Nick Miroff

Good to be back with you.

I think it's a sign of the knee-jerk defensive posture that they are in.

It goes hand in hand with the aggressive deployment of these officers and agents in these cities with marching orders to, you know, I mean, let's think about the F around and find out ethos of our foreign policy adventures in the current moment.

I think it's also being applied in a domestic context.

And there is diminishing patience with public pushback, with protest tactics.

And when a mob of agitators that were harassing them all day... With the idea that officers and agents are going to be restrained and are going to try to avoid engaging directly with the protests.

And so when she immediately leapt to, you know, defend Officer Ross's decisions... An act of domestic terrorism.

I saw that as an eagerness to both send a kind of political signal to the president's base, but also a signal to the broader DHS workforce, which includes ICE, that this White House and this administration is basically going to defend you no matter what you do.

Well, you know, these videos were like a Rorschach test for the country and our politics.

And, you know, it's not surprising that that's also true within the ICE workforce.

It's not like I've done a, you know, a broad poll, but I have—

tried to ask almost everybody, you know, who I can think of what they saw.

And, you know, it ranges from, you know, I've had very senior ICE officials who are not softies by any means, you know, tell me that this was just straight up murder and that Officer Ross was way out of line and, you know, needs to be held accountable in a way that sends a real signal to the rest of the

the workforce.

But I think that, like, I would say that to generalize, like, most of the ICE officials that I heard from had a kind of a more nuanced view and felt like once that vehicle was coming at Officer Ross, that he could be found to, you know, have made a reasonable decision to fire in self-defense and that...

Most of the people I spoke to said that he made a very risky decision and putting himself in front of that vehicle with its engine on was inherently dangerous.

And some of the folks I spoke to have heard that he, you know, within the Minneapolis area,

field office, you know, had had a reputation for being really, like, gung-ho.

I mean, one person put it euphemistically that he was very enthusiastic about his job.

But, you know, he was a guy who was clearly highly trained and was really doing his job aggressively.