By Dan Dinello for Informed Comment
Three thousand ICE maniacs invaded Minneapolis and rampaged through its streets, indiscriminately terrorizing immigrants and US citizens. Ordered by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to carry out Trump’s promise of “reckoning and retribution,” these masked, armed lunatics express a torrent of belligerence to everyone in sight, breaking windows, pointing guns, storming homes, punching neighborhood residents, dragging disabled people from their cars, and throwing bystanders to the pavement without any probable cause.
Recruited by white nationalist videos, deployed without proper training in conflict de-escalation, and prioritizing arrest quotas, these sadistic vigilantes throw flash-bangs and tear gas at peaceful protestors, grab kids off the street and exploit them as bait to lure targeted people to open their doors, and racially profile Black, Latino and Asian US citizens, including perp-walking an elderly man who was wrongly arrested and dragged half-naked from his home.
Noem’s ICE is a fascist occupation force that lies about its activities, operates outside the law and constitution, and has been told, by Vice-President Puppet Vance, that it enjoys “absolute immunity.” The government wants to normalize the sight of an all-powerful paramilitary: the threat of arbitrary state violence is made routine, knitting it into the fabric of daily life such that most Americans will go about their mundane preoccupations while they are occupied.
Kill and vilify is a standard DHS policy instituted by Noem as she demonstrated after the executions of Renee Good, a mother and poet, and Andy Pretti, an intensive care nurse. She falsely asserted that Good’s actions amounted to ”an act of domestic terrorism.” Noem claimed that Good used her car as a “deadly weapon” so the ICE officer was justified in shooting her though it was obvious from the witness videos that Good maneuvered her car away from him. An autopsy revealed the first two shots were not fatal, the third shot to the head — as her car pulled away — was the one that killed her.
A few hours after the execution of Pretti, who was shot in the back while being held face-down and immobilized on the street by several ICE thugs, Noem stated that Pretti’s actions — he was filming ICE — amounted to “domestic terrorism.” Though a border agent had removed Pretti’s licensed firearm before he was shot, Noem said Pretti “violently resisted,” was “brandishing” a gun, and intended to “inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Noem denies reality. Nothing she says is credible.
Noem is “doing a very good job” said the gangster President, reminding me of President George W. Bush telling FEMA Director Michael Brown what he thinks of his handling of the catastrophic Katrina hurricane that ultimately killed over 1,000 people: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Ten days later Brown resigned. Noem, who is less competent and more malicious than “Brownie,” should follow his example.
In Noem’s fabrications, she is channeling the President of Lies, the hate-monger Stephen “Goebbels” Miller, and the now-demoted Border Patrol Commander Gregory “SS” Bovino among others. Trump falsely said that Renee Good was at fault for her own death because she “disrespected” and “ran over” the officer who murdered her. Her heart-breaking last words to her killer were “I’m not mad at you.”
Administration officials have all variously slandered Pretti as “an assassin” who intended to “massacre law enforcement.” The falsehoods were so similar that their responses were obviously agreed upon. Noem confirmed this, according to Axios, saying “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen.”
A fascist regime reverses reality, turns moral transgressions upside down, makes the victim the perpetrator, and the perpetrator the victim. This repressive government wants to desensitize people, not only to the kidnapping of children but to the killing of Americans. US citizens have ignored obscure migrant deaths: 32 people died in ICE detention last year. But they are not ignoring the public murder of white American citizens who are doing nothing but witnessing and documenting ICE crimes.
Resistance in Minnesota has taken numerous forms — mass demonstrations in frigid temperatures and smaller individual actions that involve protection, aid, and observation. Trump, Noem, Miller and online MAGA parasites have repeatedly called these activists “violent” and said they are involved in “riots.” But the resistance in Minnesota is characterized by a conscious, strategic absence of violence. When matters escalate, it is usually the choice of the federal agents. Of the three homicides in Minneapolis this year, two were committed by federal agents.
Volunteers risk their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom: whistle-blowing pedestrians and drivers patrol for ICE thugs, alert neighbors, and try to film interactions. Pretti and Good were both murdered while doing ICE watches. They, like many others, are exposing the administration’s mendacity about its use of extreme violence. If not for their courage, we would not see incontrovertible evidence — proof of sanctioned executions and systemic lying.
These falsehoods about the murders were the basis of the government’s legal response — investigating Good’s widow — prompting six federal prosecutors and the FBI agent in charge of the Minneapolis field office to resign. State and local authorities were blocked from conducting their own investigations into into the murders.
