Another American citizen has been murdered in the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. This victim, a 37-year-old ICU nurse named Alex Pretti, was killed on January 24 while tending to the injuries of a woman pushed to the ground by ICE. The previous victim, Renee Good, was a 37-year-old mother of three who was executed in her car on January 7.

In both of these cases, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed the agents were acting in self-defense. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem immediately issued a statement accusing Good of “domestic terrorism”. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller denounced Pretti as “a would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement.” These statements, released before any investigation took place, seem intended to halt any investigation at all and make the “official” story the only one that counts.

But anyone who’s watched the videos of these killings knows that neither of them were in self-defense. Good’s car was pointing away from Officer Jonathan Ross when he put three bullets in her. Her last words were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Pretti was lawfully carrying a holstered gun, but he was unarmed and down on the ground when an ICE agent emptied a magazine into him.

The executions of Good and Pretti are only the tip of the iceberg. In Minnesota alone, ICE’s reign of terror has included blinding a young man with a nonlethal round, shooting teargas into a car filled with children, and abducting children as young as five years old. Videos of these incidents and countless others, filmed daily by ordinary Americans around the country, show the unforgivable violence that President Trump and ICE are unleashing on the American people.

The evolution of ICE, from bad to worse to Gestapo

Formed in 2003 by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11, ICE is a relic of the War on Terror, founded when there was widespread fear of Al-Qaeda entering the country through the Mexican border. Its purview is fairly broad, covering more than 400 statutes related to immigration, trade, and customs.

The agency’s evolution into a paramilitary organization, deployed in high numbers on American streets, is new to President Trump. His second administration quickly began a mass recruiting campaign for ICE, offering generous salaries and high sign-on bonuses and appealing specifically to white nationalists. Then Trump greenlit the agency’s escalating use of violence and intensified its presence in American communities, all while Congress increased its budget astronomically.

Now the agency acts as an invading and occupying force, loyal solely to Trump and not to the law, the Constitution, or any state or local governing bodies. Its actions have put it in conflict not only with American citizens but with local law enforcement and, in some states, even the National Guard. Some of ICE’s violent, unconstitutional, and immoral tactics include:

• A racially targeted, Gestapo-style “show me your paperwork” approach to enforcement. Rather than using investigative police work to go after the “worst of the worst,” as Trump once pledged, ICE agents simply stop whoever they think looks like they might not have been born here. They are raiding job sites, restaurants, public areas, schools, and even impersonating police and going door-to-door, apparently trying to meet Miller’s 3,000-deportations-a-day quota. At least 170 US citizens have been swept up in raids like these, some of them violently assaulted and detained for days.

• Arresting people in the midst of immigration hearings. Republicans often say they don’t mind immigrants as long as they do it the “right way.” But ICE has stalked immigration courts to capture people doing just that, deporting them right in the middle of trying to get their paperwork sorted. 

• Detaining and disappearing people into concentration camp-like detention centers. The most notorious facility currently used by ICE is CECOT in El Salvador, a supermax gulag with brutally inhuman conditions and a chilling reputation for torture. But in America, conditions may be no better. Amnesty International condemned Florida’s secretive Alligator Alcatraz as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” Detention facilities are refusing to provide medical care. Detainees sometimes disappear entirely, leaving their lawyers and family members unable to reach them or find out if they’re alive. In 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody that we know of.
  
• Compiling a mass surveillance database and labeling Americans domestic terrorists. ICE partners with Palantir, a nefarious tech and AI company co-founded by billionaire Trump ally Peter Thiel, to not only track immigrants but also to keep records on Americans who oppose them. This effort is closely tied to NSPM-7, a presidential memo that effectively sets the table for Trump to declare any political or ideological opponent an enemy of the state. One ICE agent told a woman recording him in Maine, “We have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
   
• Killing Americans in broad daylight. The executions of Good and Pretti were not mistakes or accidents brought about by poor training. They were immediately backed up by the administration as good and proper responses, with Vice President JD Vance even declaring the agents have “absolute immunity.” ICE agents have since invoked these incidents to threaten Americans, with one saying, “Have y’all not learned from the past couple days?… Is this how you want to die?” This is terrorism, plain and simple – violence and intimidation to achieve their authoritarian political goals.

