It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, February 02, 2026
‘You Have Lost All Legitimacy’: Portland Mayor Demands ICE Leave City After Tear Gassing Kids
“To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children.”
ICE deploys pepper balls, tear gas, and flashbang grenades on hundreds of people in Portland Oregon on February 1, 2026. (Photo by Sean Bascom/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The mayor of Portland, Oregon demanded that federal immigration enforcement officials leave his city after they were seen lobbing tear gas and flash bang grenades at demonstrators.
As reported by The Oregonian on Sunday, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson reacted with outrage after seeing federal agents deploying tear gas and firing rubber bullets at thousands of protesters who on Saturday marched to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in the city’s South Waterfront neighborhood.
Wilson called the agents’ attacks on protesters a vast overreaction to a “peaceful daytime protest, where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces” stationed at the facility.
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson said. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”
The mayor also heaped scorn on federal agents for employing such tactics when several children were present in the crowd.
“To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children,” he said. “Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people.”
Erin Hoover Barnett, a former Oregonian reporter who attended the demonstration, told the paper that she saw “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” who started dousing the crowd with tear gas on Saturday.
“To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers,” she said, “people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying.”
A Portland protester identified only as Robin gave an account similar to Barnett’s during an interview with local news station KPTV.
“About eight or 10 of them came out with guns whatever kind of guns they have and flash bombed just started throwing them at the crowd just exploding everywhere,” said Robin. “It was like a war zone. It felt like we were under attack. I definitely got hit. I had to run around the corner and pour a bunch of water on my face.”
One local protester identified only as Celeste told local news station KOIN 6 that she was out on the streets because she wanted to “fight tyranny.”
“What’s happening in our streets with ICE is ridiculous,” said Celeste. “It’s illegal. It’s got to be stopped. And no one’s going to stop it. Except we the people. We’ve got a tyrant in the White House, and no one will stop him but us.”
Dem senator blasts Fox host to her face on ICE: 'It is disappearing legal residents!'
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) speaks to the members of the media on the day of a briefing for senators on the situation in Venezuela, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 7, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) shut down a Fox News host Sunday after being asked whether the Trump administration’s proposed changes to its immigration enforcement operations were “reasonable,” arguing instead that mass deportations had turned the United States into a “dystopia.”
“Does that sound like a reasonable step to you?” asked Fox News’ Shannon Bream, referencing Border Czar Tom Homan’s proposal to ramp down immigration enforcement operations in exchange for state and local governments’ cooperation.
“People who are in jail [that] are going to be released by a state or locality, ICE has said we’ve got a detainer on this person, we think they’re removable, let one agent go into the jail versus what we’re seeing on the streets of Minneapolis?”
Visibly taken aback, Murphy scoffed at Bream’s use of the word "reasonable," and argued the Trump administration immigration enforcement operations to be anything but.
“C’mon, are we still pretending that ICE is going after dangerous people? They aren’t! Right now, 70% of the people that they’re detaining have absolutely no criminal record,” Murphy fired back.
Over 73% of the more than 328,000 migrants arrested under the second Trump administration had no criminal record, though Bream interjected to repeat the Department of Homeland Security claim that in actuality, 70% of migrants arrested by federal immigration officers had criminal records. That claim, made by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, has been thoroughly debunked by independent analyses.
Murphy went on to condemn the Trump administration outright for its mass deportation operations, declaring them to be an “emergency” that he and his Democratic colleague intended on addressing immediately.
“What is happening in Minnesota right now is a dystopia; ICE is teargassing elementary schools, it is disappearing legal residents into cars, it is murdering American citizens,” Murphy said.
“ICE is making this country less safe, not more safe, today. That is an emergency, that’s why, today, 60% of the American people vehemently disagree with what ICE is doing and we have to address that emergency right now.”
