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By Chris Walker / Truthout
New nationwide polling demonstrates a deep distrust of federal immigration agencies in the wake of their violent raid of Minnesota, with a majority of respondents indicating they would not want such agents coming to their own home states.
An Economist/YouGov poll published on Tuesday also showed strong support for a de-escalation of immigration operations in the Twin Cities. The polling comes as agents have abducted and detained people (including children) with pending asylum cases, used violent force against demonstrators, and shot and killed Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
According to the poll, only 21 percent of Americans believe more immigration agents should be sent to Minneapolis, while 13 percent believe the Trump administration should keep the same number of agents there. Meanwhile, 15 percent of Americans believe that numbers should be reduced, with another 37 percent saying all immigration agents in Minneapolis should be removed.
Combined, a majority of Americans, 52 percent, believe the number of federal immigration agents in the city should either be reduced or cut completely.
As demonstrations intensify in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, respondents also indicated strong support for those taking part in protests, with 50 percent viewing all or most demonstrations as being peaceful. When it comes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in the cities, only 35 percent viewed them as mostly peaceful, while 47 percent said they were engaged in mostly violent actions.
Overall, only 33 percent of respondents in the poll viewed ICE as making the U.S. more safe, with 50 percent saying the agency was making the country less safe.
Asked whether they want federal immigration agents to be sent on operations to their own states, similar to how they’ve been sent to Minnesota, a majority of Americans, 54 percent, said they did not want that to happen. Only 32 percent of respondents said they did want that to occur, with 14 percent expressing uncertainty over the idea.
A majority of Americans also recognized that the Trump administration’s initial narrative of the shooting of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, was false, as White House officials had baselessly claimed he was a “domestic terrorist” in the first few days after the killing.
Only 13 percent of Americans felt the administration was “totally honest” about how Pretti was killed, with 16 percent saying officials were “mostly honest.” Meanwhile, 12 percent said they were “mostly dishonest,” and 40 percent said officials were “totally dishonest,” amounting to 52 percent who felt the administration had inaccurately described the circumstances leading to Pretti’s death.
After backtracking on his initial insinuation that Pretti was to blame for his own killing, Trump has since gone back to trying to smear Pretti, writing in a Truth Social post last week that, since a new video showed the Minneapolis resident kicking a tail light out of an immigration agent’s vehicle days prior to his death, Pretti’s “stock has gone way down,” describing him as an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”
Critics have pointed out, however, that, no matter what Pretti had done in the days or even hours and minutes before he was shot, his killing was in no way justified, as agents had held him down, removed a weapon he was legally carrying, and then shot him several times.
Steve Schleicher, an attorney representing Pretti’s parents, issued a statement in response to the newer video.
“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street — despite posing no threat to anyone — he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,” Schleicher said. “Nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex’s killing at the hands of ICE on January 24.”
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Chris Walker
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on Twitter: @thatchriswalker