Swing-state Republicans just clearly signaled Trump's next ICE target

Before Michigan ever sees federal officers flood our streets, before another video shocks the conscience, the warning signs are already here — and they are coming from inside our own state government.

As Michigan Advance reported last week, a group of Michigan House Republicans has now openly threatened the funding of state courts if the Michigan Supreme Court adopts a rule that would have the effect of limiting most immigration arrests in courthouses.

In other words, lawmakers are signaling that judicial independence itself is conditional and that courts will be punished for attempting to protect basic access to justice.

This is not a side issue. It is the canary in the coal mine.

Courts are where people go to comply with the law. Threatening to turn those spaces into traps, or to defund them for refusing to do so, is not about public safety or “law and order.” It is about coercion. And it tells us exactly how unprepared Michigan Republicans are to meet a moment when federal power is increasingly exercised without restraint.

That context matters, because the apparent murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis should end any lingering illusion that what is happening elsewhere cannot happen here. Video evidence shows Pretti stepping in to help two women who were being maced by federal immigration officers. For that act, he was set upon by officers, beaten and disarmed of a weapon he was legally licensed to carry. All evidence indicates he never brandished that gun, but at least one federal agent shot him to death.

Whatever euphemisms are offered in the days ahead, what the public saw was not restraint. It was escalation. And it should force a reckoning well beyond Minneapolis.

Michigan must be ready to respond to a similar surge by the Trump administration here.

Ready does not mean issuing statements after the fact. Ready means our leaders deciding now where they will stand, and what they will do, when federal power arrives without restraint and demands compliance.

The hardest question for our leaders is also the most personal: Are we prepared, like Alex Pretti, to place their bodies between what has clearly become an unrestrained mob and our fellow citizens?

That question isn’t rhetorical. It’s a measure of civic courage, and it does not apply only to people in the street. It applies to those in office, those with badges, and those with microphones.

This is where the threat to court funding becomes impossible to ignore. When Michigan Republicans threaten to kneecap the judiciary for resisting ICE arrests in courthouses, they are not merely posturing. They are laying the groundwork for complacency. They are signaling that when federal abuses come, they will not defend the institutions meant to check them — they will discipline those institutions instead.

This from the same crowd that incessantly intones that immigrants must “follow the law” and “come here the right way.” Arresting people in courtrooms, a place they have come specifically to follow the law, exposes the lie at the heart of the so-called law and order movement.

If compliance becomes the danger, then law and order has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with intimidation.

But this moment does not give Democrats an automatic pass. Opposition cannot be selective or symbolic. Sen. Elissa Slotkin has said she will not vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security when the issue comes up later this week. That is good to hear. It shows awareness of the stakes. But it must be the starting point, not the entirety of the response.

Michigan faces a choice. We can tell ourselves the killing of Alex Pretti was an aberration, or we can acknowledge the reality in front of us: federal power escalating without restraint, and political leaders here seemingly preparing to excuse it.

Threatening to defund the courts is not a warning sign — it is the decision itself.

Michigan’s leaders will either defend the rule of law before it is broken here, or they will help normalize its collapse.

Silence will not be mistaken for neutrality. It will be remembered as consent.

• Jon King is the Michigan Advance’s editor-in-chief, having previously served as the outlet's senior reporter, covering education, elections and LGBTQ+ issues. King has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is the Past President of the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors Association who has been recognized for excellence numerous times, most recently in 2022 with the Best Investigative Story by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Cleary University. Jon and his family live in Howell. Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.