All posts tagged "immigration"

Spooked Trump admin now 'flirting with capitulation': analysis

The Trump administration has felt the fierce public backlash against ICE after the death of two civilians in Minneapolis and the masked agents' aggressive tactics against immigrants — and it could force the White House to change direction entirely, according to analysis Thursday.

Although border czar Tom Homan's tone had noticeably shifted during a press conference in Minneapolis, questions have remained over what comes next in Minnesota, according to analysis from CNN's Aaron Blake.

"Even as Homan is signaling there will be a softer, more focused and by-the-books effort and fewer agents in Minneapolis, we got word Trump is pulling out of the other state where he’s launched a similar immigration enforcement effort," Blake wrote.

In Maine, ICE agents were pulled from the state Thursday after heightened public scrutiny.

"Meanwhile, the White House and Republicans seem to be preparing to make significant legislative concessions on immigration enforcement to prevent a government shutdown," Blake added.

Democrats have been pushing to cut out funding for DHS from the current large spending package, just hours from a potential government shutdown. The move would give lawmakers time to negotiate how to cut back ICE's actions in the upcoming weeks and Republicans have appeared ready to "make significant legislative concessions" in order to avoid another stalemate as Democrats make specific demands, including requiring body cameras and banning masks for the federal agents.

"But there is a clear sense that Democrats have much of the leverage right now. Republicans aren’t even talking very tough," Blake wrote.

The move reflects what Americans have been saying, with recent polls showing President Donald Trump's approval rating on immigration plummeting and a rising number of Americans saying ICE is "too tough."

And although Trump could be stubborn over the harsh immigration policy he has touted, it could play out differently this time.

"Trump and his party are at least flirting with capitulation," Blake wrote.

Trump DOJ nearly shut out by judges over cases that 'turn your stomach': expert

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice was nearly shut out by judges after a federal judge in Minnesota said ICE has defied 100 different court orders.

Legal expert Lisa Rubin talked about the ongoing cases with MS NOW anchor Katie Tur, who described Judge Patrick J. Schiltz's statement that "ICE is behaving as if ICE itself is the law."

"It's crazy to me to have that said by the chief judge of the District of Minnesota, particularly given his background," Rubin said. "We have said this many times, but when it comes to the lawlessness of this administration, the folks who are calling that out are not all appointees of Democratic presidents. Many of them have conservative legal movement bona fides. That is absolutely true of this particular judge, Patrick Schiltz, and the order in which he related that Katie is not one where he had to say any of that."

Schiltz's comments pointed to a concern and what might happen with Trump's DOJ.

"The question was just, is Todd Lyons going to come to his courtroom on Friday and testify or not?" Rubin said. "And he said, it's no longer necessary. You have told me that you released the person in question. He was supposed to come and explain why the person hadn't been released, and they said, he's been released. We agree the hearing is off. But then he took the opportunity to say, 'I have spoken with the other judges in my district. We have counted between us nearly 100 instances in which ICE has not followed our orders."

Several civil applications have remained open, Rubin added.

"The state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities have a pending motion for a temporary restraining order against the continued operation of [ICE's] metro surge," she said. "They're also asking if it continues to have this judge, Kate Menendez, rein in some of the tactics that are being used on the ground against people who aren't subject to enforcement, immigration related arrests."

The question that has continued to remain, Rubin explained, was whether the immigrants detained by ICE — the main reason for protests erupting on the ground — have brought cases that say 'your right to detain me is in question."

"You didn't have a warrant, judicial or administrative or I have status in this country. I never should have been picked up in the first place," Rubin said, describing the legal questions emerging in these cases.

Rubin and MS NOW colleague Fallon Gallagher reviewed 61 cases where immigrants were challenging their detentions, which were decided between Jan. 20 and Jan. 27.

"We found that in all but one case, with judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, the immigrants won every single time but one. And in that one outstanding case, the person had a criminal history. But in all of the rest, not only did they have no criminal history, they were arrested in circumstances that turn your stomach," Rubin said.

Rubin described the cases and circumstances surrounding some of the detained immigrants fighting for justice.

"A Kenyan woman outside a CVS looking for her seizure medication about to walk in and get it, somebody who was a deferred action for childhood arrivals, a Dreamer who had lawful status to be here, other people who entered as refugees or had pending claims for asylum, had never missed a court date, had filled out all their paperwork, someone who had permission to be here as a victim of violence under the Violence Against Women Act, and it goes on and on and on to a person, to almost a case, with one exception, every time the judges are saying you have no right to detain these people sort of underscores what we're seeing on the streets," Rubin said.

