Instead, Homan announced more hand-waving on Thursday (no timeline, no specifics) contingent upon “adequate cooperation from local officials” which includes access to county jails. Walz has been clear that state and local officials will not assist DHS in its “enforcement” actions. This is no change from the first of the week and mirrors Davos and Greenland. Crickets or ghosting, take your pick.
Moreover, Homan and DHS, in general, continue to assert widespread ‘violent assaults’ on agents but have yet to document same. As judges in Washington, DC, have made clear, tossing a sandwich at an agent is not an assault, and there have been no DHS videos of anything approaching that level of citizen “violence.” Instead, the violence runs the other direction, as is clear when an unprovoked BP agent pushed a women to the ground Saturday, an act that lead to Pretti’s death.
Homan’s assertions are also contrary to Administration actions from Wednesday:
“Associated Press journalists were in the neighborhood covering the enforcement actions. When the journalists got out of their car to document the encounter, officers with the federal Bureau of Prisons pushed one of them, threatened them with arrest and told them to get back in their car despite the reporters’ identifying themselves as media.”
ICE remains at odds with the courts, having violated almost 100 court orders this year. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” according to U.S. District Court Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee.
Then there’s forgetting that you’re in a rebranding campaign:
“They shift gears like they’re first-time drivers. They’re all over the place,” Johnson, told the LA Times. For example, from Trump: Pretti “shouldn’t have been carrying a gun… I don’t like that he had a gun” and “you can’t have guns.” Then on Thursday, Trump ‘amplified’ the claim that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist.” And Friday, on Truth Social, Trump labeled Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”
Does any of this look or sound like a deescalation to you?
ICE agents have authority to detain upon suspicion with no warrant in hand with one caveat: the person must be “likely to escape.” In other words, the person must be a flight risk. Not so according to a memo this week from Todd Lyson, ICE acting director. Now “likely to escape” means “someone who is unlikely to remain at the scene.” This definition “essentially… [makes] the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” Claire Trickler-McNulty, former ICE senior advisor, told the NYT.
Deescalation? R-i-g-h-t.
Here’s the cherry on top. According to the NYTimes, “at least seven American citizens [were] told by ICE agents this month that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology in and around Minneapolis… None had given consent for their faces to be recorded.”
“[Nicole] Cleland, the Richfield resident, said that three days after the encounter with the ICE agent, she received an email from the Department of Homeland Security saying her Global Entry and Transportation Security Administration travel privileges had been revoked. No explanation was provided.”
DHS has said nothing in public about using such technology on citizens not accused of any crimes.
In summary, there are still around 3,000 ICE and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis, which has less than 600 police and a population of less than 500,000. About 2.4% of its population is undocumented, which is less than the national average of 4.1%.
Lucas Guttentag, a law professor at Stanford University told the Los Angeles Times that “the fundamental policy [illegal detention, terminating people’s status or racial profiling] hasn’t changed. This is a tactical retreat, but not a change of policy.”
The only thing that I can see that might have changed a teeny-tiny bit is the reported 180-degree turn leading to a FBI and BP investigation and administrative leave for the two men who shot and killed Pretti.
It’s hard to overstate how freakish it is for law enforcement who just shot someone to be shuffled off to other assignments with no investigative period at all.
— I Used To Snort Cocaine Off Of Popehats (@kenwhite.bsky.social) January 25, 2026 at 1:48 PM
Remember, the Trump Administration refuses to share evidence with state officials and has objected to a court order that it retain, not destroy, evidence related to Pretti’s murder.
Believe your eyes and ears, not Administration (or pundit) fiction.
