Pasayten's Methow Valley Bulletin Board

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He was there because for weeks, he’d seen the stories building, hearing the abuses growing more lurid and sickening. Well call him Dan, a Marine veteran with two hitches in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. He’d known Alex Pretti a little, at the Minneapolis VA, a big, kind man. His murder had pissed Dan off, more than he wanted to admit. It was damn cold, but it was his city, his neighborhood, his friends now facing down ICE.

The smoke-hung air, the acrid tang of tear gas, and the rhythmic chant of protestors had filled Nicollet Avenue for hours. The night was frigid, the breath of the crowd visible in the winter air, wreathed around placards and raised fists, each person trying to make sense of what had already happened; two ICE murders in less than three weeks, the second now boiling over into disbelief and outrage.

Then, as the line of ICE agents in dark tactical gear advanced, tension punctured the air like a dropped hammer. People surged forward instinctively, not to attack but to hold ground, to witness, to record, to declare that their city, their neighbors, their lives mattered.

In the blur of camera phones and shouted warnings, something snapped. Dan stood on the line, arm in arm with fellow protestors, facing a masked, heavyset DHS agent with an Arkansas patch on his plate carrier. Dan looked at him and said, “I’d didn’t wear a mask in Afghanistan because I’m not a fu**ing pussy, fat boy.”

The Arkansas ICE agent fumbled with his weapon, thinking Dan would shut his fu**ing mouth staring down his M4. As he did, he slipped on a patch of ice, his body falling to the hard pavement. His lack of training and trigger discipline meant his weapon was off safety, and his gloved finger was inside the trigger guard. As he fell, his M4 fired.

And then the sound that no one expects in their own hometown: shots.

Dan looked down at the ICE agent, his belly hanging under his plate carrier as he slid and fumbled on the ice and reached out a hand to help him up, a reflex action of long standing. “Come on, man, let me help you up.”

His bodycam later would record the interaction and his words, “f*** you. How y’all like this?” The agent had his M4 in hand now and pumped three rounds into Dan’s chest.

Then, the world let loose.

Not the controlled reports of a target range, but sharp, ringing gunfire cutting through shouts and sirens. In the videos that would later spread across the country, you see bodies flinch, heads turn, and then people crumple to the pavement.

It doesn’t end there. If it had, if the ICE agents had any meaningful training or discipline, it may have. But it doesn’t stop there.

An ICE agent screams, “MAN DOWN! CONTACT FRONT!”

Like one organism, dozens of weapons are raised, and unlike the agent from Arkansas, these men are steady on their feet and flick off their safeties before beginning long, cyclic bursts into the crowd.

They’re excited, off the leash, finally showing these domestic terrorists who’s boss. It happens so fast, even their leadership has no idea of what’s happening. Video will capture ICE commander Greg Bovino firing his sidearm into the crowd.

Seconds after the gunfire, the crowd’s disbelief rippled outward like a shockwave.

Of the thousands of marchers that night, 158 lay dead or dying. People who had come to protest with signs now cried out in horror; others fell to their knees beside the wounded. ICE waded into the crowd, kicking and beating the survivors back from the still bodies in pools of blood freezing in the night air.

The crowd surged back, some in terror, others in shock, but almost all of them holding up their phones to film the horrors. The ICE agent in command started screaming over the din with a bullhorn, “CEASE FIRE CEASE FIRE! NO FILMING. THIS IS A NATIONAL SECURITY EMERGENCY. NO FILMING. ANYONE FILMING WILL BE ARRESTED.”

But the crowd kept filming. Kept recording the moment when America died.

It was live-streamed to the world, a digital indictment of the evil Donald Trump and Stephen Miller brought to our country. As ICE kept coming, trying to snatch phones from protestors, some agents caught up in the bloodlust of the moment took out their sidearms and went to work. Seven more Americans were killed for “resisting.”

An AP photojournalist captures two ICE agents fistbumping after one shoots a wounded protester in the head. It becomes an iconic image of the night. Greg Bovino is shown on video, his face drawn and frightened, yelling into his cell phone.

Even the Fox News audience is forced to witness the terror. They’d been hoping for another “good vs liberal” storyline to feed their media machine, another moment for a giggly Jesse Watters to caper about liberal wine moms. The live feed shows their audience the three brutal moments of the killing before a chipper host cuts and says, “Well, it looks like our brave ICE agents are under attack. We’ll be right back!”

It wasn’t a distant battlefield or a repressive regime on another continent; it was Nicolett Avenue, it was Minneapolis, it was America.