'Oh!' CNN reporter startled as chaos erupts outside ICE facility

A CNN reporter was startled during a live broadcast as a clash between federal officers and protesters erupted outside a Texas immigration detention facility.

CNN's Ed Lavandera was outside the ICE facility in Dilley, Texas, where a group of demonstrators demanded the release of 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father, who were taken last week in Minneapolis to the facility. The ICE detention location was under lockdown following demonstrations over the weekend from detainees who were responding to the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and ICE's brutal tactics, while several lawmakers attempted to speak with detained immigrants.

The visit with Texas Democratic Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett had been underway for more than three hours underway when a clash broke out among the large group.

"We have not gotten any updates from the facility," Lavandera said. "Meanwhile, outside of the facility, the attention kind of escalating here as a large group of protesters have marched from Dilley into the area and now state troopers in riot gear have been brought in to start pushing the crowd back."

The group had apparently begun to disperse, with many people walking back toward town when the clash happened.

"But here, on the edge in the entrance into this detention facility, there are still a smaller group of hard-line protesters who are there, probably about 30 or 40 feet into the property here belonging to the detention facility," Lavandera said. "And authorities have been telling them for probably the better part of an hour to scoot back in. Just a little while ago, a group of - well, now it's starting to get tense. We'll let you watch this scene unfold here as we're kind of watching it unfold as well. But state troopers starting to push back."

A loud noise rang out and some type of device was shot into the crowd. People at the scene appeared to have been hit with some type of tear gas and were treating protesters at the location.

"I saw some - Oh! There we go," Lavandera said, as someone yells an obscenity. "Oh, that landed on top of a photographer's camera. And I could see the photographer jump back there. So they have I see a number of troopers have taken a few people into custody down there on the ground, but the vast majority of them have been pushed back all of this literally unfolding here as these troopers in in the riot gear, the state troopers were the ones that were brought in, on a school bus just a short while ago."

Bizarre Trump fundraising email threatens MAGA donors: 'ICE will hunt you down'

In a threatening and odd fundraising email for President Donald Trump, MAGA donors were warned that anyone who doesn't respond to a survey validating they are American citizens would be tracked down by ICE.

The request for money — and threat — was sent by the Never Surrender, Inc PAC this week and had the subject line "Are you an illegal alien?" The Daily Beast reported. The move was questioned and criticized as a bizarre and unusual appeal to request funding.

“I reached out last week about my Citizens Only Survey,” the email said. “Your file says you’re a top MAGA patriot... But my records to my survey STILL say: RESPONSE PENDING. Don’t tell me, you’re an Illegal Alien?!? That cannot be true!”

It ended with another lingering and menacing ultimatum.

“This is your FINAL MOMENT to Prove me wrong—please. Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?”

Journalist Brian Karem described his reaction to receiving the email in a post on X.

“I can’t say I’m surprised, but . . . The Donald just asked ME and anyone who didn’t answer his survey if we are ILLEGAL ALIENS,” Karem wrote on X. “And then? He threatened to have ICE come and track me down. Maybe we just think you’re an a--hole.”

The email was sent just days after ICE agents gunned down and killed 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis amid criticism from Republicans and the general public that the Trump administration's aggressive immigration tactics have gone too far.

Even Trump doesn't agree with Stephen Miller's wild 'assassin' claim for slain nurse

President Donald Trump broke from his top aide on Tuesday and said he did not think Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, was an "assassin."

Trump was speaking with reporters outside the White House before he was headed to Iowa when a reporter asked him if he thought Pretti was an "assassin" — something White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller had claimed after Pretti was killed in an incident captured on video. Trump replied "no" to the question.

Miller came under fire in the hours after the fatal shooting for his unfounded comments.

"A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists," Miller wrote on X, without mentioning that most experts have said Pretti was disarmed by the agents before the shooting.

Miller, the architect of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration policy, was reportedly pushed out of the conversation late Monday on the future of the Department of Homeland Security as Trump and his team consider recalibrating their approach in the wake of Pretti's killing and the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother Renee Good earlier this month.