US National Protests Continue Against ICE and Trump
President Donald Trump continues ICE raids, arrests of journalists, and seizing election records, as the public turns against him. All of this is about the mid-term election in November, which Republicans could lose. [1]
Tens of thousands protested Trump’s immigration policies this past weekend after the murder of two U.S. citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. There were demonstrations in hundreds of cities. Huge protests in Minneapolis. A massive march in frigid New York City. Militant demonstrations against ICE in Los Angeles where activists threw objects at L.A. police who protected an ICE facility. High school and college student walkouts in California and Florida.
At the same time, the country has been shocked by the unprecedented arrest of journalist Don Lemon, formerly of CNN, and award-winning journalist Georgia Fort. In St. Paul, Minneapolis’ twin, city on January, 18, they followed activists who confronted a pastor who is also an ICE agent in his church. The two were later arrested by FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents, accused of organizing the protest, and charged with violating the congregants’ right to freedom of worship. Not surprisingly, given Trump’s racist regime, both journalists are Black.
In an equally startling development in January, FBI agents searched a Fulton County, Georgia, election center for ballots from the 2020 election. Trump has falsely claimed that that election, which he lost, was stolen. The government claims it is investigating voter fraud but this is clearly about gathering voter information and intimidating votes. Attorney General Pam Bondi has sued Minnesota and 23 other states for their voter records, she said the chaos in Minneapolis could end if the state turned over its voting records.
Another injustice appalled the country: the arrest in Minneapolis and transportation to the Dilly Detention center in Texas of five-year-old Liam Ramos, shown in videos with his Spiderman backpack and his hat with bunny ears, DHS claimed the child had been abandoned, though he lived with his mother and his father, the latter also arrested and both sent to the Dilly. There inmates protested in the prison yard shouting “Let us out.” Supporters also came to protest outside the prison but were driven away by police using tear gas and beating them. A judge has ordered the boy and his father to be released.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have demanded that ICE end its “invasion” and be removed entirely. But Trump and Border Czar Tom Homan refused to withdraw any of the 3,000 agents in Minneapolis. The city brought suit against ICE seeking an injunction, but a federal judge refused.
But the country has reached a turning point. The videos of the killing on January 24 of Alex Pretti, the nurse who carried a pistol for which he had a permit, clearly showed that ICE had murdered him. Trump officials called him a terrorist. No one believed it. Democrats, Republicans and conservative gun-rights activists criticized Trump. Political polls show that Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, reject ICE’s violent attacks on immigrants and citizens alike. January polls showed that over 60% of voters oppose ICE’s tactics.
In Congress, Democrats pressured Republicans in an attempt to cut the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats have demanded the unmasking of immigration agents, an end to ICE’s indiscriminate sweeps through communities, that they obtain judicial arrest warrants, and that they adhere to strict use-of-force guidelines. Still, it is not clear if the Democrats can win those demands.
There is now a national movement against ICE, and it is growing. And Trump could lose control of Congress.
Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.
From Maine to Minnesota and Beyond, Tens of Thousands March to Demand ‘ICE Out!’
“We want to show solidarity,” said one employee at a worker-owned bakery in Los Angeles. “We’ve seen historically that strikes work. I hope the violence stops. I want ICE out of our communities.” People march in Minneapolis as part of the “National Shutdown” protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 30, 2026. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
Popular outrage over President Donald Trump’s deadly campaign targeting immigrants and their defenders sparked a National Shutdown day of protests across the United States on Friday, as people from coast to coast took to the streets demanding an end to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “reign of terror.”
“No school, no work, and no shopping,” the National Shutdown said on its website. “The entire country is shocked and outraged at the brutal killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. by federal agents.”
“While Trump and other right-wing politicians are slandering them as ‘terrorists,’ the video evidence makes it clear beyond all doubt: They were gunned down in broad daylight simply for exercising their First Amendment right to protest mass deportation,” the campaign continued.
“Every day, ICE, Border Patrol, and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear,” the protest organizers added. “It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!”
