Anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis. Photo: Fibonacci Blue. CC BY 4.0

Since the murder of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7, the world’s attention has turned sharply to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Good, a mother of three children, had just dropped off her youngest child at school, when she had a chance encounter with ICE and attempted to leave the area. She was shot four times and denied medical care. Her last words captured on video were, “I’m not mad at you.” Outraged, thousands of Minnesotans took to the streets in protest. Good’s murder was followed by the ICE shooting of a Venezuelan man that also led to further militant protests on Minneapolis’ north side.

Following these events, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the former vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket in 2024, made an extraordinary televised address. It was notable for both capturing the severity of the political crisis and putting forth feeble solutions. Walz told Minnesotans:

What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief. News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities. Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota. Armed, masked, under-trained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live. They’re pulling over people, indiscriminately, including U.S. citizens, and demanding to see their papers and at grocery stores at bus stops even at our schools. They’re breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street. Just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans. Kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.

Let’s be very, very clear this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.

Walz called the federal presence an “occupation” and warned that worse was to come. Trump promised “the day of retribution and reckoning is coming.” Yet, what was Walz providing as a solution to this unprecedented crisis? He repeats verbatim the refrain of other Democratic politicians, high and low throughout the country: remain “peaceful” and “accountability is coming at the ballot box and the court.” Most importantly, Walz concluded:

We’re an island of decency in a country being driven towards cruelty. We will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, of peace. And tonight, I come before you simply to ask: Don’t let anyone take that away from us.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, on top of ominous threats he has already made, once again, threatened to escalate the repression by invoking the Insurrection Act. This ancient federal law would allow him to deploy active-duty troops to Minneapolis, turning the rampant criminality of ICE and the Border Patrol into a full-fledged military occupation. The Brennan Center for Justice warns that the act as “the law, which has not been meaningfully updated in over 150 years, is dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse.” The latest reports are that the Pentagon has put 1500 combat troops on standby.

Trump, however, has wavered on invoking the act faced with his growing unpopularity. Most polls put his support below a forty percent job approval rating. The latest CNN poll says, “A majority, 58%, calls the first year of Trump’s term a failure.” The report revealed even deeper popular concerns across party lines and loyalties,

A 55% majority say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, with just 32% saying they’ve made an improvement. Most, 64%, say he hasn’t gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. Even within the GOP, about half say that he should be doing........

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