For a MAGA true believer, all this is forgivable because, in their minds, anyone without the right paperwork is a criminal, anyone who protects them is also a criminal, and any violence the state uses against criminals is justified. In reality, undocumented immigrants commit violent and drug-related crimes at a much lower rate than the native-born population, and simply being here without the proper authorization is codified as a civil offense, not a crime. 

Not all of these abuses are brand new. Immigration activists have long blasted ICE and US immigration policy, especially under President Obama. But the scale, violence, regularity of abuse, and lack of accountability have turned the situation into a five-alarm fire. ICE is acting well outside its statutory duties, committing crimes and terrorizing communities to carry out its mission as handed down by Trump, Noem, Miller, and other MAGA extremists.

Skating on thin ice with the American people

If there is a silver lining in any of this, it’s that people are fed up with it. Residents in Minneapolis have turned out en masse to protest ICE. They are protecting one another through constant filming, as well as blowing whistles to alert neighbors to the presence of ICE agents. On January 23, tens of thousands of Minnesotans marched down the streets in the state’s biggest general strike in 100 years. They shuttered businesses and halted labor with the understanding that the best way to combat the system is to hit it in the only spot it truly feels pain: its pockets. 

Most elected officials aren’t yet close to representing the energy and anger of the people. Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries still speak of reforming ICE rather than abolishing it. But there have been increasing calls for things like the impeachment of Kristi Noem, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has deployed the National Guard to, hopefully, protect his state’s residents.

In the battle for hearts and minds, at least, MAGA is losing. Even on FOX News, they are struggling to uphold the narrative. In an interview with FBI Director Kash Patel, far-right pundit Maria Bartiromo was incredulous that Alex Pretti posed a threat to ICE and said, “There is outrage across the country… Someone is dead at the hands of border patrol.” At this point, only the most diehard MAGA faithful seem to be buying the administration’s talking points. 

While these recent excesses might give the Trump Administration a black eye in the public view, it’s only part of a larger struggle being waged. This violence and chaos is not an accidental byproduct. The administration doesn’t care about casualties and they aren’t interested in making nice. It’s about seeing how far they can go, how much power they can grab, and then defying the American people to do something about it.

Recall who we’re dealing with here. Stephen Miller is widely believed to be in charge of the administration’s law enforcement and border policy. He’s the most brazenly fascistic senior member of the administration and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has an “affinity for white nationalism.” Meanwhile Greg Bovino, the Commander of US Border Patrol and the only field agent who goes out unmasked, essentially cosplays as an SS agent. 

Amid the chaos in Minneapolis, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a mafioso-style letter to Governor Walz telling him that all he had to do to “bring back law and order to Minnesota” was hand over his state’s voter data in exchange for ICE withdrawal. This alone shows that their goals go far beyond immigration reform or enforcement. They’re interested in a complete takeover, which requires that they muddle election integrity and identify and track enemies of the regime. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said of Bondi’s letter, “This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want.” So far, it hasn’t worked.

In the Declaration of Independence, the founders wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Through their actions and violent abuses, ICE have lost that and then some. Americans are right and justified in their filming, protest, and even obstruction of ICE. Now we need to go further.

At the political level, sorting all this out means removing ICE from streets, eliminating their overly broad national security powers, canceling their partnerships with big tech, prosecuting the Trump Administration officials responsible for these abuses, and throwing out of office the Democrats who funded it. In plain language, we need to abolish ICE. Essential immigration and customs functions can be reallocated to other agencies, but there is no need for stormtroopers to go door-to-door demanding to see people’s papers under threat of violence. It is rank Nazism. 

Once that’s done, we need to take a much broader look at our use of state violence. It’s no coincidence that the killing of two white people is causing cracks in the dam. This is the way we’ve been treating less fortunate people for decades, from the militarized police killings of Black Americans to the genocide we funded in Gaza. As a nation we remained largely indifferent to those atrocities. Wakeup calls are always welcome, but America can’t go back to sleep if and when this stage of the violence is contained. 

The lesson is that the worst our government does can be done to any of us at any time, and we all need to work to curtail it. Minnesotans are showing us the way with their fearless solidarity and general strike. Trump’s campaign against blue states and his occupation of Minneapolis looks like the early stages of a civil war. It needs to be stopped now, and the perpetrators held to account before their power has the chance to grow an iota.