Minneapolis

Regime violence in Minnesota is moving fast.

DHS' deployment of ICE to the Twin Cities was aimed, it claimed, at capturing and removing Somali criminals. There's no evidence of widespread criminality, no apparent success in arresting and imprisoning and deporting genuine bad guys. You can be sure that, if ICE were making any progress in its claimed mission, Donald Trump and Kristi Noem and Fox News would trumpet those stories.

Their silence is telling.

Renee Good was murdered while first monitoring, then attempting to leave, the scene of ICE activity on January 7. Her death brought more Minnesotans into the street, including Alex Pretti. He was an ER nurse at the Veterans Administration who held a legal carry permit issued by the state for a handgun. The Second Amendment has long been among the holiest of Constitutional protections among the right; somehow, suddenly, Donald Trump and MAGA see it as criminal. Pretti's weapon was not visible during his interactions with ICE on the street. It was concealed in his waistband. He never brandished it. He held up his phone in one hand, to record events, and raised his other, empty, hand to demonstrate that he posed no threat.

He was gassed while trying to protect two other protesters. He was tackled and pummeled. His concealed weapon was discovered and confiscated by an ICE agent after he was on the ground, during his beating. The agent carried it away from the scene. Only then, disarmed, overpowered, was Pretti shot, ten times.

A straight white man exercising his Second Amendment rights might be more sympathetic to right-wing Americans than a gay divorced "wine mom." Perhaps the Trump regime will be forced to reckon with the crime, this time.

I hold out little hope, though: This is performative power, and that sort never apologizes. There's certainly no evidence to date that the rhetoric or the violence from the Administration is moderating.

Years ago, I ran a company that did considerable business with Federal and state military, intelligence and law enforcement clients. I was proud of that work! In my experience, the overwhelming majority of the men and women I dealt with in those roles were principled and law-abiding. They held themselves – their institutions held themselves – to the very highest standards of professionalism. They impressed me enormously.

There were, among my employees at the time, a number of people vocally critical of ICE and its behavior. We never actually engaged with that particular agency, but my own view was less hostile: Immigration law needed enforcement, just like other areas of the Federal code, and having cops who did that work made sense. You might dislike the laws, I thought, but then you ought to overturn them in Congress, not fire the cops.

It's crystal clear today that ICE doesn't enforce immigration law. It serves to terrorize communities, using violence that descends even to murder of citizens merely exercising their rights as Americans. Renee Good's murder, Alex Pretti's murder, aren't seen as regrettable errors or criminal acts by ICE. They are the precisely propaganda that the regime requires, the command to fear power that is meant to cow the populace. They are profoundly un-American. The men and women employed by ICE are profoundly anti-American.

My old government colleagues held themselves to the highest of standards. That's precisely what I want of any police force: The state's monopoly on violence must be tempered by enormous integrity and restraint. We should hold cops to a higher standard than ordinary people protesting on the streets. That, and that alone, will generate respect and trust of the police.

With ICE, that relationship is completely upside-down.

So I'm embracing the views of my old employees: ICE is a terrorist organization. It does not enforce laws. It violates them in order to threaten Americans into meekly surrendering our rights. I still think we ought to have principled enforcement of all our laws, but ICE is not principled, not enforcing laws. It must be disbanded. Our Constitution demands it.

I've reasoned my way here by watching the videos of the murders of Good and Pretti and by reading broadly the work of legal experts, law enforcement professionals and retired and active-duty members of the military.

I've been influenced as well by excellent reporting by ordinary citizens.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's on-the-ground writing from Minneapolis is exceptional.

Thomas Zimmer's analyses of the Trump Administration's lawlessness has long been a rich source of insight. Yesterday's article on resistance to tyranny was outstanding.

A.R. Moxon's thinking on the dangerous line that ICE criminality is pushing us toward – the step from non-violent to violent protest – was sobering.

My deepest respect to the ordinary people in Minneapolis and St. Paul, taking to the streets to identify and document ICE's illegality. You are profound patriots. I salute you.

My heart breaks at the pain of ICE's victims, and of the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Their deaths were tragedies.