“If all of them want to say that they didn’t recognize Pretti as the guy who’d already had his ribs broken in an earlier encounter with federal agents, let them say it under oath in a courtroom as part of their defense against a charge of murder in the first degree,”

Let them confess it - no court will convict them for first-degree murder on the basis of that. Unless, that is, the United States has generally got its shit sorted out by the time it comes to court and ICE is being treated as a criminal secret police.