Would You Believe A Bunch Of Immigration Agents Lied About Protestors Assaulting Them?
At least five cases have been dropped because agents' accounts appear to be big fat whoppers.
If there is one thing the Trump administration has been very clear on, it is that that they will not stand for people assaulting law enforcement officers — well, except in cases where they are simply trying to overthrow the government and install Donald Trump as dictator for life. Then it’s just fine.
Indeed, Attorney General Pam Bondi has said, explicitly, that the hundreds of January 6 rioters pardoned by the Trump administration are very different from the people arrested by DHS and Border Patrol agents for assaulting and impeding their officers during protests and immigration raids. And you know what? Fair play to her, because that is actually true … just not for the reasons she wants it to be.
As it turns out, prosecutors have had to drop cases against many of these protestors because the agents were lying about being assaulted by them. Whoops!
The Guardian reports they have reviewed records revealing that charges have been dropped in at least five cases — a total of eight felonies dropped — owing to the fact that agents straight up lied about having been assaulted by protestors.
They found that:
Out of nine “assault” and “impeding” felony cases the Justice Department filed immediately after the start of the Los Angeles protests and promoted by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecutors dismissed seven of them soon after filing the charges.
In reports that led to the detention and prosecution of at least five demonstrators, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents made false statements about the sequence of events and misrepresented incidents captured on video.
One DHS agent accused a protester of shoving an officer, when footage appeared to show the opposite: the officer forcefully pushed the protester.
One indictment named the wrong defendant, a stunning error that has jeopardized one of the government’s most high-profile cases.
That doesn’t sound very good at all!
The incident in which the agent somehow confused a protester shoving an officer with an officer shoving a protester was particularly egregious — and yet that agent refused to back down despite the actual footage showing that the protester was the one assaulted.
Via The Guardian:
In an investigative file, the DHS suggested that “in response” to the sisters’ arrest, Christian Cerna-Camacho, another protester, began to “verbally harass” agents, making threatening remarks. Demonstrator Brayan Ramos-Brito, then “pushed [an] agent in the chest”, the DHS claimed, at which point, a fifth protester, Jose Mojica, “used his body to physically shield” Ramos-Brito and then “elbowed and pushed” agents. Agents then “subdued” and arrested Mojica and Ramos-Brito, the complaint said. […]
The footage, seen by the Guardian, appeared to show an agent pushing Ramos-Brito, not the other way around, before he was taken to the ground along with Mojica, who was also not seen in the footage shoving or assaulting agents.
The agent acknowledged the officer’s shoving and said the subsequent “fight” was “hard to decipher”. The agent also claimed Ramos-Brito’s behavior before he was pushed included “pre-assault indicators”, such as “clenching fists” and “getting in [the agent’s] face”.
“Pre-assault indicators,” may we note, are not assault. We do not send people to prison for clenching their fists if they do not use those fists to punch someone.
Former California prosecutor Cristine Soto DeBerry, director of Prosecutors Alliance Action, told The Guardian that her experience tells her that when prosecutors drop cases like this it’s because someone’s been lying or the evidence “doesn’t support the charges.” She suspects that the large number of dismissed cases suggests that something suspicious is going on.
“It seems this is a way to detain people, hold them in custody, instill fear and discourage people from exercising their First Amendment rights,” DeBerry said. This is especially scary because of the sheer severity of the sentences people accused of assaulting these agents are getting.
“You spit on a federal law enforcement officer no more,” Bondi said in June. “As President Trump said, you spit, we hit. Get ready. If you spit on a federal law enforcement officer, we are going to charge you with a crime federally. You are looking at up to five years maximum in prison.”
Five years for a non-violent crime that, let us note, is pretty difficult to prove outside of an officer or agent simply saying that it happened, is just a little bit outrageous. It’s also, let us note, very expensive! It costs $50,000 to house a federal prisoner for a year — so such a sentence would cost the American people a quarter of a million dollars. A quarter of a million dollars to “protect” us all from a person who, in anger, spat on a DHS or ICE agent. Doesn’t seem like an especially good or necessary deal.
And, I’m sorry, but you cannot trust officers in that situation as far as you can throw them, which is not very far, because riot gear is pretty heavy. Any of us who have ever been to a protest where law enforcement has been especially het up has seen what kind of people that turns them into, either because A) The power has gone to their heads or B) They are annoyed and want to go home, and therefore are very eager to arrest people and have it all be done with.
This administration is not scared that the protestors in these cases are chronically and intrinsically violent individuals who are a danger to society. They just want to be able to scare people out of protesting so that they can make it look like everyone is just fine with what they are doing.
Which, you know, we’re not.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
THIS:
"This administration is not scared that the protestors in these cases are chronically and intrinsically violent individuals who are a danger to society. They just want to be able to scare people out of protesting so that they can make it look like everyone is just fine with what they are doing.
Which, you know, we’re not."
Well written Robyn!
This isn't the 70's where it was their word against ours, it's their word against videos from dozens of cell phones.