Le[e]gal Brief Episode 2: ICE, Venezuela, And The Lie Of Complete Immunity
Welcome to the second episode of Le[e]gal Brief with Lee Merritt, Esq. This week is focused on none other than President Donald Trump and the, uh, unique legal moves he’s been making at both the domestic and international levels.
In the wake of Renee Good’s fatal shooting by an ICE agent, there’s been a lot of discussion around the concept of “complete immunity” when it comes to immigration enforcement. The problem with that notion is that “complete immunity” isn’t something that exists in the American legal system. “Police officers already benefit from qualified immunity, a judge-made doctrine that shields all of the blatantly incompetent [police officers] from civil liability,” Merritt explains in the video.
Qualified immunity is why police officers often face no consequences for officer-involved shootings, even if the victim was completely unarmed.
As Lee Merritt explains in the video, what the Trump administration is trying to do goes even further, preventing state investigators and prosecutors from even investigating potentially criminal acts by ICE agents. We’re seeing this play out in Minnesota, where the Trump administration has completely shut out state law enforcement from investigating the shooting death of Renee Good.
This is terrible for many reasons. First, no one should be above the law, especially the folks who are allegedly supposed to uphold it. Second, it’s not like ICE is a well-oiled machine with only the best of the best joining its ranks. In its rush to meet arrest quotas, ICE hasn’t been properly vetting who it’s hiring.
An investigative report from Slate’s Laura Jedeed revealed that ICE isn’t being remotely thorough with its hiring. Jedeed applied for ICE with no intention of following through. Despite having a very public profile, having a dossier on the right-wing “Antifawatch” database, smoking weed the night before her drug test, and her background check not even being fully completed, she still managed to get a job offer from ICE.
So yeah, it’s pretty damn alarming that the federal government is pursuing complete immunity for an agency that isn’t even running proper background checks on the agents it’s arming. Especially coming off the deadliest year in ICE history, with Merritt noting that 30 people died either in custody or during encounters with ICE in 2025. We’re only two weeks into the new year, and ICE has already killed Keith Porter Jr. and Renee Good.
Trump isn’t just violating decades of legal precedent on the domestic front, as his recent actions in Venezuela have proven he has a taste for flaunting international laws as well. After the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump has insinuated that Venezuela is going to be under U.S. control, with the military taking control of the country’s oil production.
“That’s not just regime change, that is a sitting U.S. president effectively claiming the right to act as interim president for another sovereign nation, financed by that nation’s oil resources,” Merritt explains. “International law treats this as a serious violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and of the United Nations’ charter command to refrain from the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
We’re only at the beginning of year two of Trump’s second term, and he has already found new and horrific ways to break the law. If you want to gain a better understanding of the [il]legal maneuverings of the Trump administration, and what you can do to fight back, then join us every week for Le[e]gal Brief.
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