Matt Laslo Martin Pengelly
January 22, 2026
RAW STORY
Federal agents detain locals in Minneapolis, Minnesota. REUTERS/Leah Millis
WASHINGTON – As Vice President JD Vance prepared to visit Minneapolis on Thursday, a prominent Democratic congresswoman, herself a top target of Donald Trump’s racially tinged attacks, railed against federal immigration agents deploying “horrifying” and “terrifying” tactics in her home city.
“It’s occupation … it’s terror at this point,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told Raw Story.
Omar was speaking at the Capitol on a day of drama around the passage of new funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Agents of ICE and other DHS bodies have been running amok in Minneapolis and other parts of Minnesota as the Trump administration implements its brutal immigration agenda.
On Jan. 7, in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three who was observing federal operations.
Trump, Vance, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other senior officials immediately attacked Good and praised the agent who killed her, Jonathan Ross.
Federal agencies refused co-operation with state and local investigators as fears spread that Good’s killing would be covered up, her killer not brought to justice.
Amid rising protests in Minneapolis, there has been another shooting, wounding a man in the leg, and multiple instances of protesters met with violence by federal agents.
The Trump administration has launched investigations into local Democratic leaders, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Trump has also floated invoking the Insurrection Act, a rarely used measure that allows the president to deploy regular army troops to deal with civil unrest.
Vance was due to speak in Minnesota on Thursday evening. The administration said he would “reinforce the White House’s unwavering support for federal immigration officials,” hold a roundtable discussion with community leaders, and stage a news conference.
Raw Story asked Omar if she was worried that Vance’s visit risked “tossing gasoline on an already burning fire?”
“Minnesotans have been very level-headed in their approach,” Omar said. “They understand the stakes, and they are not taking the bait in escalating this in any kind of way that would jeopardize the safety of their neighbors.”
In another high-profile incident in Minneapolis, federal agents recently took into custody a 5-year-old boy, seeking to gain access to family members.
“It's one of the most horrifying stories to come out of Minnesota,” Omar told Raw Story. “I mean, to have this child be used in a way to coerce others to come out is really terrifying. And you know, we've heard that they took him and his father to San Antonio [in Texas] before they took them to a more permanent place.”
“Does that show that they are escalating tactics?” Raw Story asked.
“They are,” Omar said. "It's an occupation, I think is a light word to use. It's terror at this point. I think they have a desperate need to show that they are able to do something there.”
Omar was born in Somalia and emigrated to the U.S. — making her a prime target for frequent racist attacks from the right, including from Vance and Trump.
Trump has said Omar should be jailed or deported.
Right-wing invective about Somali Americans and cases of childcare benefit fraud in Minnesota have added fuel to Trump’s attacks.
Omar said: “Obviously, the Somalis are not in the crossfire of [the ICE raids] because, you know, nearly 60 percent of Somalis in Minnesota are US-born. Almost 99 percent of us are citizens. So when they couldn't find Somalis, I think they're taking their anger out on the Latino and Asian community, and it is, like I said, pure terror.”
On Thursday, the House was considering a new funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security. If it does not pass, the House will risk another government shutdown, just two months after the end of the longest such funding pause in history.
Omar said: “The alternative is finding a way to pass legislation that reins in the terror that ICE and Border Patrol is causing in our communities. They have no business being in American cities. Their mission has been to occupy, to terrorize and to intimidate communities.”
Speaking of her Minneapolis constituency, she said, “I have businesses that are reporting severe losses. It is unjustifiable to shoot an American citizen in the face, to have masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, asking American citizens for their papers.
“And this is not just happening in Minneapolis, it's happening across Minnesota, and we cannot normalize this terror that our communities are feeling, and we have to take a stand.”
Omar called the DHS funding bill “a joke” and said, “Real accountability means that they follow what the laws of this country are, and they are moving the goal post every single minute.
“They have authorized for ICE agents to go into people's homes, violating the Fourth Amendment without a judicial warrant. You can now live with federal agents that are deputized by our government constantly violating the Constitution.”
