Feb. 5—Following the killings of Rachel Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both of which are federal law enforcement agencies under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, protests against the agencies spilled into the streets in all fifty states. Anger grew after officials of President Donald Trump’s administration—including Trump himself—blamed the victims for causing their own deaths, leading to demonstrations in more than 300 cities. Protestors marched behind banners with messages such as “ICE Out of Everywhere,” demanding the agency be shut down. It is reported that over the month of January another six to eight people died while held in ICE detention centers.

It was after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, that ICE was created as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Its mission was to enforce immigration laws and investigate customs violations. With an initial budget in 2003 of $8 billion, by 2015, under President Obama, it had become the largest federal law enforcement agency. Between 2009 and 2015, 2.4 million undocumented workers were deported, earning Barack Obama the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief.” Forty percent of those deported by the Obama administration had no criminal record.

Trump promised a major crackdown as a candidate in 2024, and ICE’s budget has been sharply increased to fulfill that pledge. In 2025, ICE received $29 billion in funding, and its practices became increasingly militarized. ICE agents are often masked and dressed in civilian clothes, travel in unmarked cars, and do not identify themselves when they snatch people from the streets and at job sites. The recent killings reflect a marked escalation in violence, with even many Trump supporters warning that ICE is acting like a Gestapo. Further, it has been noted that while some ICE agents have little or no training before they are sent into “battle,” some receive training in Tel Aviv from the Israel Defense Forces, whose tactics have been shamelessly exposed in the genocide against Palestinians, including the deaths of tens of thousands of children.

When ICE agents grabbed a five-year-old boy and his father in Minnesota and shipped them to a detention center in Texas to await deportation, despite no evidence of criminal violations, many Republicans joined with libertarians to denounce the action. The action was overturned by Judge Fred Biery, who said that ICE’s tactics reflect “the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence.” In Biery’s ruling, he states:

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children…. Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were: 1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.” 2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.” 3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.” 4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”

“We the people” are hearing echoes of that history….

Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse…. Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

He concludes by writing: “Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: ‘Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?’ ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, it is so ORDERED.”