'Stinging defeat': Analyst in awe as Stephen Miller’s war became too costly for GOP

An analyst revealed Tuesday how White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller's war on immigration has created political repercussions for Republicans and prompted President Donald Trump to change course as a result of the defeat.

In the fallout over ICE's killing of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump's retreat in Minnesota has signaled a major shift among Republicans and within the Trump administration, The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait wrote. Trump has reportedly considered a shift in the policy constructed by Miller, the architect of the administration's aggressive immigration actions, influenced by the sharp public response to ICE in Minnesota.

"Trump’s retreat in Minneapolis is a stinging defeat for the national conservatives, the Republican Party’s most nakedly authoritarian faction," Chait wrote. "The NatCons believe American liberalism cannot be dealt with through normal political methods such as persuasion and compromise."

This faction has focused on "wokeism" and called "the American left as 'the enemy within,'" Chait explained. Miller has maintained that stopping immigration is "a final chance to stop permanent left-wing tyranny."

"NatCons also maintain that immigration poses a mortal threat to the United States. These two strands of thought are intertwined; NatCons consider immigration a weapon employed consciously by the left to assume permanent power, via manipulating elections and creating government dependency, a conspiracy that can only be reversed through the kind of ferocious operation on display in Minneapolis," Chait wrote.

The reality is that Trump can't handle disapproval from within his own party and the public.

"He cannot tolerate criticism and he deems any process that embarrasses him, including a critical news story or an election, illegitimate, even criminal," Chait wrote.

That's what made Pretti's killing so distinct — and repulsive — to many Americans, including conservatives, Chait explained.

"Whether or not Trump’s intermittent expressions of human feeling for the immigrants his administration has abused is heartfelt, his desire to maintain his political standing most certainly is," Chait wrote.

"Trump’s capitulation would never have occurred if not for the heroic, disciplined resistance in Minneapolis," Chait wrote. "Faced with something like an occupying army that was systematically flouting the law, the people of Minneapolis thrust its abuse into the public eye, raising the political cost of Miller’s war until enough Republicans decided that they couldn’t bear to pay it."

Trump just handed Dems a weapon that will finish him

After what happened in Minneapolis last weekend, the American people are angry, afraid, and feel powerless to stop a president and a Department of Homeland Security drunk on power and violence. They are crying out for someone — anyone — to show a way forward, to counter this administration and defend a fragile democracy.

This is the moment Democrats must step forward together.

Poll after poll shows Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in deep trouble. Voters are furious about affordability, exhausted by chaos, alarmed by the open lawlessness defining this administration.

Democrats have rightly centered accountability, calling out a GOP Congress that sits idle while Trump tramples the Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human decency.

The second fatal shooting of an innocent, law-abiding American by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis sickened anyone with a functioning conscience. This was not an accident. It was the predictable result of an unrestrained DHS operating a paramilitary force, emboldened by Trump and protected by Republican silence.

Republicans, according to reporting, are afraid to confront Trump over ICE’s brutality. In the absence of Republican courage, Democrats must act.

They have real leverage.

Last week, the House passed a funding package that included more than $64 billion for DHS, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection. It passed despite Democratic demands for guardrails to rein in ICE’s violent, lawless behavior and the rogue leadership of DHS Secretary Kristin Noem.

That DHS funding was bundled with several other appropriations bills needed to keep the government funded through the end of the fiscal year.

In normal times, such a package would sail through Congress. These are not normal times. Any faith that business could proceed as usual has been shattered by the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot in broad daylight by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.

The bill now sits in the Senate, where Democrats have the power to stop it.

Senate Democrats vowed not to provide the votes needed to advance DHS funding unless the department is fundamentally reined in. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called what happened in Minnesota “appalling and unacceptable,” and called the bill “woefully inadequate” to curb ICE abuses.

That stance upends what House negotiators — read Republicans — thought was a near-done deal. Because DHS funding is tied to five other spending bills, removing it would require renegotiation and new House approval, unlikely before funding expires at the end of the week.

The result is a very real threat of a partial government shutdown if Democrats hold firm and Republicans refuse to separate DHS from the broader package.

This is why the stakes are so high, and why Democrats must stay united until they get real action on behalf of the American people.

They have been here before. Last year, Democrats forced a shutdown over expiring Obamacare tax credits. They showed unity, then accepted a familiar Republican “promise” that the issue would be taken up later.