One week after an estimated 50,000 protesters marched in downtown Minneapolis for the “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth and Freedom” rally, at least tens of thousands of people braved subzero wind chill temperatures to protest the ongoing Operation Metro Surge blitz in the Twin Cities.
Rock icon Bruce Springsteen—who this week released a song called “Streets of Minneapolis” to pay tribute to activists fighting Trump’s assault on immigrants and American democracy—made a surprise appearance at a benefit concert for the families of Good and Pretti.
Maine Public Radio reported that over 150 businesses, mostly in the Portland area, closed their doors Friday amid Operation Catch of the Day, during which ICE enforcers have arrested hundreds of people in the Pine Tree State.
“Today, the working class of Portland has sent a clear message to those in power: Your power is derived from our labor, and we are not afraid to withhold our labor for the safety of our neighbors,” South Portland retail worker Keeli Parker told MPR.
In Chicago—where ICE’s Operation Midway Blitz prompted a special commission appointed by Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to recommend the prosecution of federal agents who violate people’s constitutional rights—Nick Mayor, co-owner of Brewed Coffee in the Avondale neighborhood, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the cost of closing his business for the day “pales in comparison to the cost of what is happening to other people and their families, with their lives getting taken and torn apart.”
More than 1,000 people packed into Washington Square in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, where protesters chanted slogans including “Power to the people, no one is illegal,” and, “No justice, no peace, we want ICE off our streets!”
Three hundred miles southwest of Salt Lake City in St. George, Utah, dozens of demonstrators rallied in the city center, holding signs reading, “ICE Out” and “the wrong ICE is melting.” One disapproving motorist yelled, “Go back to California” while driving by, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
In Los Angeles, Proof Bakery, a worker-owned cooperative in Atwater Village, also shut its doors for the day.
“We want to show solidarity,” Proof Bakery worker-owner Daniela Diaz told KABC. “We’ve seen historically that strikes work. I hope the violence stops. I want ICE out of our communities.”
Hundreds of high school students walked out of their classrooms in Asheville, North Carolina, where sophomore Henry Pope told the Mountain XPress, “We reject the ICE terror that’s sweeping across our communities.”
“We reject everything this far-right, billionaire administration stands for, and we need justice to be brought to Jonathan Ross and every other killer ICE agent in this country,” Pope added, referring to the officer who fatally shot Good earlier this month.
Kelia Harold, a senior at the University of Florida in Gainesville, rallied on campus with around 100 other students.
“Instead of sitting on my own and being helpless, it really helps to come out here,” she told the New York Times, noting Pretti’s killing.
“If that could happen to him,” she said, “I don’t see why it couldn’t happen to anyone else.”
Lemon Arrest Shows Being Near Protesters Can Make You an Enemy of the State
“Two of the five protesters were not protestors at all,” Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote (Politico, 1/30/26). “There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”
Two journalists—former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort—were arrested by federal agents for their role in covering an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church. According to Deadline (1/30/26), a “Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Lemon was facing ‘conspiracy to Deprive Rights, and …interfering by force of someone’s First Amendment rights,’” meaning “Lemon could face up to a decade behind bars on the first charge and fines and more than a year in prison on the second charge.”
This is a serious escalation of the Trump administration’s war on the press, as “the chief federal judge in Minneapolis declined to allow the case because he saw no probable cause to arrest the longtime journalist,” Politico (1/30/26) said. The administration stewed over Lemon’s coverage, and decided it was worth going after him. These arrests are a sign of the administration growing authoritarianism, as journalists are rounded up as protests are met with state violence.
To understand how badly the administration wanted to go after Lemon in particular, consider the description from the Washington Examiner (1/30/26) of the hurdles it faced:
The Justice Department had dropped its arrest warrant requests for Lemon and several others involved in the protest earlier this week, after federal Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko had also previously rejected the charges against Lemon.
