ICE is leading a 'campaign of organized brutality'

IN THE WAKE of President Trump blaming Renee Good’s death on her disrespect for law enforcement, and White House advisor Stephen Miller promising “immunity” for federal officers, it has become clear that the administration is attempting a certain kind of psychological conditioning in the blue cities its agents are now terrorizing.

- ROBIN ABCARIAN COLUMNIST

THOUSANDS of federal officers have descended on the Minneapolis area in recent weeks.

(SCOTT OLSON Getty Images)

What it all adds up to is a message of impunity that has not been lost on the officers stopping people on the street and asking for identification, yanking them from their cars and homes and workplaces, and roughing up protesters. The other day, for example, an officer in Minneapolis decked out in combat fatigues used Good's death as an implicit threat against a peaceful protester.

In a widely circulated video clip, the officer walks down the street waving traffic by as he approaches a woman who's recording him.

“Shame on you,” she says calmly as he approaches her car window.

The officer looks at her, looks away briefly, then in a patronizing tone full of faux-sadness says:

“Have y'all not learned from the past couple of days? Have you not learned?”

“Learned what?” she asks.

“What's our lesson here? What do you want us to learn?”

He says something about not “following federal agents,” then grabs at her phone.

He didn’t say, “Look what you made me do.”

He didn't have to.

On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, and put boots on the ground in Minnesota to quell the protests that have erupted after his massive immigration crackdown resulted in yet another ICE shooting. This time, according to the feds, an officer was defending himself after being attacked with a snow shovel and broom by two men who emerged from a nearby building while the officer was trying to detain a Venezuelan immigrant resisting arrest.

These clashes, however, are as inevitable as they are unnecessary. (And by the way, where ARE all those “Don't Tread on Me” people?)