President Donald Trump's officials in the FBI have curbed another local law enforcement agency's attempt to investigate a killing at the hands of immigration agents, a pattern that "should alarm every American," according to one analyst.
The FBI has refused to share evidence with Houston investigators related to the killing of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, which is complicating the homicide investigation that local law enforcement has opened, according to Houston Mayor John Whitmire. Mary Trump, the president's niece and a psychologist, noted in a new Substack essay that the move is the latest in a long series of actions aimed at obscuring investigations into wrongdoing by federal agents.
"That should alarm every American regardless of political affiliation," Trump wrote. "When deadly force is used by federal agents, transparency should increase, not disappear. Evidence should be shared with investigators, not withheld from them. Public confidence depends upon independent investigations, especially when the government itself is responsible for taking a human life."
The Trump administration has also obstructed investigations into the killings of Alex Pretty and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year. On Monday, Minnesota investigators were finally granted access to the evidence in both cases, a full four months after the killings occurred, The Guardian reported.
To Trump, this represents a trend that is "incompatible with any functioning democracy."
"Increasingly, however, ICE agents appear to be operating with the blessing of Tom Homan, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the Trump regime as though those constitutional protections no longer matter," Trump wrote.
"They are behaving as judge, jury, and executioner," she continued. "That is incompatible with any functioning democracy."