Thousands of Minneapolis residents have not left their homes for days for fear of being picked up, or worse, by the masked cowards of ICE. Volunteers have taken to discreetly delivering bags of groceries to their doors. A handful of dissident Germans performed the same act of kindness for the hidden Jews of Berlin under the Third Reich, according to Jonathon Freedland’s book about German resistance, The Traitors Circle.
A wave of revulsion is engulfing a majority of non-MAGA American citizens. Some who have tolerated a year of corruption, imperialism, revenge prosecutions, state-sanctioned murder, threats to invade allies, and the unraveling of the president’s mind are speaking out and demonstrating.
A few athletes are finally voicing criticism, including WNBA star Breanna Stewart and NBA stars Victor Wembanyama and Tyrese Haliburton, who posted: “Alex Pretti was murdered.” 76-year-old Bruce Springsteen wrote, recorded and released an anti-ICE song “Streets of Minneapolis,” responding to “state terror.”
CEOs mostly remain silent, complicit cowards. Even those speaking out are uttering tepid statements. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees that ICE is “going too far” with its immigration crackdown, though he also called Trump a “strong leader.” Apple CEO Tim Cook — taking time from attending the White House premiere of Jeff “bootlicker” Bezos’s $75 million, vapid propaganda film Melania — said that he was “heartbroken” by the events in Minneapolis and called for “de-escalation.”
Some Democrats and activists aimed an intense fusillade of criticism demanding the removal of ICE from Minneapolis and other cities, funding cuts to DHS, and the firing of Noem for the harm her brutal border troops have caused. Even one Republican Senator — the retiring Thom Tillis — called for her ouster. Independent Senator Lisa Murkowski struck a similar note. “You have a secretary right now who needs to be accountable to the chaos that we have seen.”
In the face of national outrage, Trump only side-lined Noem and mildly retreated, saying he might slightly “de-escalate” in Minnesota. To oversee the barbaric mass deportation campaign, he installed bull-necked, bullet-headed “border czar” Tom Homan, the extremist who instituted the draconian family separation policy in Trump’s first term. The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights condemned it as “torture” and “government-sanctioned child abuse.”
Homan had disappeared from cable news after it was revealed last year that the FBI had recorded him receiving a paper bag marked from the Cava restaurant chain containing $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as contractors seeking federal largesse. Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, another fascist femme, refused to investigate. Trump decided that a corrupt compromised official is the perfect person to re-instill credibility in the deportation machine.
Trump also shipped out battering-ram Greg Bovino, the face of the ICE terror campaign. Sacrificing Bovino as the fall guy, he was demoted from his role as Border Patrol Commander. Bovino was sent back to his former job in El Centro, California, near the hilly mountainous terrain of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park that serves as the backdrop for the intense final chase scene in Paul Anderson’s movie One Battle After Another. Appropriately, he resembles the Sean Penn character, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. Like Bovino, Lockjaw embodies a cartoonishly militaristic, hard-right ideology with a reactionary belief in using violent force against those he sees as threats to a white supremacist order.
It was Noem who promoted Bovino, gave him the unofficial title “Commander-at-Large,” and sent him and his berserker border agents to run deportation operations in Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans, and then Minneapolis, and approved his vicious “turn and burn” strategy. When accused of blaming the victims in the deaths of Good and Pretti, he replied, “The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The suspect put himself in that situation.”
Pictures of him striding around the city wearing a long winter greatcoat with brass buttons were noted by German media, which commented that his appearance, including a closely cropped haircut, evoked a fascist aesthetic, a “Nazi-look.” Bovino relished his role as a macho MAGA social media star. He traveled the country with his own film crew and used X to hit back at Democratic politicians and random critics online. In a sudden castration, DHS suspended Bovino’s access to his social media account.
As the week progressed, Trump returned to trashing Minnesota officials. Trump wrote on UnTruth Social Wednesday that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was “Playing with Fire!” after Frey said that his city will not enforce federal immigration law. Frey replied, saying he wants police protecting residents, not “hunting down a working dad.” The Trump retreat lasted two days.
On Thursday, Trump reverted to saying he would not pull back the operation, “Not at all.” Later that night, federal agents arrested ex-CNN anchor and independent journalist Don Lemon, in the middle of the night, on charges relating to his reporting on a protest at a Minnesota church. Another journalist and two anti-ICE activists were also arrested. Amid calls for calming tensions, Trump called Alex Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”
The DHS goon squad still stalks the streets and abducts immigrants with legal status while detaining and harassing citizens who look or sound like they might not be US-born. A recent ICE memo stated that agents can enter people’s homes to make arrests without a warrant from a judge. Local Minnesota officials said that they were still hearing from constituents, particularly in the Somali community, about ICE using aggressive tactics. Trump has repeatedly targeted Somali immigrants with dehumanizing rhetoric, calling them “garbage” and “low IQ” and suggesting that Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia, should be deported. She was recently attacked at a town hall.
