From Ed Burmila's Patreon on the Alex Pretti killing:

...there is an off-ramp in these situations that we've seen countless elected officials take but that is unavailable to Donald Trump.

They threw the perp under the bus, prosecuted, and convicted. The powers-that-be encouraged the jury to convict (Chauvin's own police superiors testified against him, an unambiguous signal to jurors, while McDonald's shooter was hung out to dry by fellow officers who refused to corroborate his bullshit version of events).

Trump cannot do this. He cannot throw any of his personal kidnapping militia under the bus. He is not only psychologically resistant to it - admitting he's wrong is not the man's strong suit - but the entire illusion of omnipotent control he needs to maintain would collapse overnight if he did. What he is using ICE to accomplish requires total anonymity, total impunity, and an explicit absence of accountability. To oversimplify it, these people are willing to do what they're doing not merely because they are sociopaths - which they are - but also because they are cowards. Plant the seed in their minds that they might end up in a courtroom begging twelve jurors staring back at them in disgust for their freedom and suddenly the whole equation has changed. The whole concept behind The Purge fails if The Purge ends with arrests, trials, and convictions.

If even one ICE officer - just one - ends up being sacrificed to bring an unfavorable news cycle to the end, these same weak, violent men will show their cowardice. They'll cease to be what Donald Trump wants and needs them to be: agents of terror. Once they become afraid, or have any kinds of second thoughts, the public they are supposed to terrorize will have less reason to fear them. Right now they are scary the way wild animals are scary: they are unpredictable and vicious. They really could do just anything to anyone at any time. If Trump abandons even one of them to his fate, that aura of total impunity will start to fade. They will know, and we will know, and they will know that we know.

I can't tell you how this is going to resolve. I can only promise you that if Trump folds and signals to his hired killers that, actually, there might be some consequences if you happen to do the killing and kidnapping in front of too many witnesses and the video looks real bad, the hired killers are likely to revert to covering their own asses instead of worrying about satisfying their dictator's needs and wants. I do not think Trump will fold and hang these killers out to dry; I do know that if he does, we've won. There is a reason, after all, that they're so deeply committed to protecting these agents' anonymity and immunity. Pierce that veil and the whole operation is compromised.