When Department of Homeland Security immigration agents executed two protesters on the streets of Minneapolis in January, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche blamed the killings on Minnesota political leaders.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” at the time, Blanche said it was “only in Minneapolis that we see this violence,” which he said was a result of not having local enforcement officers assist the thousands of federal agents carrying out the administration’s militarized mass deportation surge.
“We deport ten times the number of illegal aliens out of Texas,” Blanche said. “Why do we hear nothing out of Texas about any of the same problems we have in Minneapolis?”
Six months after Blanche cited Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Houston killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo after stopping his van while he was driving to work. ICE claimed that Salgado was shot after he “weaponized” his vehicle — a claim that should be treated with deep skepticism, given Homeland Security’s record of falsely smearing its victims. The agents in Houston were not equipped with body cameras.
Less than a week later, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a young father, was shot and killed in Biddeford, Maine, by an ICE agent during a traffic stop. Again, Guerrero was not the target of an ICE removal. Again, the agents were wearing no body cameras. And again, Homeland Security officials made initial claims about Guerrero that an eyewitness said were not true.
Not only does Blanche selectively blame local political leaders for ICE violence, he also insists that local officials need not be involved in investigating that violence. At his July 15 confirmation hearing, Blanche told Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that “of course” it’s not necessary to involve state and local officials to ensure an investigation’s independence, leading Padilla to note that there has been “no justice” for the Minnesota killings six months ago.
This should give us all grave concerns about Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general. There’s simply no evidence that DHS or Blanche should be trusted with carrying out investigations that will lead to truth and accountability.
When Renee Good was shot, Blanche said he saw no reason for the FBI to investigate her killer. Trump administration officials smeared Good — a poet, legal observer and mother who had just dropped off her son at school — as a “domestic terrorist.” In a social media post hours after the shooting, Trump himself said that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.”
Indeed, the Trump administration stonewalled Minnesota officials for months, denying them access to evidence in the killings of Good and Alex Pretti, even after Minnesota officials sued. Only in recent weeks has the administration begun to share evidence in those investigations.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has said that pressure on ICE officers to make “ridiculous numbers” of arrests had led to rushed hiring, inadequate training and ultimately to innocent people being hurt and killed. Indeed, the New York Times reported that ICE doubled its daily arrest tally in late June after pressure from the White House.
Trump isn’t going to let a few unjustified killings slow them down. When ICE officials announced a temporary suspension in traffic stops after the Texas and Maine killings, MAGA activist Mike Davis called Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin “weak,” “stupid,” and “a wimp” over the decision.
Homan made it clear it would be only a short pause, saying, “I wouldn’t even call this a bump in the road.” It was very short indeed, as an angry Trump reversed the policy almost immediately, declaring that ICE agents “are doing a GREAT job.”
The deadly consequences of Trump’s mass-deportation obsession go beyond people being shot in the streets. Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, the highest number in decades.
And that doesn’t count the hundreds of people injured by brutal misuse of aggressive crowd-control weapons against protesters — weapons like chemical irritants, rubber bullets and stun grenades. A report released last week by Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley found that special “tactical” units within Homeland Security have been responsible for a disproportionate number of the hundreds of misuse cases the groups tracked between June 2025 and this June.
Given the enormity of the corruption and destruction Blanche has overseen at the Justice Department, it is likely that when it comes to accountability for abuse of power by ICE and other federal agents, Blanche will make it his primary duty to carry out Trump’s wishes, not to pursue justice for the American people.
“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche said at his confirmation hearing, before catching himself and saying, “was his lawyer, and now I’m the deputy attorney general.”
The American people deserve an attorney general who is committed to their safety, their rights under the Constitution and to the principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. We do not deserve an attorney general who acts like a corrupt president’s personal fixer and enforcer.
Senators from both parties should say no to making Blanche our nation’s highest law enforcement officer.
