Goons, Guns, and Glory: The Powder Keg Ingredients for the Current State of Minneapolis

For ten months, ICE did what it was supposed to do.

When the GOP's final 2024 messaging revolved around calling Puerto Ricans "trash," it was clear that the party's xenophobia would once again be unapologetically on the ballot. Their hardline anti-immigrant and nativist campaign is clearly what flipped the seven key swing states in their minds. Upon returning to office in January, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump felt they had a mandate to engage in a shock-and-awe campaign of mass deportations. This is what their 77 million voters demanded. It was unfinished business from Trump's first term. With Bazooka Barbie Kristi Noem installed at the head of DHS, Trump now had a deranged puppy killer in charge of the country's sole immigration enforcement agency. With an aggressive, white nationalist recruitment campaign, the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased enrollment by 120%. With red state governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis in their corner, they were able to set up large-scale detention centers. Thanks to their relationships with private prison companies like CoreCivic, based in Nashville, and Geo Group, based in Boca Raton, the Trump Administration now had a profitable system where undocumented immigrants could be swept off the streets, held for detention, and deported, all under the guise of "national security." It was a win-win for all parties involved.

There were hiccups along the way. Early on, the administration needed a face for their mass deportation campaign. Enter Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented El Salvadoran immigrant living in Maryland. Garcia had a 2019 court order granting him protected status from removal from the country, which the Trump Administration willingly ignored. In illegally deporting Garcia due to what they initially called an "administrative error," the administration later attempted to portray him as a violent gang member, an accusation that has yet to be proven. In June, Garcia was returned to the United States and held in detention. It wasn't until December that he was released, and he now awaits a February 12 ruling as to whether or not the federal government has the right to re-detain him. Garcia remains a continuing flashpoint for the administration to try to justify their initial deportation, and we can be sure that the judge's upcoming ruling won't be the last we'll hear of the case. 

But while Garcia was an isolated incident, the bulk of ICE's work has been the use of its foot soldiers on the ground. Combined with the National Guard, Trump and his ilk have deployed ICE agents to democratically controlled cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, Portland, Memphis, and, most recently, Minneapolis under the guise of "security." Yet those of us paying attention know the reason these cities have been targeted is that they have pro-immigrant policies and large non-White populations. Trump and Miller desperately want some sort of incident that allows them to declare martial law, and they hope that their continued presence in blue cities will eventually create enough friction between law enforcement and protestors that leads to bloodshed. It's telling that while the administration has claimed its campaign has been done to remove "dangerous" immigrants, not a single deployment has been made to red states like Texas and Florida with significant concentrations of undocumented individuals. When you're doing widespread immigration enforcement actions to cut the flow of illegal drug trafficking in Maine, of all places, you can no longer argue that your administration isn't taking into account how the state voted at the presidential level in 2024. It's been clear since day one that Trump would seek vengeance against those he feels wronged him, and we've seen that play out by his obviously political ICE and National Guard deployments.

While these deployments were supposed to have been done in a way to target the worst offenders, the reality has been that ICE has ended up deporting nearly 75% of those without criminal convictions. That's what happens when you have an ill-trained federal agency with no desire to put its members in harm's way. Time and time again, we see ICE detain a nanny, or a grandfather, or a working-class parent, rather than a violent gang member. They avoid known hardened neighborhoods and opt instead for the quick and easy grab and local immigrant-owned businesses. An October study by ProPublica found that at least 170 American citizens had been swept up in the raids despite Kristi Noem's repeated assertions that this simply is not the case. It has gotten to the point now that Democrats are being very public in their opposition to the administration's haphazard approach, with Congressman Seth Magaziner publicly disproving Noem's claim that no veterans have been deported by bringing in a deported veteran via Zoom to a December hearing. With the Trump Administration having deported 540,000 immigrants during its first year, it remains well off the pace of 1 million it had set as its annual goal. Knowing it's behind on its goal and knowing the pressure from Noem to produce, we can easily see how and why ICE has been so desperate to arrest immigrants and those who appear to be immigrants. With an internal ICE memo claiming they no longer need a judicial warrant to enter your home (a policy likely to be challenged in court), we're seeing a heightened effort to expand the power of the agency in unprecedented ways. 