After Micko initially rejected the arrest warrants, the DoJ appealed the decision to a higher court, in which Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, also refused to take action on the emergency request. Then, the DoJ appealed for a “writ of mandamus” to request a higher court force Schiltz to take action, according to Politico. That panel of judges rejected the emergency decision as well.
The New York Times (1/30/26) explained that the arrests finally resulted from a grand jury indictment—an illustration of New York Judge Sol Wachtler’s observation that “any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”
Scoffing at the First Amendment
The New York Post (1/30/26) asserted that Lemon “was very much part of the [protest] group,” because beforehand he did a stand-up saying, “They’re planning an operation we’re going to follow them on.” This standard would make every embedded reporter a military combatant.
Regime-adjacent media are giddy about Lemon’s arrest and already scoffing at the First Amendment concerns. The New York Post (1/30/26) said:
Before the group barged into the house of worship, Lemon filmed a segment admitting he had done some “reconnaissance” with the activists, which included members of Minnesota Black Lives Matter, who were milling about in a parking lot a few feet away.
“They’re planning an operation we’re going to follow them on. I can’t tell you exactly what they’re doing, but it’s called Operation Pull-Up,” he said.
That’s just called reporting, but that does seem to be the point: The administration views reporting as a threat to the ongoing DHS operations in Minneapolis, and therefore it cannot be tolerated.
The Daily Mail (1/30/26), a right-wing British tabloid, mocked Lemon after his arrest:
An insider familiar with the investigation added that prosecutors considered that Lemon would likely enjoy the publicity of his arrest, and said it was “definitely a downside” to bringing charges against him.
“He’ll write a book and act like he’s a martyr,” the source said. “But I also think if you don’t do anything you send a message that people can disrupt church services, and I think they have to cut that shit off and enforce the law.”
Accomplices to protesters
Prosecution of reporters for being present at demonstrations has mostly happened to journalists less prominent than Lemon (FAIR.org, 9/26/17).
Lemon’s arrest clearly gratifies Trump and the MAGA base, who perceive the journalist as having mocked both the president and his fans (Poynter, 1/29/20). “Don Lemon, the dumbest man on television (with terrible ratings!),” Trump posted on the site then known as Twitter (1/28/20). But it also sends a broader message to journalists: Reporting from anti-ICE protests means you are an enemy of the regime, a stance that could have an immense chilling effect.
As horrible as Trump is when it comes to attacking press freedom, the Lemon case is the latest escalation in a long history of government attacks on the press who cover protests. Here are just a few incidents we’ve documented:
Two reporters from the progressive Asheville Blade of North Carolina were convicted of trespassing while covering the clearing of a homeless encampment (FAIR.org, 6/8/23).
Eight journalists were charged with felony rioting for being in the proximity of unruly protesters at the 2017 presidential inauguration, in what were known as the J20 protests (FAIR.org, 9/26/17). (One was former FAIR writer Aaron Cantú, who later later settled a lawsuit against the District of Columbia for his arrest and mistreatment—The Nation, 5/4/23.) Federal Judge Lynn Leibovitz held that another defendant, independent journalist Alexei Wood, could be tried for conspiracy and destruction of property because by covering the demonstration, his audience was “being kept abreast and informed of the events” (FAIR.org, 12/16/17).
Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was arrested and later acquitted on misdemeanor charges related to her coverage of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising (FAIR.org, 3/16/21).
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman faced rioting charges for her coverage of anti-pipeline protests in North Dakota. The charges were later dismissed (Guardian, 10/17/16).
Former FAIR intern John Knefel was one of at least 26 journalists arrested for covering Occupy protests around the country (FAIR.org, 1/1/12).
The Lemon and Fort arrests are a ratcheting up of an established trend by US officials, both local and national, to view reporters as accomplices to anti-government protesters, and to use the fear of arrest to scare the rest of the media.
