This post originally appeared on author Garrett Graff’s site Doomsday Scenario, which you can subscribe to here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer recommendations about how to fix immigration enforcement going forward. I was called as the commission’s expert witness on the history of problems, corruption, and training within CBP and ICE—a story I’ve covered for more than a dozen years, as regular readers of this newsletter know. To prepare, I spent the last week re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with DHS scandals and waves of corruption and mismanagement—and found myself horrified anew. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning; my name is Garrett Graff and I’m honored to be here to speak about the historical challenges and problems with the Department of Homeland Security and two of its largest components, CBP—aka Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol—and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE. First, let me introduce myself. I’m a journalist and historian; I’ve written multiple books focused on federal law enforcement, national security, and American government—one of which, about Watergate, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History—and published dozens of articles in places like POLITICO, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic about DHS, the Justice Department, and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, CBP, and ICE. My testimony today is based on, draws upon, and in places quotes from that extensive previous reporting and writing over the years and is informed by literally hundreds of conversations with agents and executives at all levels of federal law enforcement, including dozens or scores of interviews with agents and officers of ICE and CBP. I’ve interviewed CBP commissioners and ICE directors in their executive suites; I’ve been on patrol with Border Patrol, ridden on their boats and flown in their helicopters, shared meals with the union officials and been in the studio while they recorded their popular podcast, and observed as Border Patrol apprehended migrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border. My goal today is to outline for the Commission some of the history of ICE and CBP and, in particular, to outline what has changed—and what is changing—as the Trump administration floods both agencies with money from the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” What I hope you will take away from my testimony today is that the problems, abuses, scandals, and controversies involving CBP and ICE that have been on display over the last year in far too many American cities and social media feeds—from deadly shootings and agent brutality to the routine abuse of Constitutional and civil rights and liberties—is entirely consistent with long-identified problems in CBP and ICE that have gone ignored and uncorrected both by a generation of Congress and multiple Democratic and Republican administrations alike. These are not aberrations—these incidents are the entirely foreseeable consequence of specific funding and management decisions and how the nation has approached immigration enforcement since 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. An ICE agent wielding a pepper ball gun with his finger on the trigger, barrel pointed at press and protesters alike, during Operation Midway Blitz in Chicagoland, outside the Broadview ICE Facility. Chris Riha/ZUMA In particular, CBP has been likely the deadliest and certainly the most troubled federal law enforcement agency for the better part of two decades now. Since 9/11, the culture of ICE and CBP has meant that the agencies have been what you might call a fascist-secret-police-in-waiting, troubled agencies simply waiting for an ambitious would-be authoritarian. ICE is an agency whose recruiting and training standards are so low that other federal law enforcement agents say pejoratively that ICE is “hired by the pound, from the pound.” And the paramilitary CBP, especially, has been uniquely callous with human life and suffers from a deeply ingrained culture of racism and misogyny, all of which is enabled by an all-but unequaled longstanding sense of impunity. CBP—the nation’s largest law enforcement agency—has been plagued for two decades by a tidal wave of crime, corruption, and misconduct driven by a disastrous post-9/11 hiring surge that flooded the force with thousands of agents and officers who never should have been given a badge and a gun—including, as one CBP commissioner told me, even accidentally hiring members of actual drug cartels. Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005. CBP’s misconduct scandal is so long-running that today it would be old enough to drink. In total, according to CBP’s own discipline reports, over the 20 years from 2005 to 2024—the last year numbers are available—at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested themselves, some multiple times. (In 2018 alone, a single CBP employee was arrested five times.) To put that number in perspective: * The population of CBP agents and officers who have been arrested would make it roughly the nation’s fourth largest police department—equal to the size of the entire Philadelphia police. * Indeed, for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Before I dive in, I want to add an over-arching caveat. None of what I’m about to say is meant to imply that everything was hunky-dory in DHS at noon on January 20th last year when Donald Trump returned to the presidency. Quite the opposite. And yet something was fundamentally different before last year: ICE and CBP managed to go about their work in such a way that didn’t cause ordinary law-abiding US citizens to fear for their lives; ICE or CBP agents didn’t routinely operate wearing masks and deploy teargas daily against US citizens; the entire school systems of major US cities didn’t have to close in fear of CBP and ICE operations targeting neighborhoods, and professional sports leagues like the NBA didn’t have to cancel games because of ICE and CBP violence in major American cities. Something big has changed—and my hope is that this testimony will help explain what and how. Columbus, New Mexico, USA; The US Border Patrol steps up vigilance along the US/Mexico border as most illegal crossings occur after dark.Thomas Herbert/ZUMA PART I: THE HISTORY First, how history plagues CBP and ICE. On September 11, 2001, immigration was the purview of the Justice Department’s Immigration and Naturalization Service while border trade and travel was the responsibility of the Treasury Department’s US Customs Service. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and as part of the creation of DHS and the massive reshuffling of government, both INS and Customs were broken apart. ICE brought together the “legacy INS” deportation and detention officers, which were renamed as what’s now known as Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), as well as the “legacy INS” and “legacy Customs” special agents to form the Homeland Security Investigations division, HSI. Other parts of INS and Customs were reshuffled into the new, supposedly “unified” border agency of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The green-uniformed Border Patrol were in charge of patrolling the border in between legal ports of entry while a team made up of “legacy Customs inspectors” and USDA agriculture inspectors were combined and renamed into the blue-uniformed Office of Field Operations to handle legitimate trade and travel through “ports of entry” like land crossings, seaports, and airports. PROBLEM #1: A HIRING SURGE GONE WRONG One of the first things Congress did with the new agency was to super-charge its hiring. The agency’s own studies concluded the Border Patrol did not have “operational control” over 97 percent of the border. * Altogether, the border was so porous that in 2000, a three-ton American elephant named Benny appeared in a Mexico City circus, only for US authorities to discover there was no record he’d ever crossed the border. The plan to remedy this lack of control of the border was audacious—and remarkably ill-conceived: During the eight years of the Bush administration, the Border Patrol surged from 9,200 agents in 2001 to some 18,000 agents—and eventually peaked in the Obama administration at 21,000 agents. Add in the officers of the Office of Field Operations and the air and marine officers, and CBP had a gun-carrying workforce of about 45,000 agents and officers. There was plenty of evidence even before the hiring surge to believe it was a bad idea. Police departments in Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., had all been beset by systemic misconduct scandals after they had tried to grow their force rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s. The Border Patrol hiring surge would be no different. The surge meant the agency had to search far and wide for increasingly less qualified candidates. The agency raised its recruiting age limit from 37 to 40, and regularly sent new agents through the academy and even out into the field before completing full background checks. Agents in the field pejoratively referred to the new hires as “No Trainee Left Behind.” By the end of the Bush administration, more than half of the Border Patrol had been in the field for less than two years. This hiring surge collided with two other fundamental and foundational problems with CBP—its legal authorities and its culture. PROBLEM #2: LIMITED LEGAL AUTHORITIES Understanding both ICE and CBP requires starting with the difference between two US government “job codes,” known as “1811s” vs. “1801s.” So-called “GS-1801s” are the federal government’s street cops—the bottom ranks of law enforcement. The positions come with less training and lower education requirements—usually only a high school degree or equivalent—as well as more limited authority. All of CBP, including both the Border Patrol and Office of Field Operation, are “1801s,” as are all ICE ERO deportation officers. All of them have strictly limited arrest powers. Then there are the “GS-1811” positions, known as “Special Agent / Criminal Investigator.” These are the government’s detectives—think the FBI, Secret Service, US Marshals, and, notably, ICE HSI agents. These positions usually require more work experience and a college degree, and come with far more training (months, not weeks), and more broad investigative authority. The difference between 1801s and 1811s may seem minor, but it’s incredibly important in understanding why CBP and ICE are as rogue and poorly trained as they are.  For one thing, that subtle difference in job code meant that CBP was entirely set up as 1801s, which inadvertently meant that it had no authority or power to investigate wrongdoing by its own agents and workforce—to make that point more sharply, in the post-9/11 reorganization, we created the nation’s largest law enforcement agency and didn’t give it the power to have the internal affairs capacity that one would expect at even a mid-size local police department. It was a key ingredient in a recipe for disaster—one that would not be fixed until the final months of the Obama administration, more than a decade after the creation of DHS. Which brings me to the third fundamental challenge and problem with CBP and, especially, the Border Patrol—its fiercely independent and closed-rank culture and tradition, borne of policing and protecting a largely unpopulated, harsh, and isolated region along the US-Mexican border. Members of the US Border Patrol listen as Vice President JD Vance speaks to the press as he tours the US-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas, on March 5, 2025. Brandon Bell/Pool/AFP/Getty PROBLEM #3: TRADITION AND CULTURE The Border Patrol’s culturally and traditionally something akin to what I’ve described as “part police force, part occupying army, [and] part frontier cavalry.” The traditional job of Border Patrol agents has been hard—they often work alone or in pairs in rural, rugged terrain, with backup and help often miles and sometimes even an hour or more away. Agents developed a strong tradition of frontier-style justice; its agency motto, “Honor first,” is as much a statement of machismo as it is about integrity. This fierce independence manifests itself in distinct areas worthy of note, which combine to make it particularly susceptible for a would-be authoritarian—its approach to its daily work and use-of-force; a deep-seated institutional culture of racism and misogyny; and a pugilistic approach to politics. Use of force: This is an agency that is uniquely callous about human lives—both of US citizens and migrants. * It is, as best as anyone can determine, perhaps the nation’s deadliest law enforcement agency. It is notoriously hard to understand federal law enforcement shootings, but since 2010, CBP agents have been involved in at least 72 deadly shootings or use of force incidents. * An internal report in 2013 that the agency tried to keep secret accused its agents of shooting their weapons not out of fear but instead out of “frustration.” * In 2013, a report by the Police Executive Research Forum examined 67 incidents and found that “too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force.” * Agents are emboldened in their use-of-force by a sense that there will never be consequences for doing so. Roughly 96 or 97 percent of complaints against Border Patrol historically have gone nowhere. In fact, across a four-year period from 2012–2015 that included 2,178 complaints that warranted investigation, just eleven resulted in an agent’s temporary suspension and eleven more resulted in a reprimand. Only one—one of 2,178 complaints!—led to an agent’s resignation. If you do that math, that works out to be that across the entire Border Patrol about three agents a year received a formal disciplinary reprimand. If agents act like they can get away with anything, the statistics back them up. Racism and misogyny: The racist and nativist roots of the Border Patrol are well known, as scholars like Kelly Lytle Hernandez traced in her book “Migra!” But what is remarkable is how the seeping cultural corruption since 9/11 has taken an agency founded a century ago to enforce explicitly racist policies and managed to make it even more racist. * In 2017 CBP officers at Newark Airport set up a “rape table” at the New Jersey airport where they would sexually assaulted and hazed other officers. One female CBP officer described the incident, saying, “I’m afraid for my life, my safety.” * In 2019, ProPublica uncovered a racist Facebook group made up of some 9,500 current and former Border Patrol agents and leadership—including the then-chief of the Border Patrol herself. As ProPublica wrote, “current and former Border Patrol agents mocked dead migrants, called congresswomen ‘scum buckets,’ and uploaded misogynistic images.” A United States Border Patrol agent on horseback tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuna Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas on September 19, 2021. Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty This underlying racism, misogyny, and nativism has contributed to the third area of the Border Patrol’s culture I’d like to address—its unusually pugilistic participation in national politics. The Border Patrol union has particularly resisted transparency efforts and attempts to rein in use-of-force. When CBP announced it would recognize officers and agents who de-escalated confrontations and avoid using deadly force, the union called the new award “despicable.” The union has also especially carved out a unique relationship with Donald Trump since the earliest days of his presidential campaign. It was the first union to endorse Trump—later followed by ICE’s union—and Donald Trump actually first wore his now signature “Make America Great Again” hat during a summer 2015 tour of the border initiated by local Border Patrol union officials. The entirely predictable result: It wouldn’t surprise any seasoned law enforcement leader that doubling the size of CBP without adequate vetting, training, oversight, or management led to a host of problems—not the least of which was the stunning arrest statistics I cited earlier. * In 2016, in the final months of the Obama administration—a period that represented the peak of reform and professionalization efforts at CBP—an outside advisory group headed by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton concluded, “The CBP discipline system is broken.” Bratton’s advisory group noted that CBP’s discipline system was less rigorous, in fact, for its armed officers and agents than the Transportation Security Administration’s system for its unarmed airport screeners. Hugely elevated misconduct, crime, and corruption problems continue to dog CBP to this day. Overall, CBP’s arrest and misconduct rate is FIVE TIMES higher than other federal law enforcement agencies. CBP’s corruption problem was so bad that, according to what two CBP officials told me, DHS leadership under Janet Napolitano ordered CBP to change its definition of corruption to downplay to Congress the breadth of the problem. US law enforcement has never experienced a scandal as big, as far-reaching, destructive, and as far-lasting as the wave of corruption and criminality that has overtaken CBP and the Border Patrol since 2005. It’s a story that too much of the public still doesn’t know and too many policymakers still don’t understand. Let me add one more caveat here: It’s not my goal here to paint all of CBP with a brush of misconduct, racism, and corruption. Many agents and officers are excellent—serving our nation in hard jobs in the best possible tradition. But as one female agent told Mother Jones in 2024, “I was a loyal agent and employee for 27 years and I see the good in the agency. But I can’t deny that the worst that I’ve seen has come at the hands of agents, and not the criminals we’re supposed to arrest.” A BRIEF HISTORY OF ICE Now let me turn my attention for a moment to ICE. In the reshuffling of DHS, ICE got the job no one wanted—immigration enforcement domestically is arguably the country’s most fraught and unsettled policy area. For most of its roughly 20 years of existence, ICE has faced a clear problem—there are way way way more undocumented immigrants in the United States than Congress funded ICE to find, arrest, and deport. For many years, ICE was budgeted for around 400,000 deportations. ICE’s ERO side has long relied upon and focused heavily on what’s known as “prosecutorial discretion.” Under that strategy, ICE ERO mostly focused on deporting people with a so-called “final order of removal”—e.g., people who had exhausted all the legal process and ignored the binding decision of the immigration courts to leave the country—or people with criminal records above and beyond simply being undocumented—e.g., the much-talked murderers, drug smugglers, gang members, rapists, and the like who are always cited as the Trump administration’s main targets. That meant—generally speaking, and again with the all caveats I listed above—that if you were an undocumented immigrant but weren’t on the government’s radar, you didn’t have to worry much in your day-to-day life. The strategy of discretion worked. By 2011, nearly half of the 400,000 people deported by ICE had a criminal conviction, up from a third in 2008. That work was manpower intensive, but it also meant that they were making a real difference in terms of crime in the United States. They were actually finding, arresting, and deporting the “worst of the worst,” while, for the most part, leaving the day-laborers and abuelas alone to await whatever political solution to America’s immigration crisis Congress could someday find. Then Donald Trump was elected president and took office a second time last year.  Police pepper spray a photographer after warning him to back up near the gates of the Metropolitan Detention Center during an ICE Out for Good demonstration in Los Angeles. Lela Edgar/SOPA Images/ZUMA PART II: WHAT’S CHANGED Today, that “prosecutorial discretion” is out the window. Last spring, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller set an arbitrary target of one million deportations a year—which translates into immigration officers making 3,000 arrests a day. That new quota meant ICE and CBP had to abandon any pretext of targeted enforcement operations; it took too long and required too many officers. Those raids where Greg Bovino’s heavily-armed CBP agents storm into Home Depot parking lots are a necessity of this new quota because it’s the low-hanging fruit of immigration enforcement. Similarly, ICE and CBP officers around the country—and particularly in targeted operations in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, or Minneapolis—are stopping, detaining, and deporting people with no criminal records who are following all legal procedures for their asylum, immigration, or citizenship proceedings. These actions aren’t because any of these immigrants pose a threat to the United States—it’s because they’re easy pickings and ICE and CBP have embraced “quantity” over “quality.” The terror and trauma of theses arrests is the point—not the safety of the United States. That shift is reflected in how most people now detained by ICE have no criminal record. A CATO Institute roundup in November found that “nearly three in four (73 percent) had no criminal conviction” and just “5 percent had a violent criminal conviction.” This is not how ICE has traditionally been used, and CBP wasn’t supposed to be routinely policing the streets and cities of America’s interior. The Border Patrol and ICE are just not trained, prepared, or accustomed to patrolling “regular” America and rolling through neighborhoods, school grounds, parking lots. They’re not regular police, and they don’t know how to behave or navigate urban civilian environments. They don’t have the muscle memory or de-escalation skills of dealing with angry citizens or innocent people. It’s clear that many lack real-world policing skills. A shirtless protester stands and shows the effects of stings balls, pepper spray and tear gas on his back outside the Broadview facility during a protest against ICE and ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ in Chicago. Dave Decker/ZUMA The fact that they’re instead approaching their work not as law enforcement but as an occupation military force is clear in the language officials are using; yesterday alone, Greg Bovino gave an attaboy video calling for agents to “Turn and Burn” and Tom Homan referred to agents deploying to Minneapolis as being “in theater.” This is not the mentality we want guiding or inspiring a federal law enforcement agency. Their poor training and sense of political impunity is contributing to and driving their “Arrest First and Question Later” approach, which is the exact opposite of what would you expect in a free and democratic society, and it has had entirely predictable outcomes. ProPublica found in October that more than 170 US citizens had been arrested by immigration authorities, some disappearing into ICE’s apparatus for days. Sometimes I believe that American exceptionalism—the sense that “it can’t happen here”—blinds us to the realities of our current political life. The behavior of ICE and CBP over the last year is one such case. In any other foreign country, if a US reporter was writing about these raids and the occupation of Chicago last fall or Minneapolis right now, we wouldn’t hesitate to call ICE or CBP as a “paramilitary force loyal to the regime” or “masked right-wing militia” (and that, by the way, is exactly what other countries’ media are calling it here). And, as an even larger cohort of even less qualified and less trained ICE and CBP officers begin to hit the streets, this is all almost certainly going to get worse.  PART III: WHAT’S TO COME I want to focus my final section of remarks about what we can expect in the months to come as ICE and CBP together see a flood of funding that is unprecedented—even measured against the wild amounts of money thrown at immigration and border security after 9/11. In 2014, my Border Patrol reporting was titled “The Green Monster.” Today, we’re creating something even more dangerous to the country: A masked monster of a law enforcement agency—one uniquely unsuited for its new power, authority, reach, and funding levels. This time, unlike the money for the Border Patrol after 9/11, ICE’s giant new supercharged ranks will be focused not on America’s borders, but America’s streets, neighborhoods, and businesses. We are set to repeat as a nation every single mistake we made after 9/11 with CBP and the Border Patrol—but worse. The goal for growing ICE with 10,000 new officers is both a larger total number than the Border Patrol tried to hire during its surge and also represents a larger total percentage of the existing ICE force. ICE is set to receive $30 billion in new funding for this hiring surge. Moreover, we should have specific fresh concerns about WHO is applying for these new jobs at ICE and CBP, which also has plans to hire thousands of new agents. After 9/11, the Border Patrol played on patriotism in its recruiting. Today, DHS and ICE are relying are explicitly white nationalist rhetoric and imagery in their promotion materials. U.S. Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump poses for a picture with the National Border Patrol Council during a campaign rally at Findlay Toyota Center on October 13, 2024 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Rebecca Noble/Getty As one of the first moves to revamp its training, ICE proved that it’s building a Trump cult of personality as much as hiring for a law enforcement agency—it cut its previous five-month training academy to just 47 days, a period chosen, according to what three officials told The Atlantic, “because Trump is the 47th president.” ICE is no longer interviewing candidates before hiring them and swearing them in virtually, promising that it’ll catch up on their background checks later, CNN reported. The training has already been cut a second time to just 42 days to speed getting officers into the field. The fact that as DHS deploys CBP and ICE in new ways in American life that it is actually CUTTING, and not increasing, training, shows that DHS has no intention to have them up to the basic national law enforcement standards—they are being designed to be a blunt instrument only, a roving paramilitary force that serves at the pleasure of the president himself. Lastly, news headlines are also beginning to feel eerily familiar about what the early warning signs of CBP’s tidal wave of misconduct and criminality looked like in the late 2000s. There are major warning signs that ICE’s workforce has a similar misconduct problem today. In December, a detention officer at an ICE facility in Louisiana pleaded guilty to raping a Nicaraguan detainee for months, and an off-duty ICE officer who shot and killed a man in L.A. on New Year’s Eve had been accused of “allegedly whipp[ing] his sons with a belt and ma[king] racist and homophobic remarks in the past.”) And again—the hiring surge is just getting started. Furthermore, there are two specific new concerns I see looming on the horizon that I have not addressed previously in today’s testimony. First is ICE and CBP’s giant investment and deployment of surveillance technologies—some of which have been leading to mistaken arrests in the field and much of which, as currently envisioned, is not consistent with policing in a free society. ICE is extensively using data-mining and facial recognition technologies with little public understanding of the safeguards behind their use. In particular, there’s a facial recognition app called “Mobile Fortify,” which ICE is using and claiming is the “be-all-and-end-all” of whether someone is in the United States legally. There are multiple documented instances where this app has returned false or contradictory information and yet ICE has relied on it to make detentions and arrests. A Border Patrol Agent scans the face of a driver as they stop and question him in the street during an Immigration Enforcement Operation in Minneapolis.Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu/Getty Second, I have not spoken much about ICE’s detention centers; the Trump administration and ICE are in the midst of enormously ambitious plans to double the capacity of detention facilities, from about 55,000 beds to more than 107,000 beds, as part of the plan to pour about $45 billion into detention facilities. I would expect and predict that over the course of 2026, we will see this plan become the center of new scandals. Let me leave you today with a final point: This doesn’t change unless we demand change and make it change—the way that the funding for ICE has been allocated, it can spend this money straight through 2029. Congress is going to have to act to turn that funding and hiring spigot off—otherwise, this continues on autopilot for the next four years. But the damage we are doing to our own country is long-lasting. Remember we are two decades removed from the start of the CBP hiring surge and I can still find you a news story or headline every single day that traces its origins back to the mistakes made in that surge. We as a nation must act to change the trajectory of immigration enforcement in our country. America cannot survive as a free society if ICE and CBP continue to operate as they have over the last year—let alone as both agencies are turbocharged and empowered with even more funding, more officers, more guns, and more arrests.

