Justice Department targets 65 officials for holding ICE accountable, stops sharing its own evidence on ICE killings

…(cont) I went out to the car to sit with it for a minute, because that's usually where I end up when something doesn't add up and I don't want to stare at it indoors. I've got a glovebox full of paper I never look at — an expired registration, a gas receipt from a station I can't place anymore, an old inspection sticker curling at the corner. None of it's organized. But I don't throw any of it out, because the whole arrangement of a glovebox is that the paper stays put in case somebody with a badge wants to see it.

Minnesota is investigating two deaths from the crackdown there earlier this year — Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both killed by federal officers. Alex Pretti died in January; he was thirty-seven, a nurse. The state sued the federal government back in March for the materials on both cases. In court filings this October, Minnesota said the federal government had paused handing that material over. If the Committee can put that many officials under review for asking ICE a question, what's the review called for the agency that stopped answering a state's questions about two people who are dead?

Susan and Michael Pretti held a press conference on October 27th — their first public remarks since their son died in January — and accused federal officials of stonewalling them and shielding his killers. They weren't trying to get anybody added to a list. They were trying to get the Department to hold somebody accountable for what happened to their son. Do they get the file?

I've got a dog in the yard who's barked at the same mail carrier for six years running, and nobody at the Postal Service has ever opened a file on him either way. I bring him up only because I'm trying to find the actual line between who gets looked at and who doesn't, and from where I'm sitting, I can't find it by myself. Could the Committee draw that line for me, in writing, the way they apparently already have for everybody else on their list?

I keep thinking about the glovebox, honestly. Not because it's a clever comparison. Because it's the only place I've got where I understand the rule: the paper stays, in case somebody asks. Minnesota asked in March. By October they were still waiting. I don't know what you call that, and I was hoping the Committee could tell me, since they seem to have a name for everything else this year.

Oh — before you go, one more thing. I'm sorry, I told myself I'd leave this alone, but I keep landing back on it wrong. Sixty-five people got put under a microscope this year for asking ICE to answer for something. How many has anybody put under one for refusing to answer Minnesota?