With its reckless siege on Minneapolis—supported by an influx of three thousand agents, or five times the size of the city’s police department—the Trump administration has demonstrated that fraud investigation and immigration enforcement are pretexts for a show of federal force and violent suppression of civil rights and political dissent. What’s plain to anyone who’s seen videos of drivers pulled from cars, American citizens asked for their papers and threatened with gunfire, pastors and parents shot at close range with pepper balls, or schoolchildren caught in clouds of tear gas is that another boundary has been crossed. Five years after whipping up a loose army of supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol and stop the certification of an election he lost, Trump has deployed a well-funded paramilitary force to execute his authoritarian agenda. Historical precedents suggest themselves, even without the visual prompts of the cartoonish U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino in a trench coat worthy of Goebbels, or the nationalist propaganda reels produced by the Department of Homeland Security.
There is ample reason to question the legality of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis. The conduct of its masked and heavily armed agents is clearly out of control. Many are underqualified and poorly trained. As to whether the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good was justified, Trump’s Justice Department has declined to investigate what to many looked like a summary execution. But it has opened spurious investigations of Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey. Rather than take part in this legal charade, a number of federal prosecutors have resigned in protest. Their noble actions may hinder but are unlikely to halt Trump’s relentless attacks. He has shown no interest in calming the tensions he has stoked. The administration has embarked on a fresh $100 million drive for ICE recruits, which according to The Washington Post will include looking for prospective hires at gun shows. Even as ICE continues to terrorize Minneapolis, it may soon expand its offensive to cities around the country, from Lewiston, Maine, to New York City.
These developments must be viewed as part of a larger pattern, starting with Trump’s pardons of convicted January 6 rioters the day his second term began. This was soon followed by the firing of Justice Department officials who refused to go after his political enemies; the kidnapping and deportation of noncriminal migrants to a Salvadoran torture prison; the shakedown of media outlets, elite law firms, and universities; the deployment of National Guard troops to quell demonstrations in Portland, Oregon; warrantless arrests of peaceful protestors; and, of course, the dangerously provocative actions of federal agents in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere. Trump is still threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, and 1,500 military troops specially trained for cold-weather combat may soon be on the way to Minneapolis.
New York Times columnist M. Gessen recently wrote that under Trump, the country has descended into what can be called “electoral authoritarianism,” where the trappings of democracy—legislatures, courts, and elections—are maintained “but used primarily as decoration.” And even the decoration may soon be dispensed with. Trump regularly muses on shutting down polling sites or seizing ballot boxes during the fall midterm elections—or even suspending elections where MAGA opponents stand a chance of winning. These shouldn’t be dismissed as idle threats, given that the past year’s multipronged attack on democratic institutions is now accompanied by armed government agents threatening citizens in public.
The good news is that polling shows that Americans are increasingly troubled by the chaos and violence the administration has unleashed. A majority disapproves of ICE raids and the conduct of agents. Most say that ICE is making cities less safe, and public opinion—once favorable toward ICE—is now split on whether to abolish the agency altogether. Democratic leaders would be wise to take advantage of this growing sentiment, but so far they’ve tried to play it safe. Instead of, say, forcefully demanding significant cuts in ICE funding, they have repeated familiar calls for ICE to focus on immigrants with criminal records and advocated half-measures like mandatory body cameras for agents. Meanwhile, since the USCCB’s statement last November in support of immigrants, many U.S. bishops have gone quiet, while others have loudly sought to change the subject. Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, found time to berate New York City’s new mayor, bemoan the defrauding of social-services programs, and celebrate Trump’s “declaration of religious liberty day” before issuing a mealy-mouthed, both-sides statement on the chaos inflicted by the federal government in his own state.
Many Catholic bishops in this country could learn from the example of Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, who recently urged clergy to meet the political moment with action: “It may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.” Protestors in Minneapolis and elsewhere have reminded us of what that entails—and why it’s necessary. The administration’s brutality against immigrants is a violation of universal human rights, and its suppression of protests a flagrant assault on civil liberties. Trump said in a January interview that the only limit on his power is his own morality. That would be a catastrophe were it true. It is up to all people who believe in moral decency and the rule of law—members of Congress, judges, the clergy, and ordinary citizens—to demonstrate that it is not.
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