It wasn’t, of course. Why would anyone in their right mind take Republicans in Congress at their word? The credits expired. Premiums spiked. Millions lost coverage. Democrats sent a message, but messages don’t pay bills. Outcomes do, and the outcome was failure because Democrats caved.

Now the test is far more dire.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned the killing of Pretti, calling Trump and DHS “completely and totally out of control.” He labeled the killing of a VA nurse a “horrific, preventable tragedy” and demanded an independent investigation free from DHS interference.

But words are not enough. If the Senate blocks DHS funding and the bill returns to the House, Jeffries must keep his caucus united to stop it.

This is not the moment for half-measures or false promises of reform later. Or to trust Republicans to do the right thing. Senate Democrats must refuse to fund DHS — fully, publicly, to the end.

Not for symbolism. Not for a press release. Not in exchange for another empty Republican assurance.

This is a defining test for Schumer. The New York senator built his career battling in the trenches. Yet that fighter feels absent now, replaced by a leader strong on floor speeches but weak against Trump’s, and the GOP’s, relentless bad faith.

Schumer has a chance to remind the country who he once was. He can hold his caucus together, vote down DHS funding, and force a reckoning over the brutality and illegality that has now claimed American lives.

Public opinion is already there. Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans are horrified by what is happening in Minneapolis. There are not two legitimate sides to this story. Americans can see the truth for themselves. There is only one.

Trump’s response has been escalation. He sent border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a move roughly equivalent to sending a Tsavo lion into a chicken coop. Homan, like his boss, offers intimidation instead of accountability.

Democrats must be visible. They must go to Minnesota, stand where Americans were killed, and make clear they are willing to confront this administration head-on. They must stay united and refuse to be conned yet again by Republicans.

This is not politics as usual. It is about protecting American lives.

The country is watching. If Democrats fail, this will not stop in Minnesota. These tactics will spread to blue cities and blue states, putting more American lives at risk.

This really is a matter of life and death.

Democrats must either prove they are willing to fight, or once again signal that they will blink. If they break now, the consequences will be measured in blood, making polls and headlines meaningless.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This city knows all too well how low Trump will go — and he's about to go yet lower

During the 2024 election, JD Vance and Donald Trump told disgusting, racist lies about Haitians in Springfield and made the southwest Ohio city a national target of hate and extremism.

Pathetic loser neo-Nazis stalked the streets, disrupted community meetings, and protested in front of City Hall. Charity leaders were harassed. Schools closed after being subjected to repeated bomb threats. Business and city leaders were threatened with violence and death.

After telling the racist lies that sparked this hateful chaos in a city of his own constituents, then-Sen. Vance admitted that he would “create stories” to get attention, which is how a child operates.

Now he’s Vice President of the United States.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tried to be the adult in the room.

He took to the New York Times to shoot down the lies and support the actual community — as opposed to the hate-filled fantasy portrayed by the amoral sociopaths in the right-wing media echo-chamber.

DeWine was born in Springfield.

DeWine and his wife Fran also have deep connections to Haiti, founding a school there named after their late daughter, who they tragically lost in a car accident in 1993.

Amid gang violence in 2024, the Becky DeWine School had to close down.

That current, brutal spat of gang violence stems out of a history of genocide, colonization and slavery, revolution, extortion and impoverishment, and subsequent dictatorship, instability, and violence.

I know the story of one Haitian refugee who escaped the violence there and has been in the U.S. for years under protected status.

Working multiple jobs and living modestly to save as much as possible, she had a home built for herself back in Haiti to eventually move back.

She furnished it and everything, getting it ready: a new couch, a new fridge, a comfy bed.

About two months ago, gangs broke into the home, robbed everything from it, and left it in ruins.

She now has no home to return to, just a pile of rubble.

“Self-deport,” they say: self-deport to violence and disaster.

“Illegal,” they say, as they strip them of their legal status.

During Trump’s first term, he tried to end Temporary Protected Status for refugees from Haiti in 2018 and referred to Haiti and African nations as “s---hole” countries. Courts blocked him.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has now once again set a date to end protected status for Haitian refugees in the U.S., on Feb. 3.

A lawsuit against the order is before an appellate court of federal judges, but no decision has yet been given. A ruling is expected Feb. 2.

Springfield is on edge.

Look for the helpers.

The helpers at the local level are doing everything they can. They’re exhausted. They’re scared.

It’s an absolute disgrace that America has sunk so low. The community has done everything they can.

