A half dozen former U.S. Capitol riot prosecutors, who helped lead the most important legal prosecution in American historical past, have crafted a technique memo to immediate Congress to research potential misconduct by federal immigration brokers.
The four-page memo, which was obtained by CBS Information on Sunday, particulars a sequence of investigative suggestions for Congressional committees to probe allegations of extreme drive and different violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers in Minneapolis. The group of prosecutors recommends Congressional investigators use among the similar instruments and strategies employed by the Justice Division between 2021 and 2025 in investigating the Capitol siege, throughout which greater than 140 law enforcement officials had been injured and greater than 1,500 defendants had been arrested.
The suggestions had been shared with rating members of the Home Homeland Safety Committee, the Home Judiciary Committee and the Home Oversight Committee, within the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The Justice Division declined to open an investigation of the agent who shot and killed Good, whereas they had been criticized for equivocating about an investigation into Pretti’s killing.
The previous prosecutors, every of whom departed the Justice Division in 2025 after President Trump’s inauguration, advocate Congress rent a bunch of former FBI and Homeland Safety brokers who’re “conversant in use of drive” insurance policies.
“You profit from the truth that many profession brokers and prosecutors have already left the FBI and Division of Justice, or plan to take action; many shall be keen to affix this effort,” the memo mentioned. “As soon as you’ve got organized the crew, divide your investigation into basic classes of misconduct, together with doubtlessly: offenses towards detained migrants, offenses towards non-detained migrants, offenses towards protesters and observers, and flaunting of courtroom orders.”
The prosecutors’ memo comes amid considerations that the Trump administration just isn’t vigorously pursuing leads within the Minneapolis killings and different associated allegations of misconduct involving federal immigration enforcement personnel.
“The Division of Justice has no obvious curiosity in investigating CBP and ICE crimes, so it’ll fall to Congress to do a complete, nationwide investigation into these businesses’ misconduct,” Brendan Ballou, one of many six former prosecutors who issued the memo, advised CBS Information. “By preserving proof now, Congress can tee up prosecutions sooner or later, which in flip will discourage CBP and ICE misconduct within the current.”
The group of former January 6 prosecutors additionally really useful that Congress solicit suggestions, movies and photographs of potential ICE and Customs and Border Safety misconduct from the general public. Of their memo, the prosecutors mentioned the Minneapolis killings and different episodes of alleged misconduct have triggered “public revulsion” that’s parallel to the anger and outrage after the Capitol Rebel.
The memo additionally recommends Congress ought to accomplice with “cooperative native and state regulation enforcement to allow sharing of data” and search the social media profiles of the identified officers concerned, in addition to the victims themselves, to find out their culpability.
The previous prosecutors mentioned Congress must also “ship preservation requests to Google and different expertise corporations for ‘geofence’ information on potential close by witnesses.”
The historic January 6 prosecutions had been fueled by tons of of suggestions from the general public, together with from volunteers who scoured the various pictures and movies of the riotous assault on the Capitol to find out the potential identities of the individuals concerned.
The Justice Division secured a 100% conviction price in jury trials towards the Capitol attackers.
Mr. Trump reversed the successes of the Justice Division by granting clemency to greater than 1,500 of his supporters who had been convicted or charged in relation to the Capitol riot. In his pardon, the president mentioned the prosecutions had been “a grave nationwide injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American individuals over the past 4 years.”
