To hear Todd Blanche talk about it, he’s just a foot soldier in Trump’s army, doing as Trump commands. The problem is that ICE and CBP agents, like the FBI and ultimately the DoJ, are also Trump’s minions, subject to executive policies and goals, foremost of which is the removal of as many non-citizens, plus a few who are citizens, as possible by any means possible. And if a few people, regardless of citizenship, get killed by ICE along the way, so what? You can’t make a deportation omelet without breaking a few eggs.

So it should come as no surprise that the FBI made it official by putting into writing that it will no longer investigate killings by their fellow minions, ICE agents, regardless of whether they’re righteous shoots or plain old murder.

Federal agents around the country were told in recent days that the F.B.I. would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — cases that sometimes yield evidence that could be used to prosecute Department of Homeland Security agents implicated in violent encounters, according to people briefed on the decision.

If enacted, such a change would sharply limit law enforcement scrutiny of immigration agents, as the Trump administration draws mounting criticism over killings at the hands of federal officers. In the last two weeks, two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine have thrust the government’s tactics back into the spotlight.

The phrasing of “if enacted” is curious, given that there is nothing to enact. The FBI gets to decide what it chooses to investigate and what it does not. If its director, Ka$h Patel, decides to put what remains of its resources after sending analysts to Atlanta to come up with some claim that the 2020 election was rigged toward investigating the victims of ICE shootings for their radical plans, rather than the agents who did the killings despite it being flagrantly unlawful, who’s going to stop him? All he need do is send out a memo and, poof, it’s done.

F.B.I. managers around the country received a written notice informing them of the change on Thursday, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications. The same day, some ICE agents around the country were notified by their F.B.I. counterparts.

Of course, Patel isn’t the final authority when it comes to federal investigations and prosecutions, as the FBI is part of the Department of Justice, subject to the direction of the Attorney General. But will the AG demand that Patel enforce the law, regardless of whether the shooters wear a balaclava or not? Certainly not his current direct superior, Todd Blanche.

“It’s abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer, which is why anytime anybody does that and it’s a federal officer, we’ll prosecute them,” the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said in an interview in May on CNN.

Rich as this may be coming from the guy who signed off on the Slush Fund for pardoned January 6th cop beaters, and despite the conflation of mere touching and criminal assault, there is nothing to suggest that Blanche isn’t with the program. It’s not that there aren’t investigations or prosecutions, but that the focus isn’t on the shooters but on the shootees and others who aren’t quite as enamored with ICE.

An investigation by The New York Times found that the Trump administration had filed charges against more than 550 people for assaulting federal officers. Of the more than 400 cases that had been resolved, nearly half had unraveled, with charges being thrown out or withdrawn, or the defendants being acquitted.

Unsurprisingly, DHS and DoJ kinda, sorta, deny that the new policy is to allow ICE agents to kill with impunity.

A joint statement by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, however, denied that any such change was underway.

“The relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and F.B.I. will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Policy shift or not, two things have been overwhelmingly clear in the killings of six people, three of whom were citizens, by ICE agents: The feds have no interest in finding that their their minions were the bad guys and will do everything possible to impede state prosecutors in investigating and prosecuting ICE agents to fill the void the FBI left behind.