As the National Association of Black Journalists (1/30/26) put it, this moment is “about whether the First Amendment has meaning when reporting is inconvenient to those in power.” The situation “mirrors a broader pattern in which government actors appear quick to criminalize those documenting injustice, while accountability for official misconduct remains elusive.”
Beyond Corporate Media, Journalists Are Stepping Up and Speaking Up About ICE
CBS News (1/24/26) does not mean to imply that Alex Pretti’s death had anything to do with a shooting that coincidentally involved immigration agents.
As millions around the world, fresh off watching real-time footage of federal law enforcement murdering Renee Good, saw federal agents murder Alex Pretti, CBS viewers got a headline (1/24/26): “Person Dead After Shooting in Minneapolis Involving Federal Immigration Agents.”
You can check your calendar; it is 2026. And yet corporate media still think we’ll fall for that passive voice business, wherein law enforcement are… there… and people just kinda die.
Or we get—as CBS (1/27/26) offered elsewhere—“videos of the incident appear to contradict officials’ claims.”
'No hate, no fear'
“Every time this country has had a debate on the sustainability and expansion of our democracy,” Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates told Workday (1/23/26), “workers have settled that debate—and I’m looking for workers to do the same thing this time.”
It’s not clear whether corporate media know they’re writing themselves a resignation letter, but they are. Fortunately, there are other outlets ready to step up and speak up.
You can read Hammer & Hope (Fall/24) for an interview with Doran Schrantz, a longtime organizer of Minnesota’s faith-based communities on “How a Decade of Multiracial, Interfaith Organizing in Minnesota Undergirds the Resistance.” Schrantz explains:
We built a strategy together around how we understand what it means to unequivocally be East African and Muslim. Or rural with a rural perspective. No one’s asking you to change any of those things. We are explicitly posing the question about how we can publicly demonstrate, over and over again, the critical importance of multiracial democratic power. We center this question partially to model, but partially to protect our movements from being distracted and divided by identitarian or weaponized racialized attacks.
You can read Sarah Lazare writing for Workday Magazine (1/23/26) and In These Times (1/23/26) about Minnesota’s January 23 strike and shutdown. Tens of thousands marched through downtown Minneapolis shouting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
That action crucially involved workers and unions. A union leader from SEIU Local 26, which represents more than 8,000 of Minnesota’s janitors, window cleaners and property service workers told Lazare they’ve “lost over 20 members to these abductions by federal agents, often without warning, often without due process.”
You can read Katya Schwenk at the Lever (8/28/25), who details how ICE has been allowed to swallow more and more resources based on a broad authority that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security to reshuffle funds with little oversight.
The latest is DHS draining money from FEMA, tasked with disaster relief but lately wielded as a political cudgel, as when Trump floated the idea that he would deny relief to states that allowed consumers to ban Israeli products. Once an independent agency, FEMA was subsumed into DHS in 2003 as part of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 reorganization.
Congress has repeatedly given DHS authority to move money around in a way not afforded to all departments, who have to trouble with things like approval from lawmakers.
Switching names not changing course
“What is motivating all of the reporting on Trump’s ‘pivot’?” Popular Information (1/28/26) asked. “Trump softened his rhetoric, calling Pretti’s death ‘very unfortunate’ and ‘very sad.’”
You can read Popular Information (1/28/26), which warns of media disinformation around a supposed Trump “pivot” on ICE actions in Minnesota. For instance, AP (1/27/26) reports that Trump has “shifted toward a more conciliatory approach,” that this is an “about face.” The New York Times (1/26/26) ran a headline declaring “Trump Changes Course in Minnesota.” Except that switching names at the top—Homan for Bovino, or anyone for Noem—is actually not proof that the violent crackdown in Minneapolis won’t continue indefinitely.
Popular Information also breaks down, for those interested, the weak corporate response to citizens’ murder by the state. Conspicuously silent after Renee Good’s killing, large companies in Minnesota evidently felt moved to address the issue after Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released a letter on behalf of more than 60 CEOs based in the state that consisted of 215 words that said next to nothing.
