It is both extraordinary and reasonable that a federal judge has issued a restraining order blocking the Trump administration from "destroying or altering" evidence related to the shooting death of a second American citizen by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.

In an outraged statement in response, a Department of Homeland Security official fumed that “any claim that the federal government would ‘destroy’ evidence” is “ridiculous.”

Spare us the outrage. There’s a reason even some congressional Republicans are now calling for an independent probe of the administration’s violent, masked assault on an American city. And they’re right: This administration has shown itself to be utterly untrustworthy in its use of deadly force against civilians — and in the grotesque lies it spins afterward.

Not only was it appropriate and necessary for U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud (who was appointed by President Donald Trump) to specify that the administration cannot destroy evidence in Alex Pretti’s shooting death, but the same safeguards should be applied regarding the earlier shooting death of Renee Good. Instead, the administration has resisted any probe by the state while refusing to conduct its own.

In both cases, unarmed Americans engaged in legally protected protest were effectively executed in broad daylight by agents of their own national government — whose president then subjected their survivors to slanderous lies that blame the victims for their own killings.

In both cases, the whole nation can see for itself what really happened via bystander videos. Yet Trump and the minions of his thugocracy have said, in essence: Believe us, not your own lying eyes.

Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot to death behind the wheel of her car Jan. 7 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross. Video makes clear Good was trying to pull away from the scene of a protest when Ross fired three times.

President Trump and his circle immediately pushed the false narrative that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who tried to run down agents with her car. Trump himself went so far as to claim Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” — none of which happened.

In fact, Ross can be seen on video casually walking around the scene after the shooting. It’s unclear from the videos whether it was Ross or one of his fellow immigration agents who declared Good a “f------ b----” immediately after her killing.

Pretti, also 37 and a nurse, was killed Saturday after stepping between a female protester and an immigration agent who was pepper-spraying her. Pretti was legally carrying a holstered handgun that he never touched during the altercation and which an agent removed from him as other agents held him down. In videos, 10 shots are heard ringing out in quick succession, killing the now-disarmed victim.

As with Good’s killing, the administration immediately spun a plain lie to justify Pretti’s killing, claiming he was a “domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin” who approached agents pointing the gun. Videos make clear that simply didn’t happen.

As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz aptly put it after talking with Pretti’s family: “If we cannot all agree that the smearing of an American citizen and besmirching everything they stood for and asking us not to believe what we saw — I don’t know what else to tell you.”

It’s important to note that these two cases are not remotely the only instances of bald-faced lies coming out of this administration regarding its dystopian immigration crackdown.

The entire operation, in fact, is predicated on the constantly repeated lie that America is facing a violent immigrant crime wave. An analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute finds that more than 70% of ICE detainees under this surge have no criminal record of any kind. Infamously enough, ICE has even taken to waiting to arrest immigrants as they emerge from court rooms where they were following the rules to obtain legal citizenship.

That’s monstrous. Sending a terrified 5-year-old boy from Minnesota to a Texas detention center, as the administration recently did to little Liam Ramos (this despite a fully legal pending immigration case) is monstrous. And shooting and killing American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights to protest this thuggery, then spinning slanderous lies about the victims — including from the president himself — is infinitely monstrous.

How determined is this administration to avoid accountability? So much so that an FBI supervisor in Minneapolis resigned after being ordered not to investigate the agent who killed Renee Good. Instead, the administration has pushed to investigate ... Good herself.

That Kafkaesque nugget alone should settle any debate about the need for a fully independent investigation of this madness.

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