This story was co-published with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. On December 31, in the waning hours of 2025, the Washington Post reported on an internal ICE document that concerned the agency’s “wartime recruitment” strategy, or rather its attempt to expeditiously swell its ranks of deportation officers. The memo, according to the Post, had in mind a pool of ideal candidates who lead a “patriotic” lifestyle and have an interest in “military and veterans affairs,” “physical training,” “gun rights organizations,” and “tactical gear brands.” The memo’s logic was easy enough to understand, since what it described, if you read between the lines, was an informal paramilitary that was waiting to be tapped. Over the last month—as a violent federal occupation has unfolded in Minneapolis, where veteran immigration agents brutally killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti—both the memo and the new recruits it would draw into the fold began to take up outsized space in my mind. For a long time now, the gun rights movement has been animated by the promise of a violent reckoning, a sentiment nurtured by the groups that represent it and Republican politicians, who seek to channel a wild, truculent energy into votes and profits. It seemed the promise was being fulfilled in Minneapolis, like the fatal denouement of a production that had one harbinger after another. > “Any mission, any condition, any foes, at any range.” During the 2016 election cycle, when as a reporter I attended my first National Rifle Association annual meeting, I began to see that the promised reckoning could not be delayed forever. At the convention, in Louisville, Kentucky, there was the tradeshow floor, akin to a medieval arms bazaar and containing some 520,000 square feet of guns and tactical accessories. There were seminars covering “Defensive Shooting Skills Development,” “Methods of Concealed Carry,” “Current and Emerging Threats,” and “The Bulletproof Mind For The Armed Civilian.” And there was a line of some 7,000 people, leading into an arena called “Freedom Hall,” where there would be speeches by the emerging Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and Mark “Oz” Geist, a member of the Benghazi diplomatic compound’s security team that had come under siege in 2012. Three middle-aged white men stood in line in front of me making confident assertions about Barack Obama and “government cover-ups.” One informed the others that Obama, still president, had purchased a “$10 million mansion in Saudi Arabia,” where he and his family would flee after leaving the White House to “evade charges.” Trump would of course chase him down, the man assured everyone, while the United States reembraced frontier justice and flourished under his rule. The line then moved inside, 7,000 people took their seats, and the Republican presidential candidate promised them: “I will never let you down.” Based on the ecstatic response from the crowd, it seemed to me that the message Trump had transmitted was about power—raw power—and who would wield it during his administration.   Going back to at least the early nineties, when President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was in office, gun rights organizations, led by the NRA, and various prominent Republicans pushed an argument for the Second Amendment that was disguised as a historical one. The right to bear arms, they said, was intended to be unfettered because its purpose was to provide citizens with the means to fight a tyrannical government that had turned against its own people. Federal agents, under Clinton, were “jack-booted government thugs,” according to a notorious fundraising letter signed by former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. These thugs, he said, had the power to “take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.” It was often implied that such arguments, which grew in prominence during Barack Obama’s tenure, applied only to the Democratic Party, which posed a vague yet persistent threat to “freedom,” while the Republican party would preserve it. Republican values were antithetical to tyranny, whereas Democrats were inherently tyrannical, and therefore any actions taken by the former were in service of saving the country from the latter. In 2016, while sitting in “Freedom Hall,” I began to feel a sense of alarm that I’d never before felt. Under Trump, this contingent would feel it had permission to act against the enemy. The carrot that was dangled during each election cycle—in fundraising pitches by gun rights groups and the sale of military-style firearms to civilians—was finally being fed to the horse. There would be no more “couch commandos,” as gun industry executives referred to their most enthusiastic customers in the years after 9/11. This was the period in which soldiers were in American streets, and the industry, en masse, had seized on a marketing opportunity to blur the line between soldier and civilian.  What the industry was selling was theatrical participation, the thrill of COSPLAY, except the props were real. “As close as you can get without enlisting,” one gun company, in 2010, boasted as it advertised its “semi-auto only version of the U.S. Special Operations Command’s newest rifle.” “Any mission, any condition, any foes, at any range,” said another manufacturer about its latest assault weapon. In the ad it was equipped with a scope and propped on a tripod, as if intended for a sniper, which of course was the point. Companies were selling military-style weapons with a “combat-proven design,” that provided “versatility on the range or during patrol,” and were a symbol of “bravery on duty.” To enhance the feeling of a simulated combat experience, manufacturers of AR-style firearms cut product placement deals with video game designers. An executive at the gun company Sig Sauer told authors Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, who co-wrote the book American Gun, that featuring the weapons in games was tantamount to “seed planting.”  Buying a gun had become a way to serve at home, and serving at home came to mean preparing for Democratic tyranny. In 2015, for instance, while Obama was still president, the Pentagon prepared for a training exercise across the American Southwest called Jade Helm 15. It was here that the performative, paranoid politics of the right during the Obama years reached something of a fever pitch. Conservative bloggers and commentators created widespread hysteria by alleging that the exercise was a veil for imposing martial law, confiscating firearms, arresting dissidents, and taking over Texas. The state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, called on the Texas State Guard to monitor developments. It was “important,” he said, that Texans know their “rights” and “liberties” would not be “infringed.” The last word did not seem like an accidental allusion to the Second Amendment. For conservative elites, the preservation of power requires giving those beneath them a taste of it, without actually surrendering anything substantial, such as higher tax payments. In the meantime, they have created a shadow army, empowering them not with wealth but with the alluring prospect of crushing their opponents. A few months after the 2016 NRA convention, Trump said at a rally that Hillary Clinton “wants to abolish” the Second Amendment. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” he went on. “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.” Trump for much of his career had been the paragon of vapid wealth, but unlike other leaders of the right who came before him, he was signaling that he would take the army off standby, out of the realm of theater, and move the violent plot forward. The 2020 anti-lockdown Covid protests were a stark indicator of the new paradigm under Trump, who directed blame for restrictions toward Democrats such as Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. After state lawmakers voted to extend her state of emergency, a large group of men carrying assault rifles packed the Michigan Capitol rotunda and attempted to barge into the legislature, where a line of police guarded the doors. They screamed in the faces of the officers, who looked on impassively. > The lurid fantasy at the heart of the gun rights movement is playing out, but > the leading roles, as they were previously imagined, have been reversed. As the year wore on, Trump told the Proud Boys during a televised presidential debate to “stand back and stand by.” His loss to Joe Biden then set into motion the January 6 insurrection. Oath Keepers stashed an arsenal of weapons at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia. One member imagined a scenario in which “millions die resisting the death of the 1st and 2nd amendment.” A week later, a middle-aged white man named Ian Rogers, a California resident and proud NRA member, was arrested with his best friend for planning to attack the state’s Democratic headquarters. He owned roughly 50 firearms, including four illegal automatic weapons, and had stockpiled 15,000 rounds of ammunition. Writing to me from prison last year, he said that the Democratic Party was “the greatest threat facing the United States today.” He went on, “Just as Rome was brought down by enemies within, we have such traitors amongst us now,” adding, “These people fundamentally hate the country and they will do anything to impose their vision on the nation.” Now, in Minneapolis, masked federal agents, dressed as soldiers, have fatally shot two American citizens. Both were victims of an occupation, in which the Trump administration has unleashed a savage campaign of terror against civilians. The lurid fantasy at the heart of the gun rights movement is playing out, but the leading roles, as they were previously imagined, have been reversed. The party in power is not a Democratic regime, but a Republican one, prompting accusations of hypocrisy against gun rights organizations, who have had little to say and have not called on their followers to face down tyranny in Minneapolis. Following the merciless second killing, of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, federal officials, led by Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, concocted a false narrative alleging that Pretti had murderous intentions. Pretti had a sidearm on his waist, and they shamelessly pointed to it as evidence, even though the gun was holstered, he was legally carrying it, and agents shot him after they had removed the weapon.  Officials also tried to argue that, owing to the firearm’s presence, Pretti’s death was justified. This assertion presented an existential quandary for gun rights organizations, which have spent decades working to dismantle carry restrictions. One by one, the groups issued statements about how a holstered handgun did not give law enforcement the right to kill a person. That was the wrong message, the groups said, but the tyranny of the occupation itself was treated as legitimate. Gun Owners of America stated that “the Left must stop antagonizing @ICEgov and @CBP agents who are taking criminals off the streets and play a crucial role in protecting communities and upholding the rule of law.” The NRA similarly declared, “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs.” What is happening now, in other words, is a reminder that the argument about government tyranny was always a canard. Beneath it lurked what was really at stake, which was the right to assert control through force. Over and over, conservatives and Second Amendment stalwarts have claimed that right as their own, with Minneapolis being the latest example. The story they have told for decades is a binary one—good versus evil. In that framing, they are righteous and have but one job: Vanquish the enemy. Hold power. Save America. The same day Pretti was shot, video surfaced of federal agents pointing their weapons at civilians. “It’s like ‘Call of Duty,’” someone could be heard saying, referencing the blockbuster military-style video game series. Since then, Trump has suggested he will deescalate in Minneapolis. But whatever happens, the players have had a taste of the real thing, and there’s no going back.

Over a few weeks this January, two Minneapolis sisters repeatedly left their homes and headed out to mock, insult, and record Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, who until recently was leading the disastrous and violent anti-immigrant operation of the city. The first time they heard him speak, the women, who uploaded their street surveillance of Bovino to TikTok, howled with laughter: Bovino’s voice is somewhat high and surprisingly nasal. “Wait, your voice is not what I expected,” one of the women hollered through a megaphone, sounding near tears with hilarity. “Speak again! Talk again!”  > “When I realized that I had eyeballs on these videos, I had some power.” The first time they had seen Bovino, things went differently. The two women, who are both in their 20s and asked that they not be named or have their videos linked, were standing on a public sidewalk after spotting ICE vehicles nearby, when Bovino walked out of a local TV-affiliate’s building flanked by masked men. “I had my megaphone,” one sister told me. “And I just screamed at him with all the rage in my body from across the street.” While righteously venting was, she says, “cathartic,” she noticed that Bovino also seemed to enjoy it. “He was energized by it. It was so gross.” With their anger seeming to backfire, the sisters “realized we need to strategize,” she says. After some research, “we chose mockery as a deliberate tactic,” she says, a way to try to respond to and puncture the image that Bovino has carefully crafted. “His social media presence, his news appearances—everything he does—leans into these theatrics,” she says. “He posts what I call thirst traps to his Instagram, these edited videos of him walking around and detaining people. It was so clear that it was the attention that he wanted.” Luck was on their side; the next time they saw Bovino again, he looked at the sisters and chirped, “All right! Title 8 immigration enforcement!” Her laughing response of borderline hysteria worked, she says: “You can see in his body language that it just shuts him down.” The video went viral, and prompted the sisters to create a series of riotously funny and often uncomfortable videos based on their continued birddogging of Bovino and the agents accompanying him. “I wanted to put a video out there so other people could see him and make sure they could recognize him in public and make sure he didn’t have peace,” the Minnesota woman explains. “I wanted to alter public perception of him. He works so visibly hard to portray a powerful image. When I realized that I had eyeballs on these videos, I had some power myself to alter that perception.” Before his apparent demotion and unceremonious return to the arid confines of El Centro, California, Bovino had come to stand in for the proudly amoral, violent, lie-riddled way that ICE has conducted operations in Minnesota and elsewhere. He’s also an excellent representation of how monumentally cheesy these guys are. The Border Patrol commander, who is, as many protesters have pointed out, quite diminutive in stature, likes to stride around in a long military-style green coat and a questionably useful leather cross-body strap, both of which clearly resemble outfits donned by Nazi SS commanders. “Get your Hitler coat off, you little bitch,” one of the Minneapolis women recommended during one of their on-camera interactions. (In a sympathetic interview with the outlet News Nation, Bovino claimed that the coat is “Border Patrol issued,” adding, “I’ve had it for over 25 years.”)  More broadly, the clothes that ICE and CBP agents wear are a fine example of the powerful blend of menace, deadly incompetence, and total lack of drip they constantly display. Having made anonymity a hallmark, they virtually always appear masked, sometimes sporting neck gaiters with skulls on them, when they’re not wearing what GQ has called “Dropshipped Normcore,” “a kind of algorithmically-influenced, masculine mish-mash of the kind of high-crowned baseball hats, tight graphic T-shirts, open plaid button-ups, slim stretch denim jeans or cargo pants, and anonymous walking sneakers or trail shoes.” The author and illustrator Molly Crabapple has called them a “Temu death squad.” It’s no surprise that masked ICE agents slipping on (real) ice have provoked such intense hilarity that Homeland Security officials apparently instructed FEMA workers to avoid using the term “ice” in recent winter storm warnings, to avoid having their posts “being turned into internet fodder.”  It is, of course, not just ICE and CBP who look and sound like tremendous dorks while doing real and frightening damage. The Trump administration has adopted a cruel, gross, and weird way of communicating, blending moldy internet memes with overt white supremacy. The way they perform impunity when they are caught doing that is also a blend of chilling and deeply uncool. After Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Twin Cities activist was arrested after allegedly disrupting a church service, the White House was caught circulating a manipulated image showing her in tears. (Actual photos of the arrest show her looking calm and serious as she’s led away.) After The Guardian broke that story, the White House responded with what they clearly considered to be an epic clapback. As deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr posted, “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”  > The response from the American public has been to continue making fun of this > administration. “The memes will continue” is incredibly weak: it sounds like something Elon Musk would tweet in his frenzied and thus far unsuccessful efforts to be funny online. The White House’s memes about taking over Greenland last month also had an unpleasantly Musk-like aroma: an AI-generated image of Donald Trump walking hand-in-hand with a penguin that is holding an American flag, for instance, along with the words “Embrace the penguin.” (There are no penguins in Greenland, or really anywhere in the northern hemisphere.) These attempts at meme-based relevance go hand-in-hand with all the unsuccessful pivots and impersonations that people in the Trump orbit have tried to look cool, culturally relevant or even, God help us, badass: Katie Miller’s excruciatingly dull fascist wine mom podcast, say, or Pete Hegseth’s American flag-lined suit, camo ties, and ongoing impression of Slim Pickens‘ atomic bomb-riding cowboy character in Dr. Strangelove. There’s also JD Vance pretending he enjoys the Internet jokes about him having sex with a couch. All of these gambits try—and fail—to serve the same purpose: to make these people look cool, funny, or with it while they advance a profoundly unpopular agenda. Not surprisingly, the response from a large sector of the American public has been to continue making fun of this administration, from our increasingly exasperated and radicalized late night hosts—minus the always gutless Jimmy Fallon—to Minnesota protesters braving subzero temperatures to throw snowballs at ICE vehicles, pour a little freezing water on the ground, and let Greg Bovino know his coat looks stupid. Even world leaders openly mock Trump, as in a viral video from earlier this year of the leaders of France, Azerbaijan, and Armenia joking about Trump’s inability to keep the later two countries straight, or who might be at war with whom.   Trump’s opponents have tried this before: the former-reality TV star was treated like a joke almost right until the moment he won the 2016 election. It was hard not to, what with his surreal Baked Alaska hair, his ridiculous braggadocio, his weird grudge against windmills, and other endless things about him to mock—physically, financially, and spiritually. Recall, if you will, that the Huffington Post classified Donald Trump under “entertainment” news until, at the end of 2015, they had to stop doing that. Personally, in the time I worked at the feminist website Jezebel, we came up with dozens of creative nicknames to describe the then-candidate, including ones like “future leader of the free world” that I imagine were somewhat funny at the time. Srdja Popovic, a self-described “revolution consultant” whose activism helped overthrow Slobodan Milosevic, calls mocking the powerful “laughtivism”—using humor and creativity to effect profound social change. The Minnesota woman says that in their video-recorded beclowning of Greg Bovino, she and her sister happened on a central principle of mocking a powerful public figure, one that Popovic also understood: forcing the target into a situation where he would wind up looking silly no matter what. Popovic calls it a “dilemma action.” “We put him in a lose-lose situation,” the Minnesota woman says. “He could’ve kept talking and we would make fun of his voice, or he shuts up and we looked like we shut him down.” Dictators and despots understand the dangers of humor: early in his rule, Vladimir Putin was reportedly enraged by a depiction of him as an ugly, weird-looking puppet on “Kukly,” a show put out by the then-independent TV channel NTV. He demanded his puppet avatar never appear again and the show, as the New Yorker has written, cheekily obliged: a subsequent episode showed Putin as various weird manifestations of God, like “as a burning bush and a storm cloud.” In Nazi Germany, people also mocked Reich officials for being unpopular, incompetent, sweaty losers; so-called “whisper jokes” proliferated as a way to express discontent. Germans did this even when the stakes were deadly: in 1943, a woman named Marianne K cracked a joke about Hitler standing atop a radio tower with with Goering, trying to come up with something that would cheer up Berliners. “Why don’t you jump?” Goering suggests. After someone ratted her out, Marianne was soon executed. > By clumsily attempting to get in on the jokes, the people in charge try to > defuse their power. In an echo that might sound familiar today, Hitler and other Reich officials also took their own stabs at humor to make themselves more popular: a New York Times article from 1940, with the unfortunate headline “Hitler’s Fun,” says that a recent speech by the dictator was full of “merry quips,” adding, “He was very jovial about the thousands and thousands of bombs he promised to drop on England nightly for every hundred the British raiders scatter over Germany.”   By 1944, mockery was firmly entrenched in Germany as a form of dissent, the Times reported, including widespread parodies of popular Nazi songs. “None of the joking is very brilliant humor,” the paper sniffed, “some descending to gutter level, but showing, nevertheless, the general discontent with the Nazi regime on the part of vast numbers who have been deprived of other means of registering their disapproval.”  The danger with merely making jokes, then as now, is that they serve as a way to let off steam without effecting actual change. The Nazis, for instance, tried to at first stem the tide of parody songs, as the Times reported, before eventually thinking the better of it: “Goebbels evidently has decided on second thought that this sort of activity was a safety valve that would be dangerous to remove.” Similarly, JD Vance has not only pretended to love being called a couch-fucker, but, on Halloween, dressed as one of the memes of himself that has circulated online. By clumsily attempting to get in on the joke, the people in charge try to defuse the power those jokes have against them. These days, it feels borderline delusional to think it will do any good to mock Trump or the various maladaptive, malevolent dorks around him. Every joke that could be made has been, and all of them have bounced off him like a million arrows against the carapace of an armadillo streaked with cheap self-tanner. (See, I couldn’t resist one more, and look where it’s gotten us: nowhere.) Most credit for how Minnesota is prevailing against ICE should go to serious, effective, broad-scale activism, resistance, and community solidarity—and not just jokes about Greg Bovino. Yet the two things aren’t mutually exclusive. And in a way, jokes about Trump, ICE, and all the rest of them are a way of reasserting and insisting upon observable reality: what’s taking place is shocking, reprehensible—and also powerfully wack. When then-vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called Trump and his gang “weird,” it went over remarkably well, a rare example of a politician simply saying what so much of the public was thinking. Humor alone will not save us. But perhaps it allows us to continue the painful task of looking at what’s really happening here, and, in the words of the artist Barbara Kruger, “the ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers” who are doing it to us.   The day that we spoke, the Minneapolis woman was digesting Bovino’s departure, and Tom Homan’s installation. “I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and learn about the new guy,” she told me. If ICE ever actually leaves her city, she adds, “I think sharing what we as a community have learned with the other cities that they’re going to go to will be huge. I think we’re going to be a model for the resistance of the occupation. I hope my videos showed one way of doing that, but there are so many more.”

As January comes to a close, it should not just become a harrowing memory. The past four weeks are a harbinger of what is to come under President Donald Trump, as the administration showed exactly the future it is building: One in which the laws are ignored, American life is cheap, and elections are hijacked by FBI raids. This month, Americans have witnessed a lurch toward authoritarianism that cannot be ignored. If January 2026 was any indication, the march toward dictatorship isn’t linear, it’s exponential.  > The Trump administration has reached a point where they believe they can > simply shoot you for opposing its agenda. On January 3, the United States captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, and brought him to the US to stand trial. This was illegal. It doesn’t matter that Maduro was a dictator himself; his capture was a show of lawless force. The US is now overseeing the sale of Venezuelan oil, the Qatari bank account that holds the proceeds, and the dispersal of some of that money to Venezuela. Fresh off this literal coup, Trump began saber-rattling about taking Greenland, threatening Europe that he would even take it by force. Trump backed down after Europe rebuffed him, but it’s unlikely that his desire to appear big and strong by taking territory or invading other nations is over. Trump has not shied away from siccing an army on his own people. In Minneapolis, Trump’s immigration forces encountered organized and increasing resistance from protesters in the Twin Cities. In response, the government escalated their tactics. Thus far, armed federal agents have killed two American citizens, demonstrating that the price of opposing this administration can be your life. On January 7, Renée Good told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross, “I’m not mad at you.” Seconds later, he shot her three times, and followed that by calling her a “fucking bitch.” Outrage and a general strike across the Twin Cities followed. But the Trump administration didn’t back down. His Justice Department attempted to investigate Good, presumably to back up their smear that the mother of three with stuffies in her glove compartment was a domestic terrorist. As the protests continued, the administration grew bolder. On January 24, a group of masked Customs and Border Protection agents shot Alex Pretti in what looked like a state-sanctioned execution from a distant totalitarian country. Pretti is on his knees, surrounded by officers, holding his phone, helpless, when he is shot in the back. At least nine more shots pierced his motionless body as it lay alone on the street. The Trump administration has reached a point where they believe they can simply shoot you for opposing its agenda. Then they set about smearing Pretti, an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, as a domestic terrorist.  The backlash was predictably fierce. When multiple Senate Democrats began announcing they would not back a DHS funding bill without reforms to ICE, the administration showed a smidge of contrition. It moved CBP commander and Nazi impersonator Greg Bovino, who defended Pretti’s murder with such brazen lies that he proved to be a liability, out of Minneapolis. Nearly a week after his killing, the administration announced it would launch a civil rights investigation into the CBP agents who shot Pretti. This is likely a PR stunt, to be run by the same Justice Department that has contorted the law to harass and smear the president’s opponents. There is no evidence that this administration has any desire to rein in or punish its immigration officers, and Americans should not be fooled by a few days of conciliatory talk. The administration is barreling full steam ahead.  For months now, ICE, CBP, and their leadership have played fast and loose with federal court orders. Bovino, for example, repeatedly lied to Sara Ellis, a Chicago-based federal judge—and she called him out for it. Notably, that was not the conduct that Bovino’s superiors had a problem with. Now, ICE appears to be disappearing people from Minnesota and refusing judicial orders to either defend the disappearances or return the people they have apprehended. On January 28, Patrick Schiltz, Minnesota’s chief federal district judge, issued an extraordinary order calling out ICE’s refusal to follow court orders. “Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases” in his state alone, he wrote. “The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.” The violated orders are all habeas petitions, meaning the government has been asked to explain its arrest of an individual or to free that person, but it has simply refused. Schiltz continued: “This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” ICE, he continued, “is not a law unto itself.” But that’s exactly how this administration is determined to act. This week, I decided to look into how the Trump administration was ignoring Minnesotans’ Constitutional rights; the violations are innumerable, mounting to thousands per day. Federal agents are behaving like the First and Fourth amendments, in particular, do not apply to them; that witnessing and documenting their actions is a crime rather than a right; and that they can seize anyone they want—violently if they feel like it—rather than observe constitutional restraints on searches and seizures. The administration is not stopping at arresting protestors. On Thursday night, it arrested two journalists, prominent former CNN anchor Don Lemon and, on Friday morning, independent journalist Georgia Fort, who had both documented a protest at a church in St. Paul. Notably, both journalists are Black. “The nature of oppression in America is that they workshop it first on Black, Latino, Asian & Native people,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, posted on Bluesky of Lemon and Fort’s arrests. “But it is always, in the end, coming for everyone.” As if these facts weren’t alarming enough, the DOJ’s obsession with going after the two journalists led it on an unprecedented quest to convince federal judges to issue arrest warrants that the judges found frivolous. First, the government requested eight arrest warrants related to the protest. After a federal magistrate judge in Minnesota declined to issue warrants for Lemon, Fort, and three others, the DOJ asked the chief judge, Schiltz, to issue them. He refused, and the government went to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to force Schiltz to issue the warrants. The Eighth Circuit declined. Presumably, the government decided to get an indictment from a grand jury instead, but the source of authority for the arrests remained unclear as of Friday afternoon. President Trump’s second administration has inspired a resurgence of interest in the idea of the “dual state,” a framework for authoritarianism created by German Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel to explain how life for many people in Nazi Germany appeared normal even as authoritarianism took hold. Fraenkel theorized that society had been bifurcated into a normative state, in which the rule of law appears intact, and a prerogative state, in which the state ignores the law to take on its enemies or further its aims. In the 1930s, most Germans could go about their lives assuming the general laws would apply, but the targets of the state, such as the Jews, saw their rights stripped away. At bottom, however, the dual state is only a useful mirage. It lulls people into complacency because their lives continue apace, but at any moment, they can be sucked into the prerogative state where they are at the mercy of the state.  University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq, who is at work on a book about the dual state, has pointed out several examples from Fraenkel’s time as a lawyer in Nazi Germany that may seem eerily familiar to Americans in January 2026. In one, Fraenkel won a financial settlement for his client against the regime, only to discover that the money had been deposited in the government’s coffers. In another, a man was acquitted in court, only for a Gestapo officer to seize him anyway.  Over the last month, the contours of such a dual state have emerged again and again. When ICE detains people and then refuses to comply with judges’ orders—which happened at least 96 times this month, as Judge Schiltz documented—it is signaling that the targets of its raids have been taken not just into detention but into the prerogative state, where the rule of law cannot not reach them. When the government arrested Lemon and Fort even though multiple judges believed the charges were frivolous and refused to issue warrants, it refused to take no for an answer. Then there’s Juan Espinoza Martinez, who was acquitted by a federal jury of bogus charges that he ordered a hit on Bovino. Rather than let him go home, ICE picked up Espinoza Martinez, a Dreamer who has lived in the US since he was five years old. As of a few days ago, his family didn’t know where he was.  The bedrock of a democracy is the people’s ability to pick its leaders. On Wednesday, the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing ballots from the 2020 elections. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present at the scene, despite having no domestic law enforcement authority. She has been investigating the 2020 election, in which Trump lost to former President Joe Biden, to prove it was corrupt. But it would be naive to think that Trump’s obsession with his 2020 loss, and Wednesday’s raid, is just about the past. The administration is normalizing FBI raids on state and local election infrastructure. As election law expert Rick Hasen of the UCLA School of Law warned in Slate, the Fulton raid may be a “test run for messing with election administrators and the counting of ballots in the midterm elections in 2026.” The appearance of Gabbard at the raid is in line, Hasen points out, with election denier Cleta Mitchell’s suggestion that Trump could “declare a ‘national sovereignty crisis’ in a bid to take over the midterm elections.” Mitchell was on the famous 2020 call in which Trump demanded that the Georgia secretary of state “find” him the votes to win the state; this is not her first time trying to illegally overturn an election in Georgia. Trump attempted a chaotic and violent coup on January 6, 2021; it would be illogical to assume that he and his movement would relinquish power again. It is fitting that January was also the month that the world took a look at Donald Trump’s America and saw it for what it is: A bully that cannot be appeased any longer. Through his illegal attack on Venezuela, open designs on Greenland, not to mention murders on the seas and punitive and arbitrary tariffs, Trump has alienated longstanding allies. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called on nations to turn away from the post-World War II world order in which the United States is viewed as a leader and protector. “We are in the midst of a rupture,” he warned. America’s role at the head of international finance is also at stake, including Trump’s attempts to take over the Federal Reserve and US monetary policy, making the American dollar a risky bet for investors. The world is seeing Trump’s destruction of his own country for what it is; Americans should too. January 2026 has given us a frightening look into a future if the Trump administration continues its plans apace. ICE is buying up warehouses to convert into mass detention camps, and deploying dystopian tech tools to identify and track protestors as well as immigrants. ICE and CBP, the president’s violent paramilitary forces, have advertised their a willingness to break the law, to violate people’s rights, to ignore judges’ orders, and now to execute their critics. When they shot a defenseless man in the back in broad daylight, they showed who they were, and where they plan to go next. We’ve been warned.

