Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”
This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, demanded at a press conference on Saturday, referring to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. An angry crowd gathered and swore profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home.
No, they don’t. You can be detained and deported, even if you are an American citizen, because they have abandoned the concept of due process. Your rights have already been taken away! They’ve already declared that this is the way it is going to be unless the American people fight them, literally. The Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has publicly said:
Trump and the entire GOP that are enabling him are following the Project 2025 agenda. They will continue to violate our rights. They will continue to brutalize and kill innocent immigrants and citizens until we take to the streets and, by some means, either economic, violent, or some other means I can’t imagine, stop them.
The Insurrection Act would fast track and legitimize (in their eyes) the process. They do want that. The key for the rest of us is to be as peaceful as possible until it becomes socially untenable to let it continue - allow it to achieve critical mass. After that, something will happen and the situation will change, through whatever means it takes.