Now it’s time for Ohio’s elected leaders to do everything they can to help: Make phone calls, back-channel, use whatever influence possible to do everything possible to keep Ohio safe and peaceful.

Springfield, Ohio does not need a vengeance tour of appalling, illegal, unconstitutional, propaganda porn for right-wing internet losers from a sadistic regime.

DeWine has been public about the economic storm that would hit Springfield if the city that has spent years successfully expanding and adjusting to this hard-working, faithful community is suddenly upended by the mass deportation of 10,000 residents.

Factories will be hobbled, jobs will go unfilled, local businesses will close down, city and county revenues will plummet, churches will once again have empty pews, and neighborhoods that had been revitalized will fall again into shambles.

Meanwhile, all those horrific scenes playing out in Minnesota will come to this small Ohio town.

Open abuse of police powers violating the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Violence, hatred, chaos. A maelstrom of madness, based on the lawless whims and childish fantasies of under-trained, under-vetted, unaccountable goon squads.

This the doing of “public leaders” who are mental, intellectual, and emotional toddlers — broken people breaking the world.

They’re too weak and stupid, short-sighted and malicious to have any positive vision for humanity, so they spew forth darkness, resentment, paranoia, division, and hate.

In stark display of their sickness of soul, they delight in the pain and hurt they torment upon others.

They reject the light of truth, compassion, mercy, restraint, benevolence, tolerance, and love. They insult God.

It’s well past time for all adults remaining among Ohio’s so-called leaders to stand up to these children.

It’s time to protect the law — actual, constitutional law. It’s time to protect order. It’s time to protect Ohio’s peace. It’s time for a shred of decency.

Ohio Capital Journal Editor-in-Chief and Opinion Columnist David DeWitt has been covering government, politics, and policy in Ohio since 2007, including education, health care, crime and the courts, poverty, state and local government, business, labor, energy, the environment, and social issues. He has worked for the National Journal, The New York Observer, and The Athens NEWS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and is a board member of the E.W. Scripps Society of Alumni and Friends. Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

Immigration agent mocked bystanders with brutal taunt after fatal shooting: report

An immigration agent reportedly hit bystanders with a brutal taunt after the killing of an ICU nurse over the weekend.

The killing by DHS agents of American Alex Pretti, who can be seen on video trying to help a woman who was pushed to the ground by the immigration officials, has spawned protests throughout Minnesota. The shooting comes after the killing of Renee Good, and early independent reports suggest Pretti had been disarmed before the first shot was even fired.

An Associated Press report states that, "The shooting happened amid widespread daily protests in the Twin Cities since the Jan. 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fired into her vehicle. Saturday’s shooting unfolded just over a mile away from where Good was shot."

Further down in the story, the AP includes a detail involving mockery.

"After the shooting, bystanders gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them 'cowards' and telling them to go home," the weekend report states. "One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: 'Boo hoo.'"

The report continues:

"Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car. Protesters dragged garbage dumpsters from alleyways to block the streets, and people who gathered chanted, 'ICE out now,' referring to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

'They’re killing my neighbors!' said Minneapolis resident Josh Koskie."

Read the piece here.

This Nazi political theory explains ICE impunity

Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, will not be brought to justice.

Let that sink in. Ross is going to skate, because in Donald Trump's America, his agency operates above the law. As Vice President JD Vance put it at a White House press conference the day after the shooting, Ross has “absolute immunity for doing his job.”

Vance’s comments shed light upon the larger legal design behind ICE’s newfound power. In Trump’s second term, the U.S. is rapidly devolving into what the late German émigré legal and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called a “dual state,” in which acts of violence perpetrated against designated enemies of the regime are not only tolerated, but often celebrated as acts of valor and redemption.

A socialist attorney who practiced labor law in Berlin, Fraenkel fled Nazi Germany in 1938, eventually settling in Chicago. There he would write his most famous work, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, a study of the legal system implemented by the Third Reich in the 1930s.

Fraenkel’s central thesis is that the Nazis did not dismantle the legal structure of the Weimar Republic all at once or entirely, but replaced it with a bifurcated system in which state functions were divided between a “normative” sphere — which operated according to set rules and regulations — and a “prerogative” sphere, where violence was permitted and traditional legal restraints did not apply.

