ApotheosisMMC.
Dagobah Resident
Another thing that I think has been mentioned very little, but is important because it started the cascade of chaotic events, is the action of the first officer who put his hand inside the vehicle and tried to stop him by force, telling him to get out of the damn vehicle (this is important because the officer who fired in self-defense would later use this as a pretext). The law "is clear," at least regarding the illegality of this action without a warrant, and people in general know this, so they will resist. But what is not so well known is that it is also ambiguous enough to allow officers to do it if they determine it to be necessary in a somewhat subjective way, whether under clear suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, posing a threat to the officers, or interfering with their operations. All of the above will result in chaotic encounters that often end badly (there are still more things below that contribute to this). In fact, this year alone there have been 50 cases of windows broken by officers who often use a kind of pickaxe suitable for this task. This makes me think that at a level Within ICE, there is a general spirit that encourages aggressiveness and inflexibility toward migrants, and at the same time, there is a lack of critical scrutiny of agent actions. These agents often seem to operate constantly on the edge of the law, and professionalism tends to be diluted with such an approach.
The memorandum amendment itself is quite ambiguous (when it shouldn't be, since its supposed objective was to limit the use of force given the various fatal incidents that had been occurring). The 2023 ICE memorandum established a policy that agents should "use force only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist."
However, the policy does not "create a duty to retreat," according to a federal judge in Chicago who recently reviewed DHS policies as part of an ongoing court case involving immigration agents. The ICE policy also does not require agents to wait for an attack before using force, create an obligation to meet force with equal or lesser force, or go through a checklist of alternative steps before resorting to force.
The above is regrettable; it encourages them to move out of the way of a vehicle, but at the same time does not obligate them to do so due to a legal loophole. Adding to the list is the controversial rule that officers can stop someone and suspect them based solely on their ethnicity, language, type of work, or location if it's associated with a large number of immigrants. I believe this was banned in Los Angeles, but not elsewhere. Although it was prohibited, it was reinstated in 2025 because it was effective to a certain extent in identifying people, and the use of multiple criteria in combination to create "reasonable suspicion" was encouraged instead of just one (we suspect this is what's still happening). As we can see, this has exploded now, but it's been chaotic for quite some time, and the new directives and, undoubtedly, internal perspectives have only exacerbated the problem.
So now, going back to Agent Ross's case, his partner either acted improperly or used the memo to blame Good for obstructing his activities (if that's what happened). Then, when he tried to escape, he kept clinging on even when there was no longer a need. His partner joined in, acting as support, and instead of moving to the right and telling his partner to take his hand away, they both decided to take the hard route, protected by the law, and prevented the woman from leaving. You mention that he was more or less in his partner's line of fire, and that this was dangerous, which it is. But these guys have a lot of self-confidence in their shooting skills, and clearly the whole training system is inefficient for some reason. If he had moved further to the right, shooting would have become impossible since his partner would then be completely in the line of fire, so perhaps that's why he moved forward instead of moving aside. The law, which grants him discretion, allows him to prepare to shoot even before the situation escalates, although I don't think that was the case here. Why was he surprised at the last second and why was he recording with his phone? ICE doesn't regulate that, but if you're in a situation like that, you try to keep both hands free to handle your weapon more safely. At least that's what you would do if you were a professional. It seems to me more and more that training in these scenarios is quite deficient for some reason.
Did we say that the situation was quite unique with things changing every second? We believed that, and surely it's true to some extent, but shouldn't they have rehearsed the various scenarios with fleeing vehicles since it's something that happens often? It seems much more feasible and less dangerous to let him go if you already have his information, so take your hand out of the vehicle, add a protocol of shooting at the tires if you like, it's still dangerous and quite unnecessary if you know who it is, but less so than the current one.
Finally, just to make matters worse, the situation was tense, but after the first shot in which you were simultaneously hit by the vehicle, why fire two more times from the side if the vehicle had already turned enough not to hit you again? It seems unnecessary for professional training, but what we see in ICE in many cases is not a consideration in this aspect; many finish off fleeing vehicles with shots even though they no longer represent a threat, which says a lot about the internal state of the institution and that chaos was inevitable when facing these guys emboldened by the law against other guys who believe they are just as protected, ironically, by the same law in other aspects.
