The Greene County Democrat

Tag: FBI

  • The FBI Will Reportedly Stop Investigating ICE Confrontations. Why?

    The FBI Will Reportedly Stop Investigating ICE Confrontations. Why?

    By Zack Linly, NewsOne

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have shot and killed two immigrants within a week of each other, prompting national outrage and protests, as favorability toward the agency continues to plummet on the heels of the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. So, how does the Trump administration respond to concerns that ICE is out of control and has become a danger to the general public? Well, apparently, it has decided that the FBI will no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents, specifically cases that involve assault allegations against agents, and cases that could be used to prosecute federal agents implicated in violent encounters. Instead, those cases will reportedly be handled by an internal investigation arm of ICE, which essentially means the agency would be investigating itself.

    Now, according to the New York Times, the administration is denying the rule change, and we’ll circle back to that in a second, but FBI agents have reportedly already been informed of it.

    From the Times:

    F.B.I. managers around the country received a written notice informing them of the change on Thursday, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications. The same day, some ICE agents around the country were notified by their F.B.I. counterparts.

    The guidance shared with them said that the bureau would stop investigating claims of assaults against Department of Homeland Security agents, the people said. Even though such investigations are intended to determine whether the officers were in fact attacked, they can provide a crucial means of gathering evidence implicating the agents themselves.

    Under the change, responsibility for investigating cases involving federal immigration officers would likely fall to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, effectively leaving the agency to investigate itself, according to guidance circulated

    Cases involving an assault on a federal officer have been a source of tension inside federal law enforcement agencies for more than a year. White House and Justice Department officials have pushed prosecutors to bring charges in as many of them as possible, particularly as Americans protest the administration’s immigration crackdown.

    Under the federal statute, felony charges can be brought against anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement officer.among F.B.I. and ICE agents.

    Cases involving an assault on a federal officer have been a source of tension inside federal law enforcement agencies for more than a year. White House and Justice Department officials have pushed prosecutors to bring charges in as many of them as possible, particularly as Americans protest the administration’s immigration crackdown.

    Under the federal statute, felony charges can be brought against anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement officer.

    Just to put this all in perspective, last year, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the release of numerous videos that show, among other things, that immigration agents and DHS officials have made a habit of lying about anti-ICE protesters assaulting or posing threats to agents before those agents began using tear gas, pepper-balls, and other non-lethal yet brutal tactics to get them under control. The order came on the heels of the case of Chicago activist Marimar Martinez, who was shot several times by federal agents and accused of following and ramming ICE vehicles while agents were conducting their operations. The charges related to those allegations were dismissed with prejudice because witness accounts and surveillance footage of the incident contradicted what agents said happened, among other discrepancies in the government’s narrative.

    And we all saw the lengths the government went to to smear Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” who attacked agents before they were fatally shot, which video footage showed was not true in both cases.

    The point is, this is an administration that lies and spreads anti-immigrant and pro-ICE propaganda routinely, and any changes made in how these incidents are investigated would only be made so the administration could further insulate itself from outside accountability. (Not that the FBI should rightfully be considered an agency that is separate from the administration with Kash Patel at the helm, but still.)

    At any rate, the administration denied that the rule change had happened.

    “The relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and F.B.I. will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” a joint statement by the Justice Department and DHS said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

    Notice the sleight of hand there. The concern is not that people who allegedly assault federal officers won’t be held accountable. This administration has been caught lying about agents being attacked numerous times, only for it to come out that the agents were actually the aggressors. The federal government’s statement even indicates that its only concern is for the agents accusing others of violence, not the other way around. And if it is true that officials have directed the FBI to no longer investigate these cases, leaving it to internal ICE departments to investigate themselves, it would only mean the administration is limiting scrutiny of immigration agents by law enforcement.

    The administration that claims everything is rigged is continuing its attempts to rig everything in its own favor. We can’t let it.

    Read the original article here.

    Featured Image: ICE Death Memorial (Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty)

  • Newswire: Malcolm X’s daughters sue the CIA, FBI, and the New York Police Department for their involvement in their father’s murder

    By BlackmansStreetToday

    Three daughters of Malcolm X have charged the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), FBI, the New York Police Department, and others in a $100 million lawsuit Friday of playing roles in the 1965 assassination of their father, claiming his murder was prompted by then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

    In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, the daughters — along with the Malcolm X estate — claimed that the agencies were aware of and were involved in the assassination plot and failed to stop the killing.

    Attorney Ben Crump stood with family members as he described the lawsuit, saying he hoped federal and city officials would read it “and learn all the dastardly deeds that were done by their predecessors and try to right these historic wrongs.”

    Ilyasah Shabazz, the third oldest daughter of Malcolm X, filed a lawsuit against the US Government and NYPD for the wrongful death of her father and the alleged cover-up of his murder. Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz died on June 23, 1997. 

    Malcolm X’s other daughters are Qubilah Shabazz, Attallah Shabazz, Gamilah Lumumba Shabazz, Malaak Shabazz, and Malikah Shabazz.

    The law enforcement agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, which was also sued, declined comment.

    That same year, a letter written by a former NYPD officer alleged that the NYPD and FBI covered up details of the assassination.

    The officer, Raymond Wood, wrote that he was ordered to coerce members of Malcolm X’s security team to commit felonious federal crimes “so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s door security on Feb. 21, 1965.”

    The lawsuit alleges that under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, the entities “went beyond mere allegedly illegal surveillance of Malcolm X, actively conspiring to reduce his protection and leaving him vulnerable to an attack they knew was imminent.”

    For decades, more questions than answers have arisen over who was to blame for the death of Malcolm X, who was 39 years old when he was slain on Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom on West 165th Street in Manhattan as he spoke to several hundred people during a speech.

    Just before Malcolm X was assassinated, a man in the crowd yelled “Get your hands out of my pocket,” which served as a signal to the assassins to begin firing their guns. Three men were arrested and convicted for the murder of Malcolm X in 1966: Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Mujahid Abdul Halim

    However, two of the men, Aziz and Islam, were exonerated in 2021 after a reinvestigation of the case. Muhammad Abdul Aziz spent 20 years in prison. Khalil Islam spent 22 years in prison and died in 2009.

    The third man, Abdul Halim, admitted to shooting Malcolm X but said the other two men were innocent. He was released from prison in 2010. 

    The city and state of New York paid Aziz and Islam a reported $36 million in compensation. 

    Malcolm X’s family charged that the CIA, FBI, and NYPD suppressed information about the assassination. 

    The family’s lawsuit claims that there was a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional” relationship between law enforcement and the killers. They also charged that police and other agencies withheld information concerning the murder.

    Malcolm X’s birth name was Malcolm Little. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Rev. Earl Little, was an organizer for Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association. 

    Rev. Little was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm Little grew up in foster homes after his father’s murder and his mother was relegated to a psychiatric hospital.

    He committed various crimes, being sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary.

    In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopting the name Malcolm X to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while discarding “the white slavemaster name of ‘Little,’ and after his parole in 1952, he quickly became one of the organization’s most influential leaders.

    He was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating Black empowerment and separation of Black and White Americans, criticizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the mainstream civil rights organizations for their emphasis on non-violence and racial integration. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King met once. Malcolm X became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and resigned from the organization.

    At the time of his death, Malcolm X was trying to develop a new organization  Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).