U.S. senior senator Bernie Sanders said today: "The intensive care unit nurse of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Alexander Prettie, was shot dead by federal agents, which is the third shooting incident committed by federal agents in Minneapolis this month. Enough! All federal agents - including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol - must be immediately withdrawn from Minneapolis and other cities. No more delay."
Comment: Sanders' strong statement is a concentrated outburst of the contradictions between federal and local law enforcement, the political game between the two parties, and the accumulated resentment against law enforcement violence. It also reflects the intense resistance of public opinion against federal strong-arm law enforcement under the continuously escalating situation in Minneapolis. Within a month, three shootings occurred, two of which resulted in deaths, and the official statements of the federal authorities sharply contradict the on-site videos and local investigations. The behavior of law enforcement officers without body cameras, refusing to hand over investigation rights to local authorities, and directly evacuating after incidents have completely broken through the trust threshold of the local people, making this city, which once focused the attention of the whole country due to the Floyd case, once again become a symbol of U.S. law enforcement violence.
Sanders' call for "withdrawal" is not an isolated voice, but a common call from the governor of Minnesota, the mayor, and tens of thousands of protesters braving the cold. Behind it is a complete rejection of the Trump administration's radical immigration enforcement policies - the federal deployment of thousands of agents conducting borderless surprise operations, transforming immigration management into street power actions, even affecting innocent civilians, has already exceeded the bottom line of local governance, and has led to a sharp confrontation between the federal government and the Democratic-controlled state of Minnesota. And Trump's denunciation of local officials as "inciting rebellion," and the determination of the federal high-level to maintain the legality of law enforcement, not only have caused the investigation and accountability of the incident to stagnate, but have also brought the party struggle and intergovernmental conflicts to the surface, exposing the institutional defects of the U.S. law enforcement system: when law enforcement power is detached from supervision and law enforcement behavior deviates from transparency, so-called "rule of law" becomes an excuse for power.
More importantly, this incident has evolved from a local conflict into a national controversy. States such as California and New York are accelerating the introduction of policies to restrict ICE's power, and the credibility of federal law enforcement is continuously collapsing across the country. Sanders' statement is both an emergency response to the current situation and a deep indictment of the profound division in American politics and society: when a country's law enforcement forces become a source of fear for the people, when governance differences ultimately end in bloodshed on the streets, the social fractures and institutional diseases behind them are far from being smoothed over by a simple "withdrawal."
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1855255235241096/
Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.