On January 7th, Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, was shot four times and killed by an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent in my home city of Minneapolis. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, ICE pursued no disciplinary action against Good’s murderer, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem went one step further in labeling this unarmed mother a “domestic terrorist”, a label the Trump administration has adopted with pride.
This is exactly what it looks like.
In Minneapolis, ICE agents are abducting men, women, and children without judicial warrants, breaking into their homes, trafficking those they deem guilty to faraway states, and dumping the innocent at random locations often miles away from their homes, left to find their own way back in the cold.
ICE agents, who are required to undergo only a month and a half of training and may be put into action with less education than that, have been captured on video chasing, grabbing, and physically restraining children. They’ve illegally kidnapped and trafficked toddlers as young as two, flying one girl to Texas despite judicial orders proscribing them from doing so.
This is exactly what it looks like.
ICE and other federal agents have responded to peaceful protests with brutality, deploying chemical weapons in residential zones and utilizing pepper spray against civilians who had already been completely immobilized.
This is exactly what it looks like.
Today, a contingent of ICE agents escalated once more, knocking a non-violent observer, Alex Pretti, an I.C.U. nurse, to the ground, immobilizing, and executing him in broad daylight. In the aftermath of this murder, the Department of Homeland Security alleged the shooting was justified because the man had, on his person, a firearm he was legally allowed to own.
The department also made the claim that the man drew and threatened officers with the weapon, an allegation refuted by The New York Times. According to current reporting, the weapon remained undrawn throughout the event and officers did not appear to be aware of it until the man had been incapacitated on the ground. Once the apparent threat this man posed to the gathered team of officers had been neutralized, ICE agents responded by shooting him no fewer than ten times, killing him.
This is exactly what it looks like.
Amid all of this, the federal government remains unrepentant and refuses to recognize any sort of overreach or wrongdoing by its personnel, an under-trained army paid per body to kidnap, traffic, and destroy humans. At every opportunity available, the President and Vice President of the United States have lavished blame for the crimes of their agents on immigrants and on the cities they live in.
Donald Trump and his government have used the pretext of deporting people living here illegally to send a louder, much more violent message: fall in line or you will be punished.
This occupation transcends the bounds of a deportation operation, it passes far beyond the borders of the law and further past the reaches of justice.
Minneapolis, one of this country’s best, brightest, most beautiful cities, is a staging ground for an experiment: the first large-scale deployment, not of a deportation party, but of the personal military force of an openly authoritarian President.
Their message is not law, but terror. Their motivation is not safety, but vengeance. We are at the whim of a self-obsessed demagogue unafraid to elevate the most violent and irrational of his support base, willing to sign off on any atrocity, any show of force, as long as they are committed in his name.
The target is clear. The government offers open support to protestors in Iran but only bullets and tear gas for their domestic equivalent. By virtue of living in a city and in a state that did not openly support this apparently great leader, we have been labeled the enemy.
The President of the United States, the most powerful figure in the American government, has sanctioned and mobilized a force of masked men loyal only to him to enter American cities, American streets, American homes, and commit disappearings, violence, and murder against anyone they want, at any time, with no fear of recourse.
This is no longer “reminiscent” of anything. This is no longer merely “similar to”.
This is authoritarianism. This is fascism. This is the failure of democracy.
This is exactly what it looks like.