To keep capitalism up and running, Hitler’s government had to maintain the façade of a stable “normative” legal system that permitted businesses and Christian Germans to engage in commerce and settle contract cases, employment disputes, landlord-tenant matters, and other civil issues in court. As University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq noted in a March 2025 Atlantic essay, this duality allowed capitalism to “jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.”

But as the judiciary surrendered its independence through a combination of cooptation and intimidation, the “prerogative” system came to dominate.

“On any given day,” Huq explained:

… people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one. In July 1936, for example, Fraenkel won a case for employees of an association taken over by the Nazis. A few days later, he learned that the Gestapo had seized the money owed to his clients and deposited it in the government’s coffers.

The case was closed with no further appeals.

Fraenkel largely attributed the theoretical underpinnings of the dual Nazi state to the work of the German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Often referred to as the “Crown Jurist of National Socialism,” Schmitt joined the party in 1933 and went on to serve as president of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals.

Schmitt was an unrelenting critic of liberalism, decrying its weaknesses for embracing universal human rights and what he deemed its hypocritical and indecisive fixations on discussion, debate, negotiation, and compromise. As a counter to universalism, he promoted a “friend-enemy” concept of politics, insisting that all states necessarily distinguish between those whom it embraces as friends worthy of protection and those who are forever considered enemies, outsiders and invaders deserving of its wrath, retribution, and punishment.

As a complement to the friend-enemy concept, Schmitt promoted the idea of the “state of exception,” arguing that the sovereign in a well-functioning state must be vested with emergency powers to suspend the rule of law to maintain public order and ensure the survival of the nation. Soon after joining the party, he declared that the Enabling Act, which effectively made Hitler a dictator, had become the provisional constitution of Germany. He would go on to enthusiastically support the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, stripping Jews and other “enemies” of citizenship, and to defend Hitler’s right as sovereign to define the enemy as he saw fit.

All of this will sound eerily familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the news. Since retaking the presidency, Trump has declared nine states of emergency on a range of issues stretching from the imposition of bloated tariffs on foreign goods to designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and proclaiming a national emergency at the southern border. The border proclamation, issued on Jan. 20, his first day back in office, cited the now-familiar charge of an “alien invasion” of “criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers,” and laid the groundwork for both his mass-deportation program and for giving ICE the largest budget of any police agency in the country.

ICE is now a formidable paramilitary force, having hired 12,000 new agents in the past year, more than doubling its size, and ramping up to hire more. It has been deployed into American cities on orders from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to root out the invaders. It has become the violent face of the country’s transformation into a new 21st-century dual state.

Undocumented immigrants remain ICE’s primary target, but citizens like Good are also in jeopardy. Good’s case stands out because she was white, and her killing was caught on video. But she is not alone. While there are no official figures that specifically track how many citizens have been victimized by immigration agents, ProPublica reported last October that it had found more than 170 cases where citizens were detained during raids and protests. According to the report:

Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.

To date, not a single federal agent has been prosecuted for these incidents. Nor are any prosecutions likely.

In “normal” times, we could at least expect Agent Ross to face a rigorous Justice Department investigation. It is not true, to return to Vance's comments, that Ross enjoys absolute immunity under existing law. It has always been difficult to prosecute federal law enforcement officials, but no such immunity exists.

But these are not normal times.

Trump, who now openly directs the Department of Justice and the FBI, has precluded the possibility of any serious federal investigation. Nor can we count on a state investigation conducted in concert with federal law enforcement. The FBI has announced it will exclude Minnesota authorities from participating in any fake pro-forma probe of Good’s death.

Perhaps most regrettably, we cannot count on the Supreme Court to hold Ross and other offending agents to account. The Supreme Court has endowed Trump with the powers of the unitary executive, holding in Trump v. United States that the president may exercise his pardon power however he pleases to excuse anyone from any federal prosecution.

The struggle against ICE and our emerging dual state is now approaching a critical inflection point. We can be heartened by the fact that the United States is not Germany in 1933, and Trump, for all his bluster and megalomania, is not Hitler. The country’s fate remains open, and dependent on the nonviolent and lawful collective action that we — all of us — take in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Bill Blum is a former California administrative law judge. As an attorney prior to becoming a judge, he was one of the state's best-known death-penalty litigators. He is also an award-winning writer and legal journalist, and the author of three popular legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam as well as scores of features and book reviews published in a broad array of magazines and newspapers. His non-fiction work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, ranging from Common Dreams and The Nation to the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly and Los Angeles Magazine.