Welcome to The Logoff: Over the past few weeks, ICE’s actions have gotten a lot of attention — and if you step back, a disturbing picture is starting to emerge.
What’s happening? In the just over two weeks since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, we have seen the Trump administration:
This week, ICE also launched a new immigration operation in Maine — disturbingly named “Catch of the Day” — that is targeting Somali communities in Portland and Lewiston for no clear reason (other than, perhaps, President Donald Trump’s oft-expressed hatred for Somali people).
Why does this matter? There’s a pattern to the many, many individual outrages perpetrated by ICE and other federal immigration agents. As we wrote last week, what ICE is doing in Minneapolis already doesn’t look like immigration enforcement so much as a military occupation. But as it expands, and as the Justice Department is used to target peaceful protesters — and even Good’s widow — while refusing to investigate her killer, the more apt comparison may be a lawless security state that is feeling increasingly emboldened.
A memo shared with the AP by a whistleblower this week, instructing ICE agents that they are allowed to enter homes without a judicial warrant to carry out immigration arrests — seemingly in defiance of the Constitution — gives further credence to that image.
What’s the big picture? We’re not there yet, but in the unchecked federal power on display in Minneapolis, the outlines of Trump’s nascent MAGA police state are coming into focus.
