Minnesota Is the Test Case for an American Police State

President Donald Trump wasted no time turning his second term into an all-out assault on the rule of law. As the tragic shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7 shows, conflict between authoritarianism and liberal democracy has entered a bloody and unstable new phase.

In the week since Good’s shooting, Minneapolis has become an occupied city in all but name. On Monday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged to send “hundreds more” ICE agents to Minnesota in addition to the over 2,100 federal “law enforcement” officers already on the ground. In response, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued the federal government to block the deployment, arguing that Noem’s order amounted to an illegitimate “federal invasion of the Twin Cities.”

Minnesota is home to around 130,000 unauthorized immigrants, about 1.4% of its population. If DHS makes good on its pledge, Minnesota will host roughly one ICE agent for every 30 undocumented immigrants. But enforcement of Trump’s draconian deportation scheme is no longer the point. What’s happening in Minnesota is a test-bed for using ICE as a shock force to intimidate American citizens by cracking down violently on legal observers, peaceful protesters, and political opponents the White House now refers to — without evidence — as “domestic terrorists.”

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday morning, Trump left no doubt about his plans for Minnesota. Posting in all-caps, the president warned that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” Given the violence he has already unleashed on the American people, we should take Trump at his word.

What happens next will define the future of Americans’ relationship to their government. Are we free citizens of a constitutional republic or we are the unwilling subjects of a gangster regime where state violence is excused at the highest levels of power? There are no longer safe sidelines in the conflict over what our country will be, as Renee Good all too tragically demonstrates.

Reckoning and Retribution

Minnesota is a rather strange choice to stage a showdown over illegal immigration. At 1.4%, Minnesota’s population of undocumented migrants is half the national average, and pales in comparison to the 5% rates in red states like Texas and Florida. Yet according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the state is now home to more ICE agents than anywhere else in the country.

The result has been the rapid decline of an orderly city into chaos and confusion. In an interview with the New York Times, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara slammed ICE for creating chaos and unrest in a city that had been peaceful just days before.

“We’ve just gotten a pretty dramatic increase in 911 calls from people in the community related to a lot of the street enforcement that’s happening,” O’Hara said. “I mean, it’s everything from people being arrested, and their cars left in the roadway, sometimes blocking the street. And in one case, left when it wasn’t even placed in park and was rolling down the road.”

It is a problem enough that Minnesota is flooded with ICE agents who appear to be making few actual immigration arrests. Even worse is the fact that, according to Vice President JD Vance, the White House believes ICE agents like Renee Good’s killer have “absolute immunity” to arrest, beat, and even kill any American citizens they feel are obstructing their ability to carry out Trump’s orders.

Vance’s claim of unlimited immunity is so extreme and misguided that even conservative legal experts have dismissed it as dangerous nonsense. But it’s hard to believe the White House is worried about petty legalities when Trump has proven willing to issue expansive pardons to anyone willing to carry out his authoritarian orders. Still, Vance’s statement reveals a stunning new interpretation of federal power: Americans protesting Trump’s ICE policy can fall in line, or they can die.

Minnesota may be under siege by ICE, but it isn’t even the only place where masked federal agents have exacted brutal violence against Americans. ICE agents have been involved in nearly a dozen shootings since Trump took office last year. The most common excuse for those shootings — and the one given by Ross in Minneapolis — was that the agent feared for their life. In multiple cases, video evidence either contradicts or completely undermines agents’ claims.

The idea touted by Noem, Vance, and Trump that Renee Good might have been a domestic terrorist is more than just disgusting rhetoric. In the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump signed an executive order declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist group, despite “Antifa” not being an actual organization. In reality, Trump’s order targeted left-leaning nonprofits and groups he alleged were “Antifa-aligned,” opening those groups up to guilt-by-association despite there being no evidence that anyone connected to Antifa played a role in Kirk’s murder. Now that order is back in the headlines as the FBI begins its investigation into Good’s killing.

How To Rig an FBI Investigation

Instead of investigating whether ICE agent Jonathan Ross was right to use lethal force, the FBI is instead investigating Good’s potential ties to “activist groups,” which former FBI officials warn could be used as grounds to target and criminalize peaceful anti-ICE protests. Over the weekend, Trump baselessly described Good as a “professional agitator” and insinuated she might be connected to Antifa. For Trump and the far right, Good was a terrorist-by-association, and as a result her killing was justified whether or not she actually did anything wrong in the moment.

The White House made clear this week that the FBI investigation’s true purpose is to provide support for Noem’s and Vance’s unsubstantiated claims, even if that means derailing the actual course of justice. Federal investigators were already refusing to share evidence with the Minnesota state police on the grounds that blue state law enforcement officials are actually compromised agents of Democratic corruption. The tactic is a familiar one in the autocrat’s toolbox: In Uganda, federal police routinely cover up state killings by refusing to hand over evidence to local investigators or the courts. Eventually, the outrage fades, the people move on, and the regime’s boot presses a little harder on society’s throat.

Not everyone is okay with Trump’s blatant manipulation of the FBI and the broader Justice Department. Six federal prosecutors resigned on Tuesday after being asked by the administration to investigate Renee Good’s widow for possible criminal conduct. Joseph H. Thompson, one of the most senior prosecutors to resign, indicated he also opposed the Justice Department’s repeated refusal to involve Minnesota state investigators in the case.

The White House demanded Thompson and his colleagues turn Good’s widow into a criminal in an effort to distract from ICE’s growing use of deadly force. Unlike others in this toxic administration, they refused. In a time when Washington is governed by small men, that conspicuous act of courage deserves our deepest gratitude.

What Now?

It’s difficult to overstate how corrosive ICE’s radicalization has become among American voters. Nearly three in four adults report having watched videos of Good’s killing. The results have been immediate. In a new YouGov/Economist poll, more Americans now support abolishing ICE (46%) than keeping the agency in place (45%) — the first time in history that abolishing ICE is a nationally popular position. Once a broadly popular agency, ICE is now historically unpopular even among many self-identified conservative voters. Only Trump’s sense of political untouchability stands in the way.

That may not be enough. A slate of new polls show Republicans are increasingly unpopular with swing-district voters, the same group who will decide control of the House and Senate this November. Once viewed as a left-wing issue, reining in ICE is now something voters of all political stripes feel is a necessity — for their own sense of security, if nothing else. Congressional Democrats are ready to embrace the shift: On Monday, Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig announced plans to impeach Noem for her ICE-related misconduct.

Holding ICE accountable shouldn’t have required Renee Good’s death, and Renee Good’s death still may not achieve ICE accountability. Law and rationality bend and break when autocratic regimes declare war on their own people. When the government fails its people in such a catastrophic way, it falls to the people themselves to defend their rights through protest and direct action. Minneapolis is leading the way, and the Trump administration