It is unfathomable that right here in America, we are witnessing how ICE is operating with impunity, with utter disregard for the law and for loss of life and liberty. What is even more shocking is that US Vice President JD Vance declared that a federal agent who killed a 37-year-old civilian woman in Minnesota has “absolute immunity,” setting an ominous precedent: an American citizen can be killed in the street by a federal agent, with impunity. Can there be any more outrageous and perilous statement uttered from the mouth of the Vice President?
Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, a military veteran who has seen what this looks like, warned: “We’re a third-world country now… I spent 17 months in Southeast Asia while the draft dodger was playing golf… You know how I know we’re a third-world country? Because in third-world countries, they have the military doing their police work in the cities when you walk around.”
Federal agents are guided by rules and protocols regarding engagement with the public. Their first priority is to avoid loss of life, which is clearly stated in the DHS’s own regulations. Second, de-escalation, which is the responsibility of the law enforcement agent, is to ensure they don’t put themselves or the public in imminent danger, which ICE completely ignored in this instance.
ICE has been operating in cities across the country, in unmarked cars with masked faces, terrifying ordinary people who don’t know who these people are attacking them on the streets.
ICE has been detaining American citizens and immigrants alike, violating rights and using violence without any accountability. They are storming residential neighborhoods, wearing military fatigues, wielding weapons of war, and operating with total immunity.
ICE’s heavy-handed and opaque methods are skating on the edge of overreach, losing sight of both transparency and humanity. Their objective is no longer to keep the peace but to inflict pain, terrorize a population, and silence dissent through chemical warfare and brute force. These tactics are reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, who obscured their identities and stormed through cities, detaining any perceived ‘enemies’ and repressing political opposition.
ICE has crossed many terrifying lines in imposing this police state. Minneapolis is being used as a testing ground. If ICE can break Minneapolis and force it into submission through fear and violence, then every other city in this country will be next. These practices constitute systematic Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations that threaten civil liberties beyond immigrant communities.
ICE faces universal condemnation across constitutional, humanitarian, and operational dimensions. Agents have been implicated in unjustified fatal shootings, including killing US citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, with video evidence contradicting federal claims of self-defense. Human Rights Watch documented a pattern of questionable lethal force incidents where DHS claims of “weaponized vehicles” were contradicted by footage.
This horrific behavior from ICE is a glaring indictment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She is grossly unqualified and must resign. She is operating under Trump’s orders, blindly dispatching ICE agents, especially to Democratic-run cities.
Last weekend’s nationwide protests are a stark warning that Americans are at a breaking point. Trump must be stopped from dispatching his Gestapo to terrorize and kill innocent people; otherwise, the consequences will be unimaginably perilous for the country.
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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for
Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and
Middle Eastern studies.
alon@alonben-meir.com Web: www.alonben-meir.com
