Elon Musk clashes with Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist over post criticising ‘illegal, horrific’ federal agent actions | Today News

Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist for Google DeepMind and Google Research, and Gemini Lead at the tech giant has in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), joined the voices criticizing United States federal agencies for using force against citizens amid anti-ICE protests in the country.

ICE is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been put on the ground as part of US President Donald Trump's anti-immigration initiative.

The post generated a clashing response from billionaire Elon Musk, who has since the 2024 US Presidential elections, expressed support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Quoting a viral video of US Border Patrol agents allegedly arresting two teens despite at least one of them showing their passport to prove US citizenship, Dean called the recent incidents “horrific”

“This is completely not okay, and we can't become numb to repeated instances of illegal and unconstitutional action by government agencies. The recent days have been horrific,” Dean wrote.

Responding to Dean's post, Elon Musk questioned the claims made in the video post. “There is no evidence that he showed his passport. Do you have anything besides hearsay on the Internet?” he asked.

The billionaire, who owns X, also attached a response from his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok AI. Notably, while the response originally said there was no proof, in subsequent updates it added that videos emerged showing that at least one of the arrested teens presented a US passport to agents.

According to Grok, the video quoted by Dean showed Border Patrol agents detaining two US citizen teenagers—Jonathan Aguilar Garcia and Christian Miranda Romano—at a Richfield, Minnesota Target store. It added that the there are reports from social media and eyewitness accounts indicating that at least one of the teenagers presented a US passport to the agents but was detained anyway.

Livemint could not independently verify the video shared by Dean.

Reuters reported that “tens of thousands” marched through Minneapolis on 9 January despite sub-freezing temperatures and fierce winds, to protest the fatal shooting of Renee Good (37) by an ICE officer on 7 January.

Across the country, smaller anti-ICE rallies took place in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington, it said, adding that dozens more demonstrations are planned for Sunday (11 January).

Critics of ICE have disputed Trump administration assertions that the agent who shot her was acting in self-defense, or that Good posed any physical threat to the officers confronting her, the report added.

A day later on 8 January, tensions escalated further when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop.