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.

A peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon on Saturday broke into chaos as federal agents deployed tear gas on demonstrators—including families with young children.  Thousands of protesters marched through the city and gathered in the blocks surrounding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. According to the Oregonian, just minutes after the crowd arrived at the facility, federal agents launched tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades after some demonstrators approached the security gate.  Labor leaders from over 20 unions led the march to the ICE building, with many protesters participating as part of the “Labor Against ICE” rally.  > Video shared with me by attendee at the ICE protest in Portland, OR earlier > this evening where federal agents tear gassed peaceful protestors—including > children, disabled and elderly: > > — Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) 2026-02-01T04:09:52.219Z Portland City Councilor Mitch Green wrote in a social media post that he was tear gassed in the crowd: “Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions. I expect to see enforcement of our city code prohibiting the use of tear gas.” > I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had > their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed > children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions. I expect to > see enforcement of our city code prohibiting the use of tear gas. > > — Mitch Green (@councilorgreen.bsky.social) 2026-02-01T01:23:34.948Z Portland’s city code bans selling, furnishing, transporting, carrying, possessing, or using tear gas weapons within the city limits. The code does not apply to “members of the armed forces of the State of Oregon and the United States in the performance of their official duties,” but federal agents are not exempted under the statute. The Portland Police Bureau posted on X on Saturday night that they closed a major street to prevent drivers from being affected by the tear gas.  Portland Mayor Keith Wilson released a statement late Saturday night, saying that it was a “peaceful daytime protest” that “posed no danger to federal forces.”  “To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” he continued. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children. Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets.” Wilson said later in the lengthy statement that the city would carry out an ordinance that went into effect in January that imposes financial penalties on facilities where chemical agents are deployed. The crackdown against protesters in Portland comes one day after a nationwide uprising where hundreds of demonstrations took place across the country to demand federal agents leave American towns and cities.

Many thousands of protestors across hundreds of demonstrations around the country on Friday once again took to their streets to tell President Donald Trump’s federal immigration agents a simple message: Get out of our towns and cities.  Friday’s nationwide mobilization is only the most recent in a string of demonstrations demanding justice for those targeted in the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing, and violent, operations. Many of them focused on the brutality in Minnesota, including the killings of two US citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by federal agents, and the apprehension of Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old boy with the Spider-Man backpack and the blue hat, who is currently sick in a Texas detention center after being picked up by DHS officials.  There’s no clear sign of when agents will leave the Twin Cities, as a US District judge on Saturday declined to order the Trump administration to immediately scale back its operations. As the Washington Post reported, she argued “Minnesota and the Twin Cities had not definitively shown that the administration’s decision to flood the state with agents was unlawful or designed to force local officials into cooperating with the administration’s objectives.” And, even if some agents leave Minneapolis, scores of immigration officials around the nation continue to target people in their cars, at home, and while working.  In addition to protests, the widespread actions included refraining from economic participation—no shopping, no working—and a school walkout, organized by students around the country.  Here are just some of the places where immigrants and their allies—many of them schoolchildren—took to the streets across the US: TWIN CITIES Protests in Minnesota have continued unabated for weeks as locals face subzero temperatures, yet come out en masse around the Twin Cities area. Stephen Maturen/GETTY Anadolu/GETTY Stephen Maturen/GETTY John Moore/GETTY John Moore/GETTY ROBERTO SCHMIDT/GETTY CALIFORNIA Demonstrations took place in major California cities, including Los Angeles, where prominent journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents late Thursday night in connection with his appearance at a church protest in St. Paul, which he reported on earlier this month. Los AngelesGenaro Molina/GETTYProtesters descended on City Hall Friday, Jan. 30, 2026 as part of a nationwide day of action to stop funding for ICE and the shooting deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. Los AngelesPATRICK T. FALLON/GETTY San FranciscoSan Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/GETTY PasadenaMediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images/GETTY NEW YORK CITY Starting at Foley Square near City Hall, a large crowd of demonstrators marched toward Washington Square Park. Earlier this week, dozens of protestors were arrested after going into the lobby of a TriBeCa hotel where they said federal agents were being housed. Spencer Platt/GETTY Spencer Platt/GETTY NurPhoto/GETTY MIAMI Anadolu/GETTY Anadolu/GETTY CHICAGO Anadolu/GETTY Anadolu/GETTY BOSTON JOSEPH PREZIOSO/GETTY JOSEPH PREZIOSO/GETTY LIVINGSTON, MONTANA As with previous nationwide mobilizations, residents of smaller cities or towns gathered near the side of a road to protest. These are demonstrators in Livingston, Montana. William Campbell/GETTY William Campbell/GETTY COLORADO DenverMark Makela/GETTY DenverTimothy Hurst/GETTY BoulderMatthew Jonas/Boulder Daily Camera/GETTY CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA Peter Zay/Anadolu/GETTY Peter Zay/Anadolu/GETTY WASHINGTON, DC Anadolu/GETTY Anadolu/GETTY Tom Brenner/GETTY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And, demonstrations are not just in the United States. Anti-ICE protests in cities around the world, including Paris and Milan, took place this week in solidarity with demonstrators in the United States. Those in Milan were focused on protesting the possible presence of ICE at the Olympic Games. There’s another US-based nationwide mobilization planned for March 28. That action is being organized by the No Kings coalition, which has put on several mass demonstrations across the nation in the past year. Though it is unclear if another cross-country day of outrage will take place before then, as people remain ready to respond to whatever news alert about DHS comes across their phones next.

Donica Brady lost her job after the Trump administration cut grant funding to bring solar power across the country, including to tribal nations. She picked up multiple jobs to make ends meet. That, in addition to caring for children, whittled down Brady’s free time. So she invited reporter Ilana Newman over when she found a quiet moment—while skinning a deer—to talk about what the loss of solar funding meant to her and her community.  “When the opportunity came up to work and help us get something established…it was huge,” she said. Brady was one of many Indigenous people working to build energy sovereignty for tribal nations—work that continues despite the administration clawing back federal funds.  Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. This week on Reveal, we’re diving into how small communities across the country are navigating the current administration’s policies and how they show up in everyone’s lives, no matter where you are in this country. We’ve partnered with The Daily Yonder to share a story about the solar energy hopes of tribal nations; The Tributary in Jacksonville, Florida, to learn how local and state DOGE are complicating efforts to run the city; and Idaho-based reporter Heath Druzin to hear how the Trump administration’s immigration policy is rupturing the state’s Republican Party.

Students at the University of Minnesota, united with hundreds of groups across the country, are imploring people, young and old, to join a general strike on Friday. No school, no work, no economic participation, all toward the goal of ceasing funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The strike comes after weeks of the Department of Homeland Security occupying the Twin Cities and targeting immigrants at school, work, and home. And after federal agents on this campaign shot and killed two US citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti. As a part of the nationwide mobilization, students around the country are walking out of school to stand against President Donald Trump and DHS’s violent operations targeting American towns and cities.  Here’s a look: > I passed these amazing kids in Chamblee walking out of school to protest ICE. > Bravo, future, bravo. #walkoutGA #walkout #studentprotest #protest #abolishICE > > — MollyRoseWalker (@mollyrosewalker.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T06:33:42.793Z > HAPPENING NOW: KNOXVILLE/KNOX COUNTY students walk out to protest ICE (H/T > @votegloriaj.bsky.social ) > > — The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T16:07:59.407Z > Happening right now. Many schools, workplaces & businesses are joining in on a > national day of protest called “ice out day of action.” Here are teachers and > students at San Mateo high school before school this morning. Many students > will walk out at lunch to join nearby schools pic.twitter.com/NdsChcPImO > > — Will Tran (@KRON4WTran) January 30, 2026 > @yvonnebravo1 > > Agua Fria High School District students are walking out today, joining high > schools nationwide. They’re speaking truth to power and demanding action on > immigration because silence is no longer an option! > > ♬ original sound – Greatest Hits Ever! > TODAY: Thousands at UCLA walk out of class, calling for solidarity with > Minnesota and to demand ICE out of California. The walkout was organized by > UCLA’s student government along with the Afrikan Student Union and other > student clubs and organizations. > > — BreakThrough News (@btnewsroom.bsky.social) 2026-01-29T00:27:25.320810254Z > @telemundo.az > > En ASU los estudiantes protestan contra ICE como parte del Día de Paro > Nacional. #tempe #asu #paronacional #walkout @valentinasr_news > > ♬ original sound – telemundo.az – telemundo.az > BREAKING: Hundreds of Asheville High School students walk out of class to > demand a general strike, joining the national shutdown today to protest ICE > operations and Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. > > — BreakThrough News (@btnewsroom.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T17:33:36.473017581Z This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

“No work. No school. No shopping. Stop funding ICE.” That’s the rallying cry behind the campaign for a nationwide general strike on Friday, seeking to galvanize opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. This week, I went to the University of Minnesota, my alma mater, to speak to some of the students behind the effort that lists hundreds of endorsements from organizations and celebrities like Pedro Pascal and Hannah Einbinder. Events are planned across the country, from New York to San Francisco, where businesses are announcing they won’t open their doors. “We can do even more,” said Austin Muia, the vice president of the Black Student Union. “We want to bring it to the national stage and see it happen all over the country. We want everyone to feel that solidarity that we felt last week.” “Let’s try to get people from the East Coast, West Coast, from the South,” said Pamela Gray, founder and president of the university’s Liberian Student Association. Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen, a day after the first general strike that sent thousands of Minnesotans marching in the frigid Minneapolis winter. Students began organizing almost immediately for a second general strike, using their website to call on other states to join Minnesota in protesting Trump’s violent and increasingly unpopular immigration crackdown.

My heart was in my throat as I watched the video emerging late Tuesday. A disturbed, angry man had just rushed Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar during a town hall in Minneapolis and assaulted her. He sprayed her in the chest with vinegar from a syringe, then was tackled by security and arrested. Omar reacted defiantly, kept her cool and carried on with the event. She was quickly hailed for her fortitude. All I could think was, thank God she’s not dead. Initial media coverage referred to the attack by 55-year-old suspect Anthony Kazmierczak as “bizarre,” but it is worse than that. In more than a decade of reporting on violence prevention, I’ve studied many stalking cases and assassinations and the recognizable behaviors that precede them: the stewing grievances and desperation, the preparation, the final moment of action. The next assailant will just as easily have a knife or a gun. In this era of surging political violence, even worse yet was the reaction from the president of the United States. ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott asked Donald Trump on Tuesday night if he’d seen the video. His response was to disparage Omar as “a fraud” and suggest the attack was staged: “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” (There is zero evidence of that, and the perpetrator appears to have shared Trump’s acrimonious views of Omar.) America has felt on a precipice this cold January. Minneapolis has been ground zero, culminating with the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by masked men carrying out Trump’s mass deportation operations. Minnesotans have mounted an inspired campaign of mutual aid and constitutionally protected protest. A growing majority of Americans are with them.  > Trump’s rhetoric may sound ignorant and unhinged, but more importantly, it is > calculated. But Trump continues to direct contempt and rage at immigrants in so-called blue cities—and at Omar, long a top target of his vitriol. Last November, he responded to an unrelated terrorist attack on National Guard soldiers in the nation’s capital by railing against “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” in Minnesota, claiming they “are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state.” Days later, he called Omar, who is Somali American, and her community “garbage” during a live-broadcast cabinet meeting. As Trump declared they should “go back to where they came from,” many in the room applauded and Vice President JD Vance pounded the table enthusiastically. Trump was at it again in the very hours before Kazmierczak assaulted Omar. During a speech in Iowa on Tuesday, Trump said Omar exemplified immigrants who “hate our country.” Those who want to stay here, he said, “have to show that they’re not going to blow up our shopping centers, blow up our farms, kill people.” That may sound ignorant and unhinged, and it is those things—but more importantly, it is calculated. Trump made anti-immigrant demagoguery the core of his 2024 reelection campaign, and he has exploited political violence throughout his first year back in office, as I documented recently. He does so, political historian Matt Dallek told me, to rile up his base and further justify his extreme policies, including the violent and lawless actions of ICE: “The narrative he creates says to all his supporters that what he’s doing is ‘destroying the enemy within,’ that he’s taking care of the scourge that he promised to address. I think it’s a mistake to discount just how powerful that can be.” Powerful politically—and unpredictable as to where and when it will unleash more violence. That also has been a hallmark of Trump’s political career: stochastic terrorism, a tactic of incitement that allows room for deniability but makes violent attacks more likely. We don’t yet know much about Kazmierczak’s motive. (As of late Wednesday, the FBI had taken over the investigation, and it was unclear whether Kazmierczak yet had any legal representation.) But we do know, according to media reporting and interviews with his brother, that he was a right-wing Trump supporter with a long history of mental health problems and “a hatred of the Somali community.” Minnesota was the site of another grim example last summer, when a pro-Trump extremist hunted two Democratic state lawmakers at their homes, fatally shooting former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Trump’s response to that horror was no less appalling. A new report from the US Capitol Police, released coincidentally on Tuesday, shows that threats against members of Congress have continued to soar. In 2025, the agency’s threat assessment section investigated nearly 15,000 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications” targeting federal lawmakers, a more than 50 percent increase from the prior year. > GOP lawmakers “know how much worse his rhetoric has made things,” said a > federal law enforcement source. Omar has long faced a deluge of threats and has sometimes been assigned a 24-hour security detail from the Capitol Police, according to the New York Times. That added protection is at the discretion of the House speaker, but for the past year Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has not offered it to Omar, the Times reported. After the attack on Tuesday, Omar made a formal request for extra protection and Johnson agreed, the Times noted. A federal law enforcement source familiar with Capitol Police operations told me that, as a matter of close protection, the attack on Omar was a catastrophic failure with an “extremely lucky” outcome. Even though Omar reportedly will now have additional security, the Capitol Police have been heavily strained on this front. Moreover, lawmakers from Trump’s party “know how much worse his rhetoric has made things,” said the source, who has direct knowledge of conversations in which some lawmakers have admitted that “they can’t or won’t go against” Trump, because they fear for their political standing or the safety of their families. Several Republicans who have quit Congress in recent years have cited such reasons, including former Trump devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene. The role of politics or ideology in an attack is often murky, the source emphasized. But the danger manifest again on Tuesday remains high, especially with Republican leaders cowing to Trump’s unrelenting politics of fear and contempt. “What does that mean for those individuals out there who are brittle, are in a tough place in life and have a lot of anger?” the source said. “Silence in the face of this can also be taken as permission.”

As the Trump administration continues to violently occupy Minnesota, the role of the defense tech firm Palantir—which continues to sell its data mining, automation, and surveillance technology to ICE—is coming under increasing scrutiny. A new tool, launched Thursday, follows the money making it happen. Palantir Payroll, the product of an effort by the campaign Purge Palantir, compiles data from FEC filings to account for the two-way cash flow: from the government to Palantir via contracts, and from company executives to elected officials.  The campaign’s Jacinta González, head of programs at the progressive communications shop MediaJustice, says the tool helps bring to light Palantir’s business model to “operate in the shadows” through lobbying and political donations. Palantir makes roughly half of its revenue through government sales, including a $30 million deal last April to build an “Immigration OS” to facilitate ICE’s “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” according to the Washington Post. According to internal communications reviewed by WIRED, Palantir then began a six-month pilot supporting ICE in three major areas: “Enforcement Operations Prioritization and Targeting,” “Self-Deportation Tracking,” and “Immigration Lifecycle Operations focused on logistics planning and execution.” The program was renewed in September for an additional six-month period.  Earlier this month, 404 Media reported that Palantir is working on a tool for ICE that “populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address.” The tool reportedly obtains many target addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services—the White House granted ICE access to data on Medicaid enrollees last summer.   González has been organizing against immigrant detentions and deportations since the George W. Bush administration, under which ICE was founded; she says she’s seen over time how ICE adopted surveillance technology and data, and that Palantir Payroll “gives us the clarity to be able to demand something different.”  There are other valuable kinds of collective action around ICE’s suppliers, González says—she has seen students kicking out technology corporations holding recruiting events on campus and organizing at investor briefings within the financial sector—but even fundamental information about those firms’ funding and relationships with ICE can fly under the radar. In fact, as a Monday report in Wired notes, Palantir’s own employees—some of whom are openly disturbed by the firm’s ICE collaboration—rely on outside news reports for information on their employer’s practices. CTO Akash Jain reportedly responded to one query about Palantir’s work with ICE by saying that the company does “not take the position of policing the use of our platform for every workflow.” That attitude defines the company’s leadership. As Sophie Hurwitz wrote in Mother Jones last February, CEO Alex Karp said on an investor call following stock price surges that the company “is here to disrupt…and, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” Since Palantir’s founding in 2003—the same year as ICE—by Karp and right-wing megadonor Peter Thiel, its tech has also reportedly been used to help make “kill lists” for the Israel Defense Forces. González says that successive governments, Democrats included, have let the Palantir-DHS relationship grow entrenched: Since 2013, Palantir has provided ICE with the systems it currently uses to look through people’s information through a network of federally and privately-owned databases. Elected officials, meanwhile, continue to take Palantir’s money. The top six Palantir-funded politicians—via the company’s corporate PAC or individual contributors employed there—are Donald Trump, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) The campaign includes a pledge for elected officials to commit to refusing Palantir-linked donations in the lead-up to the midterm elections.  “The only way that we’re able to win against a company that has as much power and influence as Palantir, is if as many people get involved as possible,” she said.

“Alex Pretti was one of us,” an NIH worker who asked not to be named told me over the phone. That’s a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot since Saturday, when the 37 year-old Veterans Affairs nurse was assaulted and then fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis. The circumstances of the killing—called an execution by many observers—has rattled government workers. They’re distraught for the same reason many Americans are. There were numerous witnesses, for one. Donald Trump and his minions Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem thoughtlessly disparaged the victim. Ample video evidence directly contradicted the government’s narrative. And it was the second killing in a month by federal agents in Minneapolis, adding to DHS’s recent death toll—including many more who have died in ICE custody. But to many federal workers, Pretti also was a colleague. The civil service was generally fragmented prior to Trump’s reelection. But his administration’s ruthless assault on the rights and livelihoods of career government employees has strengthened ties among workers from completely unrelated agencies, who have banded together to organize protests and share resources. > “There’s been so much fear being a federal employee about saying anything, but > now the fear is going away.” “I didn’t know Alex personally, but it does feel like a lot of federal workers right now are standing in solidarity with one another, and have been over the last year,” says Anna Culbertson, a former NIH employee who was terminated in the DOGE onslaught. It’s not hard for civil servants to imagine what Pretti might have been going through over the past year. “The large majority of us have been suffering a great deal under this administration,” notes Justin Chen, an EPA employee and union president. The already chronically understaffed VA lost more than 30,000 workers in 2025, about 10 percent of them nurses like Pretti. Those still there “walk around the hallways and it’s doom and gloom,” says Doug Massey, who works at the VA central office and serves as president of his union. He’s seen an uptick this past year in hostile work environment complaints—the animosity fueled by VA Secretary Doug Collins, who has so far said nothing to his staff about Pretti’s death, conciliatory or otherwise. “That could have been me,” Massey told me, noting how Pretti was killed after he tried to help a woman the amped-up agents had shoved to the ground. “I like to think I’d be someone who stepped in.” Of course, the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents who shot Pretti were also federal workers. “In theory, these two people should be driven by the same oath, which is to the Constitution,” says Jenna Norton, an NIH employee who was put on administrative leave after criticizing Trump—both then and now she was speaking in her personal capacity. Under Trump, a chasm has widened between the majority of federal workers and ICE/CBP personnel. While most agencies are scraping by on diminished budgets, Congress promised ICE $75 billion without restriction, and its leaders appear willing to hire just about anyone with very little scrutiny. Immigration enforcement officers spent 2025 in a parallel universe, one with minimal training and $50,000 sign-on bonuses, while other agencies hemorrhaged veteran employees in the name of “government efficiency.” The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal workers’ union, has been one of the most vocal entities in combatting the firing of civil servants. But when one of its own was shot to death, the union’s initial statement was rather muted. AFGE leadership acknowledged that Pretti’s unnamed killer might be in the union as well. (It now appears that two CBP agents shot Pretti.) This revelation has led to calls, including from VA workers, for AFGE to ditch CBP on the grounds that the union cannot advocate for its members while representing people who are harming them. “That’s an internal conversation we need to have,” says Chen, whose union chapter, along with Massey’s, is part of AFGE. “Right now, we’re mourning.” Individual AFGE chapters have made strong statements about Pretti’s death, calling for a response from Collins, and for ICE to leave Minnesota. “There’s been so much fear being a federal employee about saying anything, but now the fear is going away,” Massey says. “It’s being replaced by anger.” Other federal workers are taking aim at ICE’s funding. A bill headed to a Senate vote on Friday lumps together funding for Health and Human Services (HHS)—which includes the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA—with yet more money for ICE and CBP. Norton and Culbertson were among the current and former HHS employees urging Congress to reject the bill. “Obviously no one wants the government to shut down, but it’s deciding which is the lesser evil,” says the NIH worker who requested anonymity. “As health care providers, it’s our duty to make sacrifices.” HHS employees have joined the nation’s largest nurses’ union in calling ICE a public health crisis. “If the administration were so concerned about making America healthy again,” the NIH employee says, “they’d be with us.”

Last night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper broadcast an exclusive interview with the woman who was first seen in early videos posted of federal agents killing Alex Pretti last Saturday. Stella Carlson was standing close to the deadly skirmish, and ended up as the citizen with the best vantage point to record the shooting—holding her camera phone through it all, and capturing the now-indispensable video that has ripped to shreds the administration’s lies about what happened. > “I am grateful that I was in a position to be there for my community.” This interview is astonishing. And after watching so many astonishing videos of what has transpired in Minneapolis, this one has stayed with me. Carlson’s bravery is inspiring, as is how she articulates something I hold dear as a journalistic aspiration: the power of bearing witness when no one else will. “I am grateful that I was in a position to be there for my community,” she told Cooper. “To stop the lies and the madness, and allow there to be proof.” “Were you scared?” Cooper asked. “I was terrified, but I was more worried about this not being documented.” Carlson, who was described by Cooper as a children’s entertainer, a face and body painter, and an airbrush artist, didn’t choose this role. She’s not a journalist or a human rights activist. She is a person who cared about her community. Recording this brutality was foisted on her by Trump’s siege of her city, and she described it as something akin to a calling. She was there to protect her neighbors, she said, “as best I can with my whistle and my phone, which really feels not great.” “And yet you stood there with a phone, and you documented this,” Cooper gently pressed. “You didn’t run away.” And then her response, which struck me the most. A gut punch: > “I am not one to run when I’m afraid. I just—no way was I going to leave Alex > by himself undocumented, like, that wasn’t an option. I mean, obviously > somebody was just executed in the street. I knew I was in danger. We all were, > but I wasn’t going to leave… I knew that this was a moment, and we all have to > be brave, and we all have to take risks, and we’re all going to be given > moments to make that decision… I’m grateful to myself, and I’m grateful to > anybody who was supportive to me after to make sure I could get to safety and > get that video uploaded to the right people.” That is heroism, pure and simple. There were other videos of the killing. But Carlson’s was the clearest. What record would have existed had she not been there? And what record would exist without all the journalism happening in Minneapolis. I’ve been moved while reading comments from you, our Mother Jones community, thanking us after watching dispatches by our digital producer Sam Van Pykeren, who has been relentlessly chronicling the reactions and realities on the ground in a set of emotional, viral videos. This is not to show off, but to double down on the importance of showing up, speaking to real people, and yes, bearing witness, like Carlson. “Thank you, Sam, for being there and reporting the truth,” one said. Another: “Thank you for keeping our eyes open.” I hope you can check out not only Sam’s videos, but also the full range of Minneapolis and ICE reporting from the frontlines of Trump’s immigration crackdown on the site right now, documenting both the brutality and the resistance. Here’s just a sampling from our reporters over the last day or so: Kiera Butler’s look at how right-wing influencers are working to make women love ICE. Russ Choma’s revealing article about Tom Homan’s record as he takes over Minnesota operations. From Minneapolis, reporter Julia Lurie filed a stunning dispatch about the community coming together in the wake of Alex Pretti and Renée Good’s killings (with gorgeous photography by Madison Swart), describing a city under assault but also a resilient city creating mutual aid networks that will outlast federal occupation. She also interviewed a US Army vet, outraged by these new attacks on a country he once defended. Samantha Michaels published a devastating story, with a video on a warrantless ICE raid that tore apart a Memphis family. Noah Lanard analyzed how Greg Bovino proved too openly fascistic—even for Trump. There’s much more to read and watch and interact with. And there is more to come. “Nobody’s here for us,” Stella Carlson said during her gripping CNN interview. “So this is what we can do.”