On Thursday afternoon ICE agents in NYC shot and wounded a 28 year old man, who DHS called, "a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic" as he attempted to flee, by reportedly accelerating his car at the agents, while a five year old boy was in the back seat. As expected, before knowing the facts the leftist media trashed ICE, as was the case on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip.
Near the top of her show, Phillip did tell viewers, "DHS says that the man is a longtime criminal, here illegally with ties to gangs." She then added, "And all of this comes as the tensions are rising in American streets. ICE agents were told to ramp up daily arrests ahead of the midterm elections."
Phillip did not name her source, but was likely referring to a CNN story from earlier in the day which cited two unnamed sources, to claim ICE leadership told agents to make an additional 1,000 arrests per day. The story notes, "ICE returns to a previous White House imposed push to arrest 3,000 people a day."
It should be noted that last month on CNN's Inside Politics, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin denied there was ever an arrest quota. "I've never talked to anybody at the White House about any quota." Phillip did not bother to mention this, before throwing it to reporter Shimon Prokupecz near the site of the shooting, who after admitting little was known, still went after ICE.
PROKUPECZ: The circumstances surrounding the shooting is unknown....The Department of Homeland Security says that they were involved in an operation, a targeted operation. This is what we hear from them after these shootings. Just another incident involving ICE officers and car stops, and something happened here. We don't know why they decided to shoot at this man.
So CNN doesn't have any information yet. Prokupecz was just full of... questions.
PROKUPECZ: Abby, I have covered so many of these now and it just seems that time and time again, the way in which ICE is conducting these operations those operations need to be questioned. Why at 4:00 in the afternoon they are targeting individuals in this way? Those are all questions that need to be answered.
We know that ICE -- our reporting from Priscilla Alvarez, that ICE is stepping up operations and now this happens.
Alvarez co-authored the CNN piece referenced earlier, which gave Phillip a chance to repeat what those unnamed sources said.
PHILLIP: As you just mentioned, the ramping up of arrests, this is part of a mandate that has come down from the highest levels of the federal government to go from 1,000 to 2,000 to 3,000 arrests potentially per day leading up to the midterm elections.
She then tossed a softball, using the premise of these mandates, which Mullin has denied.
PHILLIP: Tell us about why that may have become a problem in this particular situation and why the quota itself might lead to more of these types of moments that we're seeing here.
PROKUPECZ: Certainly, there is pressure on the ICE officers by their bosses, their supervisors, to go out and make the numbers, go out and make these arrests and detain people. So, that's pressure on them.
The tactics, you know, time and time again, they need to be questioned.
So CNN is always casting aspersions on law enforcement, and not on illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds. Phillip then did what she should have done before Prokupecz's report, read ICE's version of what led to the NYC shooting.
PHILLIP: They said that they were conducting a targeted enforcement operation in the Bronx to arrest a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with a prior criminal conviction for grand larceny and multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, possession of drugs, and weapons possession.
He has associations to the Trinitarios gang, the same gang that brutally shot a CBP officer last year. During the incident, an ICE officer discharged his weapon, and the criminal illegal alien was injured. ICE officers immediately rendered aid.
So, that's their version. We'll hear over time what actually happened, because we know that sometimes their version is not always accurate.
You know that when Biden was president, CNN didn't read Team Biden's notes to the press with "that's their version." As in "it's surely dubious."
Soon Phillip would turn to National Review's Noah Rothman, who brought some sanity to the discussion about what was unknown:
ROTHMAN: When we're talking about this very specific case, which happened....maybe an hour ago or so, we just do not have the information necessary to responsibly speculate about the culpability of these ICE officers....
We do know that the vehicle was in motion, which could've been interpreted by the ICE officer as a threat....
And if the ICE statement is true.... not only was this a high priority deportation target, it's a target that the American people want to see deported.
The panel debate continued for several more minutes and you can see some more of it in the video below.
To the left wing media, when it comes to ICE, they presume they're guilty no matter what.