A version of this story was originally published by The Watch, Radley Balko’s Substack publication, to which you can subscribe here. Conservatives are fond of invoking the American founding, the framers of the Constitution, and the principles that drove the fight for independence. Those invocations have always been selective and opportunistic, but they’ve grown downright farcical as right-wingers contort themselves into knots to defend executive powers explicitly contradicted by the Constitution. The Republicans’ veneration of the founders is particularly rich at the moment because, of all the abuses England heaped on the colonies, nothing angered them more than the Crown’s deployment of soldiers on city streets—and the streets of Boston in particular. Anger, resentment, and violence simmered in Boston for years before the Boston Massacre in 1770. The Declaration of Independence Trump hangs in his office came six years later, followed by the American Revolution, then the birth of the United States. The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and then the debate over the Bill of Rights. The founders were also students of history, and saw how the domestic use of the military led to the fall of the Roman Republic. This, in large part, is why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress. You really can’t overstate how much the founders worried about, well, exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. When I was researching my first book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, I found a remarkable archive of colonial-era newspaper articles published as a collection in 1936 by a historian named Oliver Morton Dickerson. The articles are from A Journal of the Times, a pro-patriot, anti-monarchy paper published in colonial Boston. Dickerson’s published archive, which runs from 1767 to 1769, documents the rising tension as English troops patrolled the streets of Boston. The accounts are clearly biased in favor of the angry colonists, but they’re also consistent with other contemporaneous accounts of the occupation. They read like a social media feed—if social media had existed at the time. They also depict scenes remarkably similar to those captured in smartphone videos coming out of the Twin Cities. The full engraving by Paul Revere depicting the Boston Massacre. We’re now at two dead in Minneapolis, with at least five killed by immigration officers overall. We’re at 42 dead since Trump was inaugurated last year if you count the soaring number of deaths in ICE custody, many of which appear to be from either neglect or abuse. Even as I was working on this post, there were two alarming new developments: First, the Associated Press reported that the administration has been keeping a secret memo authorizing immigration to enter homes without a warrant to arrest people who have final removal orders (the memo itself suggests even a final removal order may not be necessary). This is remarkably similar to the general warrants or “writs of assistance” the British crown issued permitting soldiers to forcibly enter any home they suspected of harboring untaxed imports. I’ll just state the obvious: If the Fourth Amendment permits the government to tear down your door with nothing more than an administrative warrant, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist. The argument that this only affects undocumented immigrants is both legally dubious and utter garbage—they’ve already used this policy to terrorize an American citizen. The second alarming new incident was the murder of Alex Pretti. And within hours of Pretti’s death, administration officials promptly did what they’ve done after the previous shootings: slandered the victim, brazenly lied about what happened, and prevented local law enforcement from conducting their own investigation. They’ve also refused to release the names of the officers who killed Pretti, publicly praised those officers, and then quickly announced that those officers have been returned to the field. The latter is a particularly sociopathic attempt to project strength. From the officers’ perspective, it’s a hell of a thing to kill someone. The notion that they’d bounce back within a couple days to go out and round up more immigrants is incomprehensibly callous. It’s also a demonstration of this administration’s contempt for human life and its dearth of basic humanity. From the perspective of the people of Minneapolis—and the rest of the country—the message is clear: This administration believes that killing protesters is a thing to be celebrated and encouraged. They believe that performatively lying about these killings in the face of directly contradictory video evidence is a display of strength and power. And they believe that the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments forged after the violence in Boston are mere suggestions. So, here are some excerpts from those newspaper accounts of the siege of Boston, along with comparative examples from the siege of Minneapolis. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > We now behold Boston surrounded at a time of profound peace, with about 14 > ships of war, with springs on their cables, and their broadsides to the town! > If the people of England could but look into the town to see the utmost good > order and observance of the laws, and that this mighty armament has no other > rebellion to subdue than what existed in the brain or letter of the inveterate > governor and commissioners… Minneapolis: From the complaint the state of Minnesota filed in federal court: > In December 2025, the federal government initiated “Operation Metro Surge,” an > unprecedented deployment of federal immigration enforcement agents…to the > State of Minnesota, including into the cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. > Operation Metro Surge has instilled fear among people living, working and > visiting the Minneapolis Saint Paul metro area. Thousands of armed and masked > DHS agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry > out dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional stops and arrests in sensitive > public places, including schools and hospitals—all under the guise of lawful > immigration enforcement. > > Defendants claim this unprecedented surge of immigration agents is necessary > to fight fraud. In reality, the massive deployment of armed agents to > Minnesota bears no connection to that stated objective and instead reflects an > alarming escalation of the Trump Administration’s retaliatory actions towards > the state. > > Defendants claim to have deployed over 2,000 DHS agents to the Twin Cities—a > number that greatly exceeds the number of sworn police officers that > Minneapolis and Saint Paul have, combined. Operation Metro Surge is, in > essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities. > > This operation is driven by nothing more than the Trump Administration’s > desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points—at the direct > expense of Plaintiffs’ residents. Defendants’ actions appear designed to > provoke community outrage, sow fear, and inflict emotional distress, and they > are interfering with the ability of state and local officials to protect and > care for their residents. After weeks of escalation, including a DHS agent > shooting into an occupied vehicle on December 21, 2025, in Saint Paul, a U.S. > Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agent shot and killed a > Minneapolis resident on January 7, 2026. Other federal courts have already found that Trump’s justifications for sending troops into Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland were based on lies and gross distortions of the reality on the ground. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > [It] appears that the Commissioners of the Board of Customs had repeatedly > complained of being obstructed in the execution of their office. > > The proceedings of Council that “what happened on the 10th of June, seems to > have sprung wholly from those who complain of it, and that it seems probable, > an uproar was hoped for and intended…and there was no occasion for men of war > to protect them.”… > > [In] their unanimous opinion, the civil power does not need the support of > troops; that it is not for his Majesty’s service, nor the peace of this > province, that any troops be required…” Again from the state of Minnesota’s complaint: > Defendants have targeted Minnesota for the latest unprecedented surge not > based on any real or legitimate concern for the enforcement of immigration > laws or promotion of public safety, but rather in service of Defendants’ goal > to score political points. If the Defendants’ true goal was to detain and > deport dangerous individuals, they would not accomplish it through what DHS > describes as “consensual” (namely: random) encounters with people on the > street. And if the Defendants’ true goal was to prioritize detaining and > deporting the highest number of immigrants with no legal right to remain in > the U.S., they would not be targeting Minnesota for what Defendants refer to > as the largest ever immigration operation. Data suggests that just over 1.5% > of Minnesota’s total population are noncitizen immigrants without legal > status, less than half the national average rate. > > On information and belief, that small percentage includes individuals whose > presence has been long known to DHS and who have kept regularly scheduled > appointments with DHS. Many states have higher rates of reported non-citizens > relative to their populations, including Utah, Texas, and Florida. The > administration has made no similar efforts to surge federal immigration agent > deployments into cities in Utah, Texas, or Florida. Incredibly, the reported > non-citizen population of Utah, Florida, and Texas (combined together) is > nearly the size of the entire population of Minnesota… And as for the pretext that the immigration crackdown was about combatting fraud in the Somali community: > [W]hile the “Feeding our Future” fraud case was in no way new, and in fact was > a case involving collaboration between state and federal resources to bring > perpetrators to justice, President Trump and others in his Administration have > repurposed the case in recent months in order to use the pretext of “fraud” > concerns as an excuse to engage in all manner of unlawful actions. > > Pertinent to this lawsuit, the Trump Administration recognized that the > Feeding our Future scheme involved a large number of Somali immigrants, and > since then, have used the case to disparage the entire Somali community, and > Minnesota’s Democratic politicians and policies. > > On November 21, 2025, President Trump posted on social media that Minnesota > “is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” and that he was therefore > “terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS > Program) for Somalis in Minnesota.” Then, on Thanksgiving Day, President Trump > posted a lengthy screed, falsely claiming that “Hundreds of thousands of > refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of > Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our > wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against > hope that they will be left alone…” > > The White House has similarly expressed that the 2,000 deployed DHS agents > have been sent to Minnesota to help with “targeted, door-to-door > investigations at locations of suspected fraud.” But Defendants’ > investigations have not been “targeted.” DHS agents have been conducting raids > at job sites and businesses, detaining and deporting individuals while they > perform essential work that directly benefits Plaintiffs’ communities. > > DHS agents also appear to be conducting general sweeps and detaining people > within their path based on their race and ethnicity. Defendants’ conduct > further undermines the notion that they are focusing efforts on individuals > with violent criminal histories or known targets in fraud > investigations—particularly where fraud allegations are primarily investigated > via reviewing documents, not by roving groups of DHS agents dressed in riot > gear and military fatigues. Multiple federal courts have found Trump’s pretexts for occupying other cities to be wholly without merit, from the claim that violence from protesters was preventing immigration officers from doing their jobs in Los Angeles, to false claims about protest violence at a detention center in Portland, to Trump’s deranged declaration of war on Chicago and claims that the city was fomenting an “insurrection.” The above passage from colonial Boston also speculates that England may have wanted a violent reaction from the colonists in order to justify more oppressive measures. That’s an authoritarian scheme that’s as old as authoritarianism. Here too, there are parallels to the occupation of Minneapolis and other cities. Former ICE and DHS officials say the administration is encouraging the sort of tactics and aggression prohibited by most police agencies, in a way that seems designed to provoke violence and backlash. And of course we know that Trump has been itching for an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act since the summer of 2020. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Several persons have been taken up within these few days by the soldiery, and > confined without warrant Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Gentlemen and ladies coming into town in their carriages were threatened by > the guards to have their brains blown out unless they stopped. Minneapolis: > Amid heated protests in Minneapolis following the killing of Renee Good by > Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross, federal agents have > repeatedly invoked Good’s death to threaten the lives of observers and > demonstrators in Minnesota. In multiple confrontations in the Minneapolis > area, agents repeatedly referred to civilians learning their lesson—in an > apparent nod to the use of deadly force in Ross’s killing. Two US citizens detained by immigration officers said one agent told them, “You guys have got to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” Another woman, a former Marine who says an ICE agent rammed her car, says agents warned, “Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch.” We also now know that Alex Pretti was coming to the aid of a woman who had been assaulted by an immigration officer when he was assaulted, tackled, disarmed, and shot. (You can see the video evidence here.) His reported last words: “Are you okay?” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > At about noon the inhabitants were greatly alarmed with the news that the > sheriff, accompanied by the soldiery, had forced an entry sword in hand . . . > Mr. Brown one of the inhabitants, in attempting to disarm him, received > several thrusts in his cloaths, the sheriff’s deputy entered with him; he then > gave possession of the cellar to some of the troops: A large number of > soldiers immediately entered the yard, and were placed as centinels and guards > at all the doors of the house, and all persons were forbid from going in and > out of the same, or even coming into the yard. The plan of operation being as > it is said to terrify or starve the occupants out of their dwellings. > > The sheriff refused giving Mr. Brown a copy of his warrant or orders for > this doing… Minneapolis: > A federal judge in Minnesota on Thursday ordered the release of a Liberian > man four days after heavily armed immigration agents broke into his home using > a battering ram and arrested him. US District Judge Jeffrey Bryan said in his > ruling that the agents violated Garrison Gibson’s Fourth Amendment rights > against unlawful search and seizure. “To arrest him, Respondents forcibly > entered Garrison G.’s home without his consent and without a judicial > warrant,” he said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > This night the sheriff procured guards of soldiers to be placed at his house > for his protection, a measure that must render him still more ridiculous in > the eyes of the people. Minneapolis: > White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is one of a handful of > President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members who are hiding out on military bases > so they don’t have to be exposed to the public that hates them. The > Atlantic reported Thursday that Miller, his wife, and their two children have > relocated out of their home north of Arlington, Virginia, to a US military > base after local activists embarked on a campaign to shame Miller for his role > leading Trump’s fascistic crime and immigration crackdown. Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio are also reported to now be living on military bases. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > [T]here was a general appearance of the troops in the Common, who went through > their firings, evolutions, etc. in a manner pleasing to the general…The > glitter of the arms and bayonets, and this hostile appearance of troops in a > time of profound peace, made most of the spectators very serious, and reminded > me of what a late traveller relates in his account of Turkey, “That being > present on a day when the Grand Signior was passing from his palace to his > mosque, and observing that the Janissaries stood without their arms, and with > their hands across, only bowed as the Sultan passed; he was led thereby to ask > a captain of those guards why they had no arms? Arms said he, thou infidel, > they are for our ENEMIES; we govern our subjects with the LAW. This passage expresses frustration at the British troop’s performative shows of force. We saw that early on in Los Angeles, when Border Patrol conducted a showy, militarized raid on a mostly empty public park to intimidate an immigrant neighborhood. Minneapolis: We’ve also seen this in Minneapolis, with the now-recalled Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino strutting through city neighborhoods bedecked in his fashiest trench, baiting local residents into confrontations. Last week he and his entourage showed up at gas stations, always with a garish show of force to draw angry crowds. DHS then put out a indignant statement complaining that the city’s “agitators” won’t even led immigration officers urinate in peace. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Lord Bottetourts, ordered [the soldiers] to their several stations in the > colonies, in order to exert their whole influence to carry down the late > regulations. In pursuance of this ministerial plan of policy, we now behold a > standing army and swarms of crown officers, placemen, pensioners and > expectants, co-operating in order to subdue Americans to the yoke. Minneapolis: > This is what happened in our neighborhood yesterday. ICE snatched a human > being off of our streets, roughed them up badly, and then pepper sprayed legal > observers as they documented it all. This is a daily occurrence happening all > throughout Minnesota right now. > > — Elliott Payne (@elliottpayne.org) 2026-01-19T15:46:56.285Z -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > The inhabitants of this town have been of late greatly insulted and abused by > some of the officers and soldiers, several have been assaulted on frivolous > pretences, and put under guard without any lawful warrant for so doing. A > physician of the town walking the streets the other evening, was jostled by an > officer, when a scuffle ensued, he was afterwards met by the same officer in > company with another, both as yet unknown, who repeated his blows, and as is > supposed gave him a stroke with a pistol, which so wounded him as to endanger > his life. Minneapolis: Protesters clash with agents outside an ICE facility after the killing of 37-year-old Renée Good by a US immigration agent, in Minneapolis on January 8, 2026.Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty A person is detained after confronting Border Patrol agents who were arresting two teenagers after a car accident on January 21, 2026 in Minneapolis.Stephen Maturen/Getty An agent threatens photojournalists with pepper spray on January 14, 2026 in Minneapolis.Scott Olson/Getty -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Here Americans you may behold some of the first fruits springing up from that > root of bitterness a standing army. Troops are quartered upon us in a time of > peace, on pretence of preserving order in a town that was as orderly before > their arrival as any one large town in the whole extent of his Majesty’s > dominions; and a little time will discover whether we are to be governed by > the [military] or the common law of the land. Minneapolis: > Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old US citizen, was arrested and detained by ICE. She > was held for TWO DAYS.ICE agents handcuffed her, called her a racial slur, and > she was knocked to the ground so hard she got a concussion.This cannot > continue happening. ICE needs to leave. > > — Minnesota House DFL (@mnhousedfl.bsky.social) 2026-01-22T01:42:12.898Z -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > The unhappy consequences of quartering troops in this town, daily visible in > the profaneness, Sabbath breaking, drunkenness, and other debaucheries and > immoralities, may lead us to conclude, that our enemies are waging war with > the morals as well as the rights and privileges of the poor inhabitants. Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: After noting that local grand juries had attempted to indict several soldiers for “detentions, assaults, and robberies” on Boston residents, the paper lamented that servants of the British crown refused to honor the indictments. > Our young King’s Attorney, refused…alleging as it is said, that “If a soldier > should with his fixed bayonet at the breast of an inhabitant stop and detain > him two hours, it would not in law be adjudged an assault.” It is hoped a > court and jury will otherwise determine it, and that it will no longer be a > doubt even in the minds of the most sceptical that the law of the land is to > yield to the maxims of a meer economy of the military, in civil communities. Minneapolis: Here’s Stephen Miller, incorrectly telling ICE soldiers that they have complete immunity from prosecution. He said this in a Fox News appearance last fall. Miller’s admonition was then amplified by the Department of Homeland Security after the killing of Renee Good: Vice President JD Vance has also wrongly claimed that federal immigration officers have “absolute immunity” from prosecution. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Last Wednesday night several officers of the army, sallied out of a house in > King Street, and meeting with one of the inhabitants of the town, they beat > and wounded him very cruelly Minneapolis: A Getty photographer throws his camera to a colleague as he’s swarmed and tacked by federal immigration officers.Pierre Lavie/Instagram -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Abuses are daily offered some one or another of the inhabitants, who are > generally for seeking redress in a legal way; and we cannot but hope that > those of the military, who oppose themselves to the law of the land, will find > the predictions of a great lawyer verified; “that in so doing, they gnaw a > file which will break their teeth.” Minneapolis: > Worth every second > > — Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) 2026-01-15T14:50:46.050Z -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > [S]ix more regiments may be soon expected from Ireland, and another from > Halifax. If pensions of £10,000 sterling per annum had been settled upon the > [public], rather than making so unnecessary a military parade, it would have > been a vast saving to the nation. Minneapolis: > Koh: Trump has now spent $30 billion from the last bill for 10,000 more I.C.E. > Agents that are going to be on the streets. That $30 billion would cover all > the ACA subsidies for a year. It would eliminate all co-pays for prescription > drugs for people from a year, and eliminate all medical debt. > > — Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2026-01-15T03:08:22.836Z -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > The old honest music master was roughly handled by one of those sons of Mars; > he was actually in danger of being throttled, but timously rescued by one who > soon threw the officer on lower ground than he at first stood upon; the > inoffensive keeper of the house for the Commissioners, presuming to hint a > disapprobation of such proceedings, was, by an officer, with a drawn sword, > dragged about the floor, by the hair of his head, and his honest Abigail, who > in a fright, made her appearance without a head dress, was very lucky in > escaping her poor husband’s fate. Whether our Governor will so resent this > behaviour of the military, as to collect affidavits, and make it a subject of > representation to the Crown cannot as yet be determined… Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > As some sailors were passing near Mr. Justice Ruddock’s house, the other > night, with a woman in company, they were met by a number of soldiers…this > soon brought on a battle in which the sailors were much bruised, and a young > man of the town, who was only a spectator, received a considerable wound on > his head; a great cry of murder, brought out the justice, and his son, into > the street; when the former who is a gentleman of spirit, immediately laid his > hands upon two of the assailants Minneapolis: Federal officers detain a person during protests in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis on January 13, 2026.Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Protestors face ICE agents near where Renée Good was killed by a federal officer the previous week in Minneapolis.Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/Getty -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > [H]e was presently surrounded with thirty or forty soldiers, who had their > bayonets in their hands…they then made at him with their fists and bayonets; > when he received such blows as obliged him to seek his safety by flight; they > struck down a young woman at his door holding out a candle, and followed him > and son into the entry-way of his house with their bayonets, uttering the most > profane & abusive language, and swearing they would be the death of them both… Minneapolis: > Federal immigration agents bashed open a door and detained a US citizen in his > Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him out onto the > streets in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family > and videos reviewed by the Associated Press. > > ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law alerted him on > Sunday afternoon that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were > banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. He told her not to open it. > Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling > at them, Thao recalled. “I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any > warrant; they just broke down the door.” DHS would later claim that Thao was living with two convicted sex offenders. That still would not have justified a warrantless raid on his home. But it was also a lie. Thao lived alone. The man the agents were looking for, it turned out, was already in prison. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > The other evening a petty officer of one of the ships of war, who had knocked > down a married woman of this town as she was quietly passing the streets, was > bro’t before him; and being reproved for his indecent speech & behaviour, on > trial, he swore that he would run his jack-knife thro’ the magistrates heart, > whereupon the justice committed him to goal: soon after as several fishermen > were coming out of a tavern in the same part of the town, they were assaulted > by a corporal and some soldiers, who wounded one of the fishermen very > grievously… Minneapolis: > View this post on Instagram -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: Here’s some pushback in the form of a sardonic letter to the editor written by a resident of the city. > “I am glad the troops are come and, believe their arrival will be for the > health of this country. There is a great deal of oratory in the glitter of > arms; and a few ships of war contain all the arts of persuasion. A cannon ball > carries with it, solid and weighty arguments; and a thrust in the side with a > bayonet, will give conviction in a moment…and as we can’t be persuaded into > such a wholsome practice by lenitive and moderate means, we must be brought to > the exercise of reason by vigorous measures, and the point of the bayonet > becomes necessary to fix the conviction. Preparations of steel and surgical > instruments, when lenitives fail, often times produce wonderful effects, and > are frequently used in opening the eyes of the blind. If we were not a dull > stupid race of mortals, and had seasonably relinquished the trade to > Great-Britain, the operation of cutlary ware, and the rhetoric of red coats, > would be of no service; but as matters now stand, the eyes of many want > couching, and these surgical operations must take off the film, and bring us > to our senses, and to measures that are so confessedly for our interest.” Minneapolis: A homeowner collects footage as neighbors confront ICE agents following arrests in a Minneapolis neighborhood on January 13, 2026.Stephen Maturen/Getty A man flips off Border Patrol agents as they detain an unidentified man of Somali descent in Minneapolis on January 8, 2026.Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > A young woman lately passing thro’ Long Lane, was stopped and very ill treated > by some soldiers, the cry of the person assaulted, brought out another woman > into the street, who for daring to expostulate with the ruffians, received a > stroke from one of them, and would probably have been further abused, had not > her husband, and some other men came up timely to her assistance; the soldiers > were then soon beat off and the young woman whom they had seiz’d as their > prey, rescued. Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > A girl at New-Boston, was lately knock’d down and abused by soldiers for not > consenting to their beastly proposal; a gentleman hearing the cry of murder, > ran to her assistance, one of the villains, immediately made off, the other > the gentleman seiz’d, tho’ upon his stiffly denying the fact, and charging it > upon the other soldier, the gentleman suffered him to depart; presently after > the same men assaulted a young gentleman of character supposing him to be the > person who had rescued the girl from their violence; their oaths, and insults > brought several people out of their houses, upon which the soldiers made off, > but return’d a few minutes after with a number of others, and a sergeant at > their head, calling out a riot! A riot! They then drew their bayonets upon the > people, and with many oaths and execrations, threatening to confine them in > the barracks if they did not immediately disperse, accordingly, they began to > put their threats in execution by seizing one of the company and drag’d him > towards the barracks, but the rest being resolute, the soldiers were obliged > to quit him; upon which the whole dispersed. Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > Last evening after church service, there was a considerable gathering of > children and servants, near the Town House, drawn by the music of the fife, > &c. which is again heard on the Sabbath, to the great concern of the sober and > thoughtful inhabitants; some of those youth’s having behaved so as to > displease the officer, orders were given the guard to clear the parade; they > marched up with bayonets presented—one of the lads was pursued by a soldier to > some distance, who made a thrust with his bayonet, which passed thro’ his > coat, and had he not thrown himself on the ground that instant, its thought he > would be run thro’ the body… Minneapolis: Liam was detained as he returned home from preschool The ICE agent in the photo then used him as bait to lure his father out of their home, after which both were arrested and sent to a detention center in Texas. Here is a photo of teenage girl confronted and detained by Border Patrol: A young woman sits in her car on Blaisdell Avenue after being rammed by a Border Patrol vehicle in Minneapolis on January 21, 2026. Stephen Maturen/Getty The girl and another teenager riding with her were arrested after what was initially described as a “collision” with immigration officials. Here’s what that collision looked like: A Border Patrol vehicle rear-ended a car driven by a teenage girl on Blaisdell Avenue in Minneapolis on January 21, 2026.Stephen Maturen/Getty A journalist saw the incident, and reported that the immigration agents struck the girl’s vehicle, as the photo suggests, and not the other way around. It isn’t clear why the two were arrested. (Even if the girl caused the accident, a traffic violation is not a federal crime.) The journalist says the girl handed a US passport to federal officials. Details about her passenger are unclear. What we do know is that there have now been multiple incidents in which ICE, Border Patrol, and DHS have been caught lying after agents rammed into the cars of protesters, observers, and people they suspect of being undocumented, then arrested the occupants of those vehicles on the lie that they intentionally assaulted the officers with their vehicles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: Here, A Journal of the Times article explains why it decided to publish the names of Boston merchants who were cooperating with the Crown… > Fellow Citizens and Countrymen: Inasmuch, as some persons among us have in a > case of the utmost importance, preferr’d their own supposed private advantage > to the welfare and freedom of America, it is highly proper you should know who > they are, who have at this critical time sordidly detach’d themselves from the > public interest. May this disgraceful, but necessary, publication of their > names, lead them to reflect on the baseness of their crime; and when they find > themselves slighted and shunned by their neighbours and acquaintance; when > their shops are deserted, and they feel their fortunes miserably impaired by > prosecuting the plan of purblind avarice; when their guilty consciences have > rendered this life insupportable; may they seriously attend to the concerns of > another: And altho’ they must suffer the punishment due to their parricide in > this world, may a humble and sincere repentance open the way to their > forgiveness in the next. Minneapolis: > The identities of thousands of federal employees working with Immigration and > Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have been leaked online, raising safety > concerns. > > According to a report from The Independent, the leak includes the identities > of about 4,500 federal employees working with ICE, including 2,000 agents. > They were shared with the website The ICE List, which calls itself a > “journalistic project” meant to share information to “hold ICE members legally > accountable.” > > The site, which accepts user-generated data, includes photos and descriptions, > and is indexed by state. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who is > included on the site, told NewsNation that the leak “would constitute 4,500 > felonies.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > [A] tradesman in an alley was without the least provocation knocked down by a > grenadier of the 29th Regiment; he soon came to himself, and having recovered > his cane, was quietly walking off; but soon perceived was followed by the same > soldier, who he called upon to stand back, but this not being regarded he made > so good a use of his cane, as to protect himself from any further abuse for > that time; [the soldier] dared to assault & wound him with his bayonet, in a > most cruel manner, a number of soldiers looking on, and had it not been for > the timely assistance of some of the inhabitants passing by at that time, he > would probably have been murdered: This person was confined to his house a > considerable time, by means of the wounds received. Minneapolis: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > The soldier had a bill found against him by the grand jury, but this being > suspected before it was given in, the criminal deserted, or rather was > concealed for a time, and then, as is supposed, conveyed away, as others had > been before him, out of the reach of the law… Minneapolis: > Gun-toting Feds swarmed the home of the ICE agent who fatally shot protester > Renee Good on Friday morning, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal. > > A Special Response Team arrived at the suburban Minneapolis home, where Jon > Ross, 43, lives with his wife and children, early this morning. > > Daily Mail images captured half a dozen Federal officers wearing masks and > balaclavas, one carrying pepper spray and another wielding an assault rifle. > > They entered the smart five-bed home before carrying out five large plastic > crates, a computer tower and a stack of picture frames. Also: > After Good’s death on Wednesday, the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension > announced that they would be investigating Good’s killing in tandem with the > FBI. But on Thursday, Superintendent Drew Evans said he’d been told that the > FBI would be the sole investigator and that the state agency had “reluctantly > withdrawn” from the investigation. > > “The BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or > investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent > investigation,” Evans said. “Without complete access to the evidence, > witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative > standards that Minnesota law and the public demands.” We’ve also learned that the FBI agents who initially began investigating Good’s death recommended opening a civil rights investigation. That was then vetoed by the administration, which ordered a criminal investigation of Good’s wife instead. Six federal prosecutors resigned, as did the FBI agent. I expect we’ll see similar stories about Alex Pretti in the days ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Boston: > A country butcher who frequents the market, having been in discourse with a > grenadier of the 14th Regiment, who he said had before abused him, thought > proper to offer such verbal resentment as led the soldier to give him a blow, > which felled the butcher to the ground, and left other proofs of his violence. > The assaulter was had before Mr. Justice Quincy, convicted and fined, and upon > refusing to make payment, was ordered to [jail]; but rescued out of the hands > of the constable, by a number of armed soldiers, in the sight of the justice, > when they carried their rescued comrade, in triumph, thro’ the main street to > his barracks, flourishing their naked cutlasses, giving out that they had good > support in what they were doing, and that they defied all opposition. Minneapolis: After killing Renee Good, DHS and Trump administration officials—including Trump himself—celebrated Jonathan Ross, Good’s killer, as a hero. Meanwhile, immigration agents teargassed and flash-banged a car with six children inside, sending two to the hospital, including six-month-old who had temporarily stopped breathing. After the incident made national news, DHS posted this: The family was driving home from a basketball game. I’ll sum up with this: The day before the murder of Alex Pretti, somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Minnesotans braved below-zero temperatures to protest and demand that Trump end his occupation of Minneapolis. Their resolve, bravery, refusal to abandon their neighbors, and defiance of a tyrannical federal government is the best of us. Our founding is fraught with moral complexities. But for all its faults if the American experiment survives all of this, it will be because of the valor and courage of the people of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Memphis, Charlotte, and Portland—and others like them all over the country. I also can’t help but admire their restraint. This administration has given them every reason to lash out with violence. They haven’t. Not yet. Perhaps that’s in part because, as noted, they know that this is exactly what Trump, Vance, Miller and the other ghouls in charge want. This administration wants an excuse to declare war on our cities. This administration should probably learn our history.

Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol “commander-at-large” who terrorized people across America in his Nazi-like trench coat, is being put out to pasture by President Donald Trump. The cause was Bovino’s stupidity, not his cruelty. After his Border Patrol agents disarmed and killed Alex Pretti in broad daylight on Saturday, Bovino shamelessly slandered the 37-year-old nurse only to have his lies immediately and irrefutably exposed by numerous videos of the killing. Instead of leading his band of masked agents from city to city, Bovino is now returning to his original role as the head of California’s not particularly busy El Centro border sector. The Atlantic reports that the 55-year-old is expected to soon retire. In place of Bovino, Trump has sent his border “czar” and first-term Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan to Minneapolis. Unlike Bovino, who had an unusual arrangement in which he reported to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instead of his immediate supervisors, Trump has said that Homan will answer directly to him.  It is worth stressing what Bovino got away with before Trump shoved him aside. In Los Angeles, Bovino and his gang occupied the city like an invading army, marching through MacArthur Park as a public relations stunt and pulling people off the street in obvious spasms of racial profiling that led to Trump’s Supreme Court explicitly legitimizing stops based on skin color. In Chicago, Border Patrol agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez multiple times while she was in her car. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes,” Exum later bragged in a text message. “Put that in your book, boys.” (Martinez survived the shooting and is now asking a judge to release evidence from a now abandoned federal case against her.) In November, Sara Ellis, a federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois, made clear that Bovino lied repeatedly to defend his and Border Patrol’s conduct in Chicago. As Ellis wrote about Bovino in a 233-page decision, “the Court specifically finds his testimony not credible. Bovino appeared evasive over the three days of his deposition, either providing ‘cute’ responses to Plaintiffs’ counsel’s questions or outright lying.” That included, she added, lying multiple times about the events that led to him throwing tear gas at protesters. He did this all with gleeful menace. His signature look was an authoritarian haircut paired with a winter trench coat reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany. As a writer for the German publication Der Spiegel put it, Bovino “stands out from this thuggish mob, just as an elegant SS officer stands out from the rowdy SA mob. The dashing undercut is also spot on; all that’s missing for the perfect cosplay is a monocle.” As noted by the Guardian, a second German outlet wrote that Bovino looked like “he had taken a photo of [assassinated Nazi paramilitary leader] Ernst Röhm to the barber.”  None of this stopped Noem and Miller from sending Bovino to Minneapolis, where he and his men predictably continued their anonymous thuggery. That culminated on Saturday with the killing of Pretti. From there, Bovino did himself in through sheer idiocy. Unlike the shooting of Martinez, for example, Pretti’s death was captured from numerous angles. The footage made clear that he was peacefully observing and recording Border Patrol agents before they tackled him, removed the handgun he was legally carrying, then shot him to death. But Bovino had apparently become so accustomed to lying that he went ahead and pushed the DHS falsehood that Pretti appeared to have “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Pretti, a former Boy Scout and VA ICU nurse, was too sympathetic to be smeared so brazenly. Trump recognized that and sent Bovino packing. But there should be no doubt that Bovino would still be in his job if his agents had done the same thing off-camera, or perhaps even on camera to a more easily maligned victim. His removal was also likely hastened by the lingering outrage from ICE agent Jonathan Ross brazenly killing Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. At least for the time being, Trump is taking a less confrontational approach in public by touting a “very good telephone conversation” on Monday with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as another one with Gov. Tim Walz, who he now says he appears to be on a “similar wavelength” with. He has also avoided repeating the obvious lies about Pretti spread this weekend by Bovino, Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Vice President JD Vance. Sources apparently loyal to Noem are now leaking to Axios to pin the blame on Miller for the false statement that was released by DHS on Saturday and repeated by Noem and Bovino. If true, it makes Bovino something of a fall guy for Miller, whose longtime role alongside Trump does not appear to be in jeopardy. (Miller was notably absent from a two-hour meeting between Noem and Trump on Monday, the New York Times reports.) Homan is a hardliner who has been described by The Atlantic as the “intellectual ‘father’” of the first Trump administration’s family separation policy. Unlike Bovino, however, his most recent experience is with ICE rather than Border Patrol. Along with acting ICE director Todd Lyons, he is reported to favor a somewhat more targeted approach to mass deportation that prioritizes people with actual deportation orders or criminal histories. Whether that changes DHS’ behavior on the ground—especially with Miller still in the picture—remains to be seen. Trump’s pullback on Monday is reminiscent of his abandonment of the family separation policy in the face of widespread outrage in 2018. The images and sounds of separated families came to define Trump’s first term on immigration—even though the policy ended well before the midpoint of the administration. It would not be surprising if the images of Pretti being shot in the back, then again and again as he lay motionless on the street, go on to occupy the same position. In that sense, what followed family separation may be instructive. Trump and Miller’s hardline measures to seal the US-Mexico border continued through policies like Remain in Mexico, multiple asylum bans, and expanding detention of asylum seekers who’d recently crossed the border. But the outrage over family separation also helped to wipe away the political advantage on immigration that helped Trump win for the first time in 2016. The killings of Pretti and Good, along with countless videos of immigrants and citizens being abused by masked federal agents, have similarly degraded the support for Trump on immigration generated by the chaos at the border during Joe Biden’s presidency. On Monday, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted before and after Pretti’s death showed that 53 percent of respondents disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, compared to 39 percent who approve. That is a 23-point swing from February 2025 when voters approved of Trump on immigration by a nine-point margin.  Six in ten independents now say that ICE has gone too far, along with more than 90 percent of Democrats. Perhaps more surprisingly, Republicans are now nearly as likely to say ICE has gone too far as they are to say that ICE has not gone far enough, according to the Reuters poll. After years of trying to avoid talking about immigration on the campaign trail, Democrats are recognizing that times have changed. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling on social media for fellow Democrats to reject an upcoming DHS spending bill. Democratic House leaders have joined efforts to impeach Noem. It is now Bovino who is silent on X, and not by choice. In the Trump administration’s equivalent of Siberian banishment, he has reportedly been blocked from posting by his superiors.