Nonetheless, most observers said the DHS funding measure would pass, with swing-state Democrats likely to support Republicans in voting for the bill.
‘The Fourth Amendment Literally Exists to Prevent This’: Memo Claims ICE Can Forcibly Enter Homes Without Judicial Warrants
“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, demanding congressional hearings.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers approach a residential building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 13, 2026.
(Photo by Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Jessica Corbett
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
“The United States government is looking for ways around that pesky Fourth Amendment,” an investigative journalist said of Wednesday reporting by the Associated Press on an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo claiming that ICE agents can forcibly enter a private residence without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Hours After US Citizen Shot Dead by ICE, JD Vance Says ‘Door-to-Door’ Operations Are Coming
No, Says Rights Coalition, Recording ICE Agents Is Not Illegal
ICE’s May 12 memo, part of a whistleblower disclosure obtained by the AP, says that “although the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the US Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”
The January 7 disclosure was sent to the US Senate by the group Whistleblower Aid, which is “keeping the whistleblowers’ identities anonymous even from oversight investigators,” according to the document. It notes that despite being addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” the seemingly unconstitutional memo “has not been formally distributed to all personnel.”
Instead, it “has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the memo and return it to the supervisor,” the disclosure details. “Newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on” an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
Asked about the May 12 memo, signed by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that everyone DHS serves with an administrative warrant has already had “full due process and a final order of removal,” and the US Supreme Court and Congress have “recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement.”
However, as Whistleblower Aid senior vice president and special counsel David Kligerman stressed in a Wednesday statement, “no court has ever found that ICE agents have such legal authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant.”
“This administration’s secretive policy advocates conduct that the Supreme Court has described as ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is the warrantless physical entry of a home,” he noted. “This is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent.”
“If ICE believes that this policy is consistent with the law, why not publicize it?” he asked. “Perhaps they’ve hidden it precisely because it cannot withstand legal scrutiny. Policies which impact fundamental constitutional rights, particularly one which the Supreme Court has called the greatest of equals among the Bill of Rights, should be discussed openly with the American people. It cannot be undone by hidden policy memos.”
Other lawyers, journalists, and critics responded similarly to the AP‘s reporting on social media. Alejandra Caraballo of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic declared that “the Fourth Amendment literally exists to prevent this.”
Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specializing in litigation related to national security, federal employment, and security clearance law, said, “Remember when the Fourth Amendment was still a thing?”
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!”
“This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda,” he continued, highlighting a footnote that suggests “they won’t even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!”
“In short, this secret memo explains SO MUCH of what we’ve been seeing over the last months, including this raid of a home in Minneapolis where ICE officers presented no judicial warrant before breaking in the door,” he said. “Turns out they were secretly told they don’t need one!”
While Reichlin-Melnick shared photos of a scene in which armed immigration agents used a battering ram to enter a Minneapolis home and arrest a Liberian man, federal agents also recently broke down the door of a residence in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, and arrested ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a US citizen who was later freed.
The AP reporting and responses to the leaked memo came as the Trump administration on Wednesday surged immigration agents to Maine for what it dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day,” mirroring the federal deployment to not only Minnesota—where ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in her vehicle earlier this month—but also Illinois and California.
US Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an inquiry into reports of unconstitutional detentions of US citizens by immigration agents in October and on Wednesday demanded answers about the new whistleblower disclosure.
Blumenthal sent lists of questions and requests for records to Lyons and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as well as Benjamin C. Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The senator also wrote to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), urging them to call the ICE and DHS leaders to testify before their panels.
“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time.”
“In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light,” he continued. “Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first.”
“My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real,” the senator added. “They must hold hearings and join me in demanding the Trump administration answer for this lawless policy.”
Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specializing in litigation related to national security, federal employment, and security clearance law, said, “Remember when the Fourth Amendment was still a thing?”
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!”
“This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda,” he continued, highlighting a footnote that suggests “they won’t even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!”
