When an Army veteran named Derek Chauvin put George Floyd in a fatal choke hold six years ago in Minneapolis, he was prosecuted and sentenced to a long prison term. It was another military veteran, Jonathan Ross — a former machine gunner in Iraq deployed in the Twin Cities last winter as an ICE agent — who fired on and killed Renée Good. But he has not yet faced any criminal charges.
So don’t hold your breath waiting for justice for Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero. For the last eighteen months, federal immigration agents have operated with far less public oversight and accountability than any local police department. In the process, they have shot at twenty-three people — killing six of them — under circumstances that homicide detectives and local prosecutors have been blocked from properly investigating. The Department of Homeland Security has just doubled down on its policy of not releasing the names of officers involved in these fatal encounters. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been directed to stop investigating claims by those, like David Brouillette, who say they used lethal force in response to being endangered.
Under current circumstances, no friends, family members, or employment counselors of young veterans should encourage them to answer the siren call of ICE — no matter how much they need a job. As one former ICE official told the Boston Globe, “We should all be concerned . . . that they have lowered standards, that they have rushed hiring, and they have made offers to people before their vetting is complete.”