With the late December ruling to withdraw the National Guard from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, the Trump Administration was dealt a major blow. But they still had ICE, and Kristi Noem still could deploy her minions as she saw fit. Less than a week after the ruling, ICE deployed over 2,000 agents to Minneapolis in response, in part, to a viral video from a GOP provocateur claiming that there was widespread fraud in the Somali immigrant community. The video set off a political firestorm, with incumbent Minnesota Governor Tim Walz electing to forgo a third term. With ICE's largest deployment to date on the ground in a city still fresh off the wound of George Floyd, the environment was ripe for confrontation. But never in our wildest dreams would we see ICE brutally murder not one but two White citizens in less than three weeks. Renee Good had the audacity to wish her murderer a nice day. Alex Pretti had the gall to run toward an injured protester. In each case, an untrained, trigger-happy ICE agent with a micropenis and a gun had more than enough consent in their mind to pull the trigger. It was only a matter of time before ICE agents turned guns on anyone, regardless of race or immigration status, who dared challenge their authority.

This is no doubt a watershed moment. With Governor Walz having activated the National Guard, all bets are off the table. With two Orwellian attempts to tell us what we saw we did not see, the Trump Administration is struggling to justify ICE's behavior. The ubiquity of cell phone cameras has been a game-changer, and outside of Fox News and Newsmax, you cannot find an honest viewer who can't blame ICE agents for the murders of both Renee Good and Alex Pretti. With a recent poll released before Pretti's murder finding 63% of Americans disapproving of ICE's current tactics, the Trump Administration is in a bind. With nearly 12% of the city's population braving -20 degree temperatures for this past Friday's protest, Minneapolis residents are active and engaged. They want ICE out of their city, and at this point, it would be wise for the on-the-ground agents to run, not walk, the hell out of there.

Authoritarianism is built on fear. It is a fear that starts in the communities of society's most vulnerable. For those first ten months, ICE was able to do that. But now in Minnesota, they've committed a cardinal sin: they've killed White people. And you can't kill White people without other White people taking notice. Renee Good was a mother who had just dropped off her daughter at school. Alex Pretti was a VA nurse who was helping an injured protester. Neither of them was on any ICE deportation list. They were murdered in cold blood for simply existing in a city with 2,000 untrained, unprofessional, and uncouth occupying government agents looking for a fight. Normally passive Americans are taking notice. And when that happens, when normally apathetic Americans see, really see what's going on, that can be a deciding factor in a political party losing power once Americans realize they have gone too far. 

This Minneapolis moment may finally be what causes White America to awaken from its slumber. Communities of color have lived in fear of being murdered just for existing for over 400 years. But this is new to a generation of White people who have long forgotten the fear of 1960s White civil rights activists, many of whom lost their lives fighting for equality for their Black sisters and brothers. Not since then have White allies been seen as equally disposable and this has been a wake up call to those unaware of civil rights and Jim Crow history. That's not to say that 60% of White men will suddenly stop being Trump voters overnight. But for the first time in our lifetime, we have a government agency targeting innocent White bystanders. The lack of qualified applicants and training has finally caught up with ICE, and its agents are on pace to become as popular as root canals and gas station sushi if their current downward poll trajectory continues. When you give a pool of police academy dropouts and current and former White nationalists little to no training and drop them in the middle of blue city protests, something inevitably was bound to happen. If it hadn't happened to Renee Good or Alex Pretti, it would have been others. It may still happen to others. But in killing innocent White people, ICE has officially overstepped its mission in a way that has made it that much more difficult to continue its work unabated.

Playing with fire has finally caught up to these fascist goons and not a moment too soon.