“In short, this secret memo explains SO MUCH of what we’ve been seeing over the last months, including this raid of a home in Minneapolis where ICE officers presented no judicial warrant before breaking in the door,” he said. “Turns out they were secretly told they don’t need one!”
While Reichlin-Melnick shared photos of a scene in which armed immigration agents used a battering ram to enter a Minneapolis home and arrest a Liberian man, federal agents also recently broke down the door of a residence in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, and arrested ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a US citizen who was later freed.
The AP reporting and responses to the leaked memo came as the Trump administration on Wednesday surged immigration agents to Maine for what it dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day,” mirroring the federal deployment to not only Minnesota—where ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in her vehicle earlier this month—but also Illinois and California.
US Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an inquiry into reports of unconstitutional detentions of US citizens by immigration agents in October and on Wednesday demanded answers about the new whistleblower disclosure.
Blumenthal sent lists of questions and requests for records to Lyons and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as well as Benjamin C. Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The senator also wrote to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), urging them to call the ICE and DHS leaders to testify before their panels.
“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time.”
“In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light,” he continued. “Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first.”
“My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real,” the senator added. “They must hold hearings and join me in demanding the Trump administration answer for this lawless policy.”
“If we keep having these crises, one of them is going to get really ugly.”
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 15, 2026.
(Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brad Reed
Jan 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Experts are warning that the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown in Minnesota could quickly get out of hand and could even result in a second US civil war.
Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, wrote in a Wednesday column published by the Guardian that she and her colleagues at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) conducted a tabletop exercise in October 2024 that simulated potential outcomes if a US president were to carry out law enforcement operations similar to the ones being conducted by the Trump administration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minnesota.
‘Minneapolis Is the Test Case’: Trump Threatens Insurrection Act to Put Down Protests
“In that exercise, a president carried out a highly unpopular law-enforcement operation in Philadelphia and attempted to federalize the Pennsylvania’s National Guard,” Finkelstein explained. “When the governor resisted and the guard remained loyal to the state, the president deployed active-duty troops, resulting in an armed conflict between state and federal forces.”
Finkelstein noted that such a scenario is alarmingly close to what’s currently going on in Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Walz has placed his state’s National Guard on standby and President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give him broad powers to deploy the military on US soil.
The simulation also projected that the judiciary would be of little help to any state that found itself in the president’s crosshairs.
“We concluded that in a fast-moving emergency of this magnitude, courts would probably be unable or unwilling to intervene in time, leaving state officials without meaningful judicial relief,” Finkelstein explained. “State officials might file emergency motions to enjoin the use of federal troops, but judges would either fail to respond quickly enough or decline to rule on what they view as a ‘political question,’ leaving the conflict unresolved.”
Steve Saideman, a political scientist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, argued that the situation now is even more dire than the one Finkelstein and her colleagues imagined in their simulation.
In a post on Bluesky, Saideman argued that the US is “hours or days away from civil war.”
“This might sound extreme,” he acknowledged, “but if Walz has the Minnesota National Guard blocking ICE operations, the usual response of the federal government to governors using National Guard against feds is to call out the Army... What happens if the Army confronts Minnesota National Guard? We have no idea. But one real possibility is: bam.”
Saideman added that, given the nonstop chaos of Trump’s presidency, it’s only a matter of time before it eventually boils over into real civil conflict.
“If we keep having these crises, one of them is going to get really ugly,” he said. “Crises under Trump are street cars—there is always another one coming along. We have gotten lucky thus far, but if a citizen shoots at ICE or if the Minnesota National Guard tussles with ICE, things may escalate very quickly.”
In a New York Times column published on Monday, Lydia Polgreen argued it was no longer a stretch to equate what is going on in Minnesota with a war being waged by the federal government against one of its own states.
“It might not yet be a civil war, but what the White House has called Operation Metro Surge is definitely not just—or even primarily—an immigration enforcement operation,” wrote Polgreen. “It is an occupation designed to punish and terrorize anyone who dares defy this incursion and, by extension, Trump’s power to wield limitless force against any enemy he wishes.”
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