Hundreds of people marched through Madison, Wisconsin, Saturday night in the fourth consecutive night of protests following the police killing of Corey Ruiz.

Chanting “Justice for Corey,” demonstrators marched up East Washington Avenue to the State Capitol before joining another group and continuing down State Street. The ongoing protests express immense popular anger over the execution of the 38-year-old father in broad daylight last Wednesday.

Ruiz was confronted by police following a report that he was checking parked vehicles. Video recorded by witnesses shows four officers surrounding Ruiz before one of them fired repeatedly at his head at point-blank range.

Four days after the killing, Madison officials have yet to identify the officer who shot Ruiz. None of the officers involved has been arrested or charged. All have been placed on administrative leave, while the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation conducts an investigation.

U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, the Democrat who represents Madison, sought to dampen popular outrage over the killing. Asked about descriptions of Ruiz’s death as an “execution,” Pocan rejected making any judgment and said he wanted “more information to see what happened.”

While acknowledging that “the consequences of a property crime should not be a death penalty,” Pocan declared that it was “incumbent on all of us to get all of the information before we comment.”

His response expresses the political function of the Democratic Party. Its representatives seek to suppress outrage over unending police violence and channel it into official investigations conducted by the same state apparatus that protects killer cops.

The outcome of these investigations is overwhelmingly predetermined. According to Mapping Police Violence, 98.2 percent of police killings between 2013 and 2025 did not result in an officer being charged with a crime. Just over 1 percent resulted in charges, and less than 1 percent ended in a conviction.

The Wisconsin investigation will be conducted under the authority of Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin called for “an investigation that brings us transparency, accountability and justice” while urging protesters to demonstrate “peacefully and with respect for your neighbors.”

The statements contain no demand that the officer be identified or arrested.

The protection extended to Ruiz’s killer is part of a definite, nationwide policy. Police and federal immigration agents are given virtual immunity to assault and kill workers and the poor.

In Maine, the identity of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero became known less than two days after the July 13 shooting. Yet David Brouillette, 37, remains free, uncharged and under government protection.

According to court records reviewed by the Portland Press Herald, Brouillette told the father of his stepdaughter that he and his current wife were entering “protective government custody.” ICE has refused to confirm his identity or whereabouts, claiming that naming its officers would expose them to danger.

Brouillette, a former Army human intelligence collector who deployed to Afghanistan, shot and killed the 25-year-old Colombian worker as he attempted to drive away from a swarm of armed and masked agents in Biddeford, Maine.

Since the killing, both of Brouillette’s former wives have publicly accused him of a longstanding pattern of domestic violence, intimidation and abuse.

His first wife, Ashley Brouillette, told reporters that he admitted shooting Durán Guerrero and asked her “to lie for him and to cover for his character.” She also provided the Press Herald with a voicemail in which she said Brouillette threatened to cut her throat.

His second wife, Lucinda Brouillette, wrote, “If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes.”

She said that she had repeatedly brought her concerns to law enforcement, the courts and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, but nothing was done.

The office of Maine’s Democratic Attorney General Aaron Frey knew Brouillette’s identity before it was disclosed by his former wife, but he refused to release it. Frey’s office is now conducting another official “investigation.” Under Frey and his predecessors, the office has never found a police shooting unjustified.

Popular opposition to the immigration Gestapo’s violence also continued in Houston, Texas, over the weekend. On Saturday, hundreds gathered in Magnolia Park for a vigil honoring construction worker Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

Rows of yellow construction helmets were laid out in recognition of the decades Salgado Araujo spent building homes in the Houston area. Participants later donned the helmets and marched along Canal Street, the last road he traveled before an ICE agent killed him.

On July 7, Salgado Araujo was driving his brother and co-workers to a construction site when unmarked vehicles surrounded his work van. An ICE agent opened fire, mortally wounding the 52-year-old father and husband.

Nearly three weeks later, the federal government has not identified or arrested the killer.

As it did following the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security is withholding evidence from state and local officials. At the same time, it continues to repeat the lie that Salgado Araujo “weaponized” his vehicle and attempted to run over an agent.

Video and the testimony of three workers who witnessed the shooting contradict the government’s account. They said agents approached from the sides of the van and that no officer was positioned where he could have been struck by Salgado Araujo. The witnesses were subsequently imprisoned in an ICE concentration camp in Conroe and threatened with deportation.

Democrats throughout the country continue to promote the fiction that accountability can be secured through investigations by state police, forensic teams and Democratic attorneys general, combined with voting for the party in November.

Appearing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was repeatedly asked whether Democrats would hold a vote to abolish ICE if they regained control of the House.

Jeffries, who has already been endorsed as potential speaker by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, refused to make such a commitment. He said Democrats believed immigration enforcement should be “fair, just and humane” and called for “dramatic reform” so ICE agents would “conduct themselves like every other cop, police officer and law enforcement agent in the country.”

The murder of Ruiz in Madison provides a devastating example of the conduct Jeffries holds up as the standard for ICE. Local police and federal immigration agents perform the same essential class function. They enforce capitalist property relations and defend the wealth and power of the financial oligarchy through violence and intimidation.

The bankruptcy of appeals to Democratic officials was expressed powerfully Friday by Susan Pretti, the mother of Alex Pretti, whom Border Patrol agents executed in Minneapolis on January 24.

“Today marks the six-month anniversary of Alex’s murder,” she wrote. “No-one has been held accountable, no apologies, not a single phone call from any governmental official, hospital personnel, or the Minneapolis police department. Six-months of pain, a roller-coaster of trauma over and over. Every time another death, another mention, a picture, a tribute, a sorrow so deep.”

In contrast to the indifference and cover-up by federal, state and local officials, Pretti recalled the immense support her family had received from workers and young people:

And yet the out-reach not only from Minnesota, but from around the world has been nothing less than spectacular. Every card, every gift, every heartfelt letter has been read, touched, held, and cherished by us all. The kindness you’ve all shown us is beyond words. Please never forget Alex and what he believed in—equality and peace for all.

To those asking what they could do to “continue this fight,” she urged them to defend the right to speak out and protect their neighbors and communities.