“With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions,” the CEOs wrote, with no thoughts on how tensions could be deescalated or what a real solution would look like.
Popular Information contacted all 68 companies that signed the letter, asking: “Do you condemn the killing of two Minnesotans by federal officers?” All either declined to comment or to respond at all.
‘Not our first rodeo’
“They [constitutional observers] are the ones keeping watch,” Immigrant Defense Network’s Edwin Torres Desantiago told Sahan (1/28/26). “They’re the ones that are making sure our constitution is upheld.”
You can read, at the Guardian (1/20/26), Alyssa Oursler’s notes on just how grassroots networks in the Twin Cities, with things like community watch and mutual aid, are building on work honed in the 2020 protests in response to George Floyd’s state sanctioned murder. As Oursler quotes one rapid response organizer, “This is not our first rodeo.”
Another aid worker is cited: “We’ve always had to do it ourselves. We have whistles and we have organizing. That’s all we have against people with huge trucks and guns.”
And you can stay in touch with reporting from Minnesotan journalists, like those at Sahan Journal, a nonprofit digital newsroom focused on the state’s immigrants and communities of color, offering reports along the lines of “Bravery in the Face of Fear: Immigrant Defense Network Goes Statewide With Constitutional Observer Training” (1/28/26).
There have been creditable Big Media reports on Minneapolis, but just as events have shown us the need for a disruptive new way forward in politics, they’ve shown up the failures of so-called legacy media to confront the moment, and the value of citizen journalism that doesn’t pretend to come from nowhere, but instead centers the people at the sharp end of the policies crafted by the forces to whom corporate media give pride of place.
Support your local and independent journalists, is what I’m trying to say.
The Freeze: ICE, State Power, and the Cost of Treating People as Problems
What Minneapolis reveals about dehumanization, protest, and the limits of force
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | Illustration credit: Mike Goad/Flickr, public domain image
The shoes were placed carefully on the frozen sidewalk outside a downtown Minneapolis hotel. Hospital clogs. The kind worn by nurses who work long, unglamorous shifts keeping strangers alive. A handwritten sign leaned against them: Alex was here. Alex mattered.
This is the human terrain of Operation Metro Surge, a sweeping federal immigration crackdown that has turned Minneapolis into a national flashpoint. Thousands of ICE, Border Patrol, and Customs and Border Protection agents have flooded the city. Streets have been blocked. Chemical irritants deployed. Protesters arrested. Local officials have condemned the operation, and lawsuits now allege unconstitutional overreach and retaliation against a city long at odds with federal immigration enforcement.
But beneath the legal battles and political theater, a deeper crisis is unfolding, one that is moral and relational.
I recently spoke with artist and conflict mediator Dorit Cypis, who lived in Minneapolis for years. She pointed out something deceptively simple: the irony embedded in the word ICE itself. Agents move through the city armored and masked, faces covered, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, appearing almost entirely without emotion. To many residents, they look less like people than mechanisms, interchangeable parts in a vast state apparatus.
What struck me is that this appearance is not incidental. It is functional.
For agents, anonymity is not only physical protection. It is emotional insulation. Uniforms, badges, facemasks, armored vehicles—these are not just defenses against bodily harm. They shield against moral exposure. If you do not see faces, you do not have to meet eyes. If you are not in relationship, you do not have to confront the humanity of the people in front of you, or the weight of what you are doing to them.
Ice in the veins. Ice-cold blood. A posture of emotional suspension.
Hannah Arendt warned that some of the most devastating forms of violence arise not from cruelty but from distance. “The trouble with evil is that it is often committed by people who refuse to think,” she observed, people who follow procedures without confronting consequences. Bureaucracy makes harm possible without hatred, and enforcement without reckoning.
