Timeline of potential national rail strike

Speculation is growing in the wake of another fatal shooting in Minnesota that the Department of Homeland Security is hiring pardoned Jan. 6 rioters as immigration agents.

Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino confirmed that the two agents who shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti were already back on duty, but not in Minneapolis, and has refused to identify them. Journalists who have covered pro-Donald Trump militant groups suspect some of the agents involved in immigration crackdowns are drawn from those extremist ranks.

"Because I filmed the Proud Boys for years, because I was in Charlottesville and at the January 6 riot, and spent five months filming the ICE agents in Federal Plaza I’m convinced they are the same people," said independent visual journalist Sandi Bachom. "It’s impossible to find a whole new army of aggressive, violent, immature, Call to Duty Trump sycophants. That’s why they’re masked. People are gonna start figuring it out. That’s why he pardoned them all."

"I remember thinking when I got back from January 6, well Hitler had an army and Trump doesn’t," Bachom added. "He does now."

Trump pardoned about 1,500 defendants for Jan. 6-related offenses in one of his first official acts upon returning to the White House, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) two weeks ago – following the shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by a veteran immigration agent – asked administration officials whether the Department of Homeland Security was actively recruiting pro-Trump extremists.

"The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this Administration," Raskin wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. "Who is hiding behind these masks? How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6th and were convicted of their offenses?"

Senate Democrats have threatened to withhold funding for DHS without major reforms to ICE, including a possible ban on masking, and state legislatures are advancing bills to ban federal agents from obscuring their identities while on duty, and the secrecy surrounding Pretti's killers has set off alarms about their actual identities.

"There is another, more disturbing prospect: Are ICE agents actual bad dudes the administration hired rapidly with no background checks — possibly criminal (maybe pardoned J6ers?) — and the administration doesn’t want that information getting out?" wondered journalist Robert A. George. "IOW, the masks represent a LITERAL coverup. Now, we know this isn’t universally the case: Jonathan Ross who shot Renee Good is an ICE veteran. But the spiriting out of Minneapolis the agents who killed Alex Pretti is certainly…curious."

"This is purely speculation on my part, but hey, I didn’t call them domestic terrorists or anything," George added.

Their suspicions seemed to be shared by many others.

"Anyone else notice how the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Patriot Front, etc. were always out there marching to support and protect law enforcement...until recently?" asked University of Washington biologist Carl T. Bergstrom. "They're never out there supporting ICE. It's so odd, like Superman and Clark Kent."

The Atlantic's Robert F. Worth spoke to an activist on the ground in Minneapolis who agreed.

"It became clear very quickly that ICE is the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo boys," said Dan, who trained as a legal observer but asked to keep his last name shielded. "They’ve given them uniforms and let them run wild."

Melania Trump told her husband to course correct in Minneapolis because she was furious Alex Pretti's shooting put the release of the documentary about her life in the shade, according to a biographer of Donald Trump.

The first lady intervened in her husband's immigration enforcement operations because she thought uproar over last weekend's ICE shooting took focus off her premiere, writer Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast.

"This was supposed to be the Melania week," he said.

The 37-year-old ICU nurse Pretti was shot as he defended a woman from ICE agents on Saturday, video and multiple reports show.

Wolff characterized Trump as responsive to spousal pressure. He said: "Donald Trump is not moved by normal political considerations, but he is moved by a p---ed-off wife. What he does not want is a p---ed-off and uncontrolled Melania."

And, according to Wolff, Melania was "truly p---ed-off" as she considered the premiere of the $75 million film, scheduled for the Kennedy Center, was eclipsed.

"You cannot alienate the first lady to the extent that she makes it an issue with the president. Almost everyone within the White House acknowledges that this is a tripwire."

By the time Trump attended Melania's premiere event Saturday evening, he had begun to "wobble" on his deportation strategy. Wolff noted: "The shooting of Alex Pretti is Saturday morning. Saturday evening is the screening of Melania, the movie. So during this period, the president, Donald Trump, begins to shift in his view of this."

On Monday, Trump removed Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino from Minneapolis, replacing him with Border Czar Tom Homan, who opposes Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem, who incorrectly characterized Pretti as a "domestic terrorist," met with the president for two hours Monday evening and is reportedly in precarious standing. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, criticized for calling Pretti an "assassin," was excluded from the meeting.

Melania's documentary is underperforming commercially. The film, following the first lady during the 20 days preceding Trump's second inauguration, opened in approximately 1,500 to 2,000 theaters. Social media users have highlighted numerous unsold theater seats, with examples of sparse attendance at screenings in New York and Los Angeles. The National Research Group projects the film, for which Jeff Bezos' Amazon MGM Studios invested $75 million, will generate only $5 million during its opening weekend.

Wolff is currently defending against legal threats from Melania after she threatened to sue him for $1 billion, with Wolff invoking New York state protections for reporters and free speech.