On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) said that it’s best if uses of force by ICE should be investigated “by an outside agency that really has no dog in the fight,” and the administration needs to make sure their accounts of events are accurate.
Co-host Pamela Brown asked, “The DOJ dropped charges against these Venezuelan men who DHS initially said had attacked them, and one of the men was shot. And, as you heard Todd Lyons, the head of ICE, he came out and said they’re on administrative leave and that lying under oath is a crime. We’ve seen several examples where DHS comes out with a narrative, says something, and then evidence later comes, and it’s just — that narrative is not upheld by the facts. That’s one example. There was the Alex Pretti case, where DHS said he was brandishing a gun. How concerned are you about DHS’s credibility? And what are you doing to make sure that DHS is telling the truth when these incidents happen?”
Gimenez answered, “I’m very concerned. Look, the things — again, I go back to my days as mayor and sheriff of Miami-Dade County, whenever we had an incident, the best thing to do is say, we have to gather the facts, see what happened, and then we will come out, okay, with our side of events. But, again, that’s why it’s so important to have body cameras, right? So that you can see exactly what happened and what transpired before the event.”
He added, “What we can do is complain to the administration and say, hey, I think that, before you come out and you implicate or you say your version of events, you may want to make sure that [that] version of events [is] correct. One of the things that bothers me is, somehow, this person’s a terrorist or that person is terrorizing them, and you put all these labels on people. Look, it’s the incident. You go back to the incident, here’s what happened. I don’t care the individual — who the individual was. It’s about the incident. Was that officer justified in the use of deadly force or any force? And that has to come through an investigation, and, hopefully, through an investigation that’s conducted by an outside agency that really has no dog in the fight, so that the public can have confidence that the agency is investigating, is being — the incident is being investigated by a neutral investigator, and that what comes out [are] the facts. That’s what the public wants to know.”
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