A Republican attorney in Minneapolis who gave legal counsel to the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good dropped out of the Minnesota governor’s race on Monday, saying he couldn’t win given the Trump administration’s violent campaign in the state. Chris Madel stated in a Monday announcement video that, “national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.” Despite dropping out, Mandel claimed to still support Trump’s “originally stated goals” of going after the “worst of the worst,” meaning people convicted of serious crimes.” Madel criticized the Trump administration’s justification for the cruelty. “Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats,” he said. “United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying their papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.” He continued: “I cannot support the national Republican stated ‘retribution’ on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.” Madel also defended his decision to provide legal advice to ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who killed Good earlier this month, saying he helped Ross “fill out a form” because “I believe the constitutional right to counsel is sacrosanct.” According to the Wall Street Journal, although Madel largely campaigned on his record of going after fraud, many of his cases were defenses of law enforcement.  In 2024, Madel represented Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan, who was accused of killing 33-year-old Ricky Cobb by firing several shots at him while in his vehicle. Londregan faced murder, assault, and manslaughter charges, but they were dropped later that year. At the end of the day, Madel said, “I have to look my daughters in the eye and tell them ‘I believe I did what was right.'” Madel’s decision comes as some Republicans have publicly voiced opposition to the DHS operation in Minnesota, especially after Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs, on Saturday. The Department of Homeland Security claims that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Multiple videos of the shooting refute this framing. But the Trump administration indicated that it would enforce this brutality well before Operation Metro Surge launched last month. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this month, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country. ICE is also in a hiring surge, deploying new agents with limited training to meet the administration’s quota of 3,000 arrests by ICE per day.

A new video published on social media contradicts the Department of Homeland Security’s account of why federal agents killed 37-year-old Minneapolis man Alex Pretti in broad daylight on Saturday. The graphic video, which was uploaded by Drop Site News, shows Pretti appearing to direct traffic and film federal agents on his phone. Soon after, he appears to be pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by multiple agents. About a half-dozen agents are on top of Pretti or in his immediate vicinity when he is initially shot. The gunshots continue after Pretti is on the ground.  > The video published by Drop Site makes clear that the victim was not holding a > weapon in the lead-up to the shooting, or when federal agents forcefully took > him to the ground. The video, along with others recorded from different angles, refute the more than 150-word account of the shooting that DHS published on social media on Saturday afternoon. In that statement, DHS claimed that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”  DHS has tried to back that up by saying Pretti had a handgun on him at the time, sharing a photo of it in the same social media post. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said on Saturday that the victim appeared to be a licensed gun owner. But the video published by Drop Site makes clear that Pretti was not holding a weapon in the lead-up to the shooting, or when federal agents forcefully took him to the ground. Instead, he only appears to be holding his phone to record the situation. DHS also tried to make what happened appear akin to an active shooter situation by claiming that “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” That is directly refuted by the video uploaded by Drop Site that was recorded in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, which makes clear that Pretti was peacefully observing the federal agents who approached him and later tackled him. There is no indication based on the available video evidence that he tried to harm federal agents, much less inflict “maximum damage” or “massacre” people. > Contrary to Bovino’s claims, there is no reason to believe that the Trump > administration will conduct a legitimate investigation of Saturday’s shooting. Border Patrol official Greg Bovino stuck to DHS’s story in a Saturday afternoon press conference, saying that Pretti approached agents with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. Bovino then deflected two questions about when agents learned Pretti had a gun and whether he brandished it at them. Instead, he said that the situation is “evolving” and would be investigated “just like we have done over the past several years.”  Contrary to Bovino’s claims, there is no reason to believe that the Trump administration will conduct a legitimate investigation of Saturday’s shooting. After Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross killed Renée Good earlier this month in Minneapolis by shooting her at point-blank range, the Trump administration tried to investigate Good’s partner, rather than Ross. That decision led to the resignation of multiple federal prosecutors in Minnesota. On Friday, the New York Times reported that FBI agent Tracee Mergen has also resigned after “bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry” of Ross. DHS has been caught in countless lies under Donald Trump. Last year, it falsely claimed that all of the more than 200 Venezuelans it sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison were members of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. That was refuted by reporting from Mother Jones and multiple outlets, but DHS never backed down from its lies about the Venezuelan men and ignored repeated requests asking for evidence to support its false claims. Earlier in January, the Trump administration accused Good of “domestic terrorism” after Ross killed Good. Video analysis of the encounter by the Times shows Good trying to drive away from masked federal agents, not run them over, as the administration claimed.  Even Trump retreated from his initial hardline stance after it became clear that Americans were not buying the administration’s lies about Good. On Tuesday, he called Good’s killing a “tragedy” and added that immigration agents are sometimes “going to make a mistake.”

Immigration officers in Minneapolis are now using a weapon that’s unfamiliar to many protesters: grenades that spew a noxious green gas. On Wednesday, Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino made headlines when he hurled a canister of it at a crowd that had gathered at Mueller Park. > U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino is seen deploying a gas > canister at Mueller Park in south Minneapolis this afternoon.Video by Ben > Luhmann. > > — Minnesota Star Tribune (@startribune.com) 2026-01-21T23:57:11Z “I’m gonna gas. Get back. Gas is coming,” Bovino says in the video, filmed by activist Ben Luhmann. The gas has been used repeatedly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Twin Cities, according to Andrew Fahlstrom, who helps lead Defend the 612, a community group opposed to the federal surge. “People are sharing images of” it, he said. “I don’t know the name, but they say it’s more toxic than regular tear gas.” The gas, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, appears to be made by the company Defense Technology. I reached out to experts to see what they knew about it and whether it really is more dangerous than other chemical munitions. Sven-Eric Jordt, a professor at the Duke University School of Medicine who studies tear gas and its health effects, had an answer for me. The Defense Technology website, he said, includes a link for each product that is supposed to go to a “safety data sheet,” which should provide safety information. Unfortunately, Jordt discovered, the links were broken. But he found a working link using Archive.org. The green smoke grenade used in Minneapolis is missing from the archive, but Jordt located another product that appears the same—another smoke pocket grenade—except it uses uncolored smoke. He also found a military-style green smoke grenade “that is equivalent but bigger.” These grenades contain worrisome chemicals. “The potassium perchlorate is a significant toxicant and some of it may expose bystanders, but most of it is likely burned,” he says. “The lead and chromium are highly toxic—listed as reproductive toxicants and carcinogens. Again, the amounts are small, but are of concern.” But compared with the CS tear gas pocket grenade, which deploys the kind of tear gas protesters are likely more familiar with, the green gas grenades have a smaller number of toxic constituents. “If exposures are equal, I would consider the CS tear gas pocket grenade to be more toxic than the smoke pocket grenade,” he said. “The green dyed smoke suggests high toxicity to protesters,” he adds, “but the effect is more psychological.”

Two days after an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, Rep. Roger Williams issued an ultimatum to the Trump administration’s critics in Minnesota and beyond. “People need to quit demonstrating, quit yelling at law enforcement, challenging law enforcement, and begin to get civil,” the Texas Republican told NewsNation. “And until we do that, I guess we’re going to have it this way. And the people that are staying in their homes or doing the right thing need to be protected.” > Rep. Roger Williams: "People need to quit demonstrating, quit yelling at law > enforcement, challenging law enforcement, and begin to get civil." > pic.twitter.com/r5TFLgFHy1 > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2026 That’s a pretty clear encapsulation of MAGA-world’s views on dissent these days. You aren’t supposed to protest. You aren’t supposed to “yell at” or “challenge” the militarized federal agents occupying your city. And anyone who wants to be “protected” should probably just stay “in their homes.” Williams isn’t some fringe backbencher; he’s a seven-term congressman who chairs the House Small Business Committee. He is announcing de facto government policy. For nearly a year, President Donald Trump and his allies have been engaged in an escalating assault on the First Amendment. The administration has systematically targeted or threatened many of Trump’s most prominent critics: massive law firms, Jimmy Kimmel, even, at one point, Elon Musk. But it’s worth keeping in mind that some of the earliest victims of the president’s second-term war on speech were far less powerful. Early last year, ICE began arresting and attempting to deport people with legal immigration status—such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk—who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activism or expressed pro-Palestinian views. The administration was explicit about the new policy. Troy Edgar, Trump’s deputy secretary of Homeland Security, made clear that the government was seeking to remove Khalil in large part because he’d chosen to “protest” against Israel. Asked about such cases, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that engaging in “anti-American, antisemitic, pro-Hamas protest will not be tolerated.” It should have been obvious at the time that Trump allies were laying the groundwork for an even broader crackdown. “When it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of them the same: Send them to jail,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in March, discussing Khalil’s arrest on Fox Business Network. “Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities.” That’s pretty close to Williams’ demand on Friday that “people need to quit demonstrating.” It also sounds a lot like Attorney General Pam Bondi’s widely derided threat in September that the DOJ “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Hate speech—regardless of what the Trump administration thinks that means—is protected by the First Amendment. Bondi can’t prosecute people for expressing views she dislikes. And ICE can’t deport US citizens like Good. But of course, federal law enforcement has more direct ways to exert control. “The bottom line is this,” said Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Texas Republican running for US Senate, in the wake of Good’s death. “When a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life.” > Rep. Wesley Hunt: "The bottom line is this: when a federal officer gives you > instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep you life" > pic.twitter.com/JhA09qoT8r > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2026 Moment’s later, Newsmax anchor Carl Higbie complained to Hunt that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) had “literally told Minnesotans to get out and protest and that it is, quote, ‘a patriotic duty.'” “People are going to go out there,” Higbie warned ominously. “And what do you think is going to happen when you get 3, 4, 5,000 people—some of which are paid agitators—thinking it’s their ‘patriotic duty’ to oppose ICE?”