“I think anyone who’s seen what’s playing out on our streets would say things haven’t de-escalated,” said State Representative Michael Howard. “In a way things have gotten worse and escalated.” In one instance, a violent agent tore a husband away from his wife and daughter as she begged to be taken with him. Perhaps, most shockingly, ICE attempted to break into the Ecuadoran consulate in Minneapolis which, according to the norms of international diplomacy, is tantamount to an act of war.
The courts have been tough on ICE, such as US District Court judge Sara Ellis’s 233-page opinion meticulously exposing a host of lies from the Trump administration — lies it was using to justify its tactics in Chicago. But ICE does not obey court orders.
Last week, chief judge for the US District Court of Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, issued a scathing order that cataloged 96 court orders that ICE had defied in 74 different cases. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026,” the judge wrote, “than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
Mass demonstrations were staged in Minneapolis and across the United States on Friday and Saturday as well as a national shutdown, encouraging Americans to leave work, exit school, and skip shopping “to stop ICE’s reign of terror” and condemn the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. “They ditched school in Atlanta. Left work in Philadelphia. Blocked traffic in Los Angeles. And closed businesses in New York. Across the country, protesters marched, rallied and disrupted their everyday routines in solidarity with Minneapolis residents,” wrote the New York Times.
Amid the momentous protests, Senate Democrats struck a deal with Trump to fund DHS for two weeks, possibly avoid a shutdown, and negotiate their modest demands to “rein in” ICE, such as forcing them to remove their masks and raising the legal bar for the use of warrants. As usual, Democrats were placated by the phony de-escalatory smoke screen. They failed to seize the moment and make tougher demands such as removing ICE from Minnesota and other cities or a ban on deporting immigrants with lawful status.
The problem is that ICE doesn’t need the DHS spending bill to pass even though its operations are at the heart of the standoff. The DHS appropriation bill, currently held up, funds other DHS agencies: Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. DHS already received $170 billion for immigration enforcement over the next four years, including $75 billion for ICE as a result of the massive tax and immigration policy law the GOP passed last summer.
Kristi Noem will have plenty of money for her fascist fashion shoots. She will continue to humiliate herself, cosplaying in field gear that she’s never used. For example, in one endlessly mocked picture she wore a bulletproof vest that was improperly secured and held a rifle dangerously pointed at the head of an agent pictured with her.
Noem’s partisanship has prompted pushback on Capitol Hill from Democrats, more than 160 of whom have signed an effort to impeach her. The articles of impeachment, filed by Representative Robin Kelly, accuse her of obstruction of Congress, violation of public trust, and self-dealing. The impeachment push will go nowhere while Republicans control the House.
DHS continues to buy up warehouse-style “mega” detention facilities for the tens of thousands caught in its dragnet. Despite protests in small towns and cities across the US, these warehouse will be converted into new immigration jails that constitute the largest expansion of such detention capacity in US history.
Most ominously, DHS has vastly expanded the tech tools in ICE’s arsenal, such as facial recognition software and an immigrant tracking, database system backed by artificial intelligence. DHS also spent nearly $10 million acquiring at least three social media monitoring tools and services that allow it to delve into people’s cellphones. One of the tools, built by an Israeli tech company Paragon, lets agents remotely hack into phones to read messages or track locations. The others use social media data scraped from the web to help build dossiers of anyone with a social media account.
Despite all this, Minneapolis delivered Trump and his white supremacist effort a blow. They have seriously hampered ICE kidnapping efforts, humiliated the regime, and demonstrated to the world the value of solidarity and freedom — and in many cases at great personal cost. The fight must continue.
Dan Dinello , Professor Emeritus at Columbia College Chicago — is the author of Children of Men, a critical analysis of Alfonso Cuarón’s visionary dystopian science fiction film masterpiece. His other books include Finding Fela: My Strange Journey to Meet the AfroBeat King – a memoir of his 1983 trip to Lagos, Nigeria, to film African musical legend Fela Kuti, and Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Dan runs the Website shockproductions.com and has also contributed chapters to books about Avatar, Westworld, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Ridley Scott, and Star Trek among others. He is an Informed Comment regular.