On the other side are protesters, neighbors watching what they believe to be profound injustices unfold in real time. They have seen people dragged into the snow, teenagers pepper-sprayed, families torn apart, citizens labeled domestic terrorists. They are witnessing what feels like rule-breaking backed by raw, unaccountable state power. They are not neutral observers. They are shaken, enraged, and, in many cases, traumatized.
Here, too, something hardens.
The more one side appears inhuman, the easier it becomes to respond in kind. Agents become monsters. Protesters become threats. Names are hurled. Objects are thrown. Homes are targeted. Dehumanization accelerates, and the freeze deepens.
Philosopher Martin Buber gives us language for this moment. He distinguished between I–Thou relationships—where we meet one another as full, irreducible beings—and I–It relationships, where others are reduced to objects: problems to manage, threats to neutralize, obstacles to remove. “When we relate to an It,” Buber wrote, “we do not meet a being, we experience a thing.”
What is happening in Minneapolis is a collision of I–It encounters, stacked atop one another until the space for recognition collapses.
ICE, in this sense, becomes more than an agency. It becomes a metaphor.
Ice is solid. Ice preserves. Ice stabilizes. Ice keeps us from falling into the abyss beneath certainty. It offers the illusion of safety through rigidity. But ice cannot flow. It cannot adapt. It cannot respond to warmth. It delays reckoning—it does not prevent it.
There are no easy solutions, and that cannot be overstated. This is not about everyone simply learning to get along. Minneapolis is carrying the weight of deep historical forces: racialized policing, immigration policy built on fear, political incentives that reward division, and power structures that benefit when communities turn on one another instead of questioning who profits from the status quo.
And yet, thawing is unavoidable.
Thawing is destabilizing. It requires letting go of ideas that once felt protective. It demands tolerance for uncertainty, grief, and moral ambiguity. To thaw is to risk falling, to encounter the abyss beneath certainty, and to discover whether something relational, something alive, exists there.
This is where the question becomes unavoidable.
What do you do when you see someone being beaten and shot in the back? Do you stand silently with a sign? Do you shout? Do you film? Do you intervene? When the other side appears unconcerned with rules, when you are facing an overwhelming display of state power, moral responses are no longer theoretical. What do you do when you are a male doctor and you see a woman being pepper sprayed? Do you watch her suffer from the sidelines?
To scold protesters for dehumanizing ICE agents ignores the gravity of this moment and profoundly misrepresents the imbalance of power. The state holds weapons, legal authority, and narrative control. Protesters hold bodies, voices, and witness. That asymmetry matters.
An I–Thou encounter does not erase conflict. It does not magically resolve injustice. What it does is refuse the lie that violence becomes moral simply because it is institutional, or that rage becomes righteous simply because it is understandable.
Minneapolis is a test case. Masks invite masks. Armor invites armor. Freeze invites freeze. But in candlelit vigils, court filings, and acts of witness, people are insisting on presence, on the dangerous, necessary act of seeing and being seen.
This is where policymakers must be confronted.
If federal leaders continue to authorize militarized enforcement without meaningful local accountability; if courts hesitate while lives are lost; if elected officials reduce this to optics rather than ethics, then they are not neutral arbiters. They are participants in the freeze. They are choosing preservation over relationship, control over trust, force over legitimacy.
The question Minneapolis is asking is not rhetorical. Are we relating to one another as problems to solve, or as beings to meet? Policymakers will answer it not with speeches, but with structures, limits, transparency, and restraint. If they refuse to thaw, if they cling to ice as a substitute for moral courage, then the fracture we are witnessing will not heal.
Because ice always breaks eventually.
And when it does, what survives will depend on whether anyone was willing to risk relationship before the thaw became catastrophe.
George Cassidy Payne, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Rochester-based writer whose work sits at the intersection of politics, ethics, and lived experience. A poet, philosopher, and 988 crisis counselor, he covers issues of democracy, justice, and community resilience.Email
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | Illustration credit: Mike Goad/Flickr, public domain image
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