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This forum basically presents the cause of protests in Minneapolis as "blue tribe doesn't want immigration policy enforced". If this claim is controversial, I can back it up by linking several comments from last week saying as such, so I hope you don't feel strawmanned if you're broadly anti-protestor.
I want to present the claim that what ICE is doing in Minneapolis is inefficient at its stated goals, broadly unlawful/lawless, and disproportionate. I'm going to steelman the cause of the protestors - why it's good to go around notifying others of ICE's presence, making noise, and generally annoying them. I'm not going to support any form of unlawful action with this post, as I think it's wrong and unwise for one's personal safety to get into fights with law enforcement - but I'm going to explain why 10,000 people took to the streets in Minneapolis on Friday.
I'm using Gemini to get stats for this post, but all of the writing is entirely my own. Many of the examples I take are drawn from a recent twitter thread
In 2025, there were roughly 15,000 violent crimes in the entire state of Minnesota. Let us assume all of them occurred in Minneapolis, all of them were committed by a different illegal immigrant who was immediately released on bail or sentenced to ten minutes by liberal activist judges and then released, and all of those illegals reside in Minneapolis today. 170 murderers, 2159 rapes, 2836 robberies, 9826 aggravated assaults, all of them committed by a different illegal immigrant who is now at large in Minneapolis.
ICE has deployed approximately 3000 federal agents to Minneapolis. Supposing ICE is in fact, after the bad guys, they should probably be done by now, because they only had to arrest five people each in order to get all of the highly criminal illegals out.
The problem is, they keep wasting their time by engaging in completely lawless and unbelievable actions. These have a few flavours:
a) Firstly, as shown in many videos, ICE takes time out of their day to stop and question, photograph, detain, and arrest people for blowing whistles near them, yelling at them, and generally being annoying. I sympathize that these agents have some legitimate fears of the public, there are bad dudes who want to hurt cops. But it seems uncertain that any of these actions are actually intended to promote their safety, rather than intimidate protestors. Take a look at what started the entire Alex Pretti confrontation - they pepper sprayed a woman for what purpose, with what justification?
b) Secondly, the current immigration enforcement protocol seems to act on people who prosecutorial discretion should be utilized for, and has very consistently in the past, and then the government doesn't even bother to defend its acts to judges. Take this case, wherein we have a highly sympathetic detainee - but someone who nonetheless, I acknowledge, ordered removed many years ago, but not yet removed. That said, the government's position to the judge isn't even that they should do this, are allowed to do this, or want to do this - they literally offered no argument as to why she shouldn't be released. No, seriously, they submitted a three sentence response that said "we have no argument to present" - and then didn't just release the person themselves, without being ordered to? Why not? For what purpose does the government take actions that it does not represent to a court that it agrees with? For what purpose does the government require judges and court costs to issue orders to make them take actions that they have no argument to oppose?
Here's another case, this one directly out of Minnesota. Again, ICE should have plenty of evil criminals and pedophiles and whatnot to chase down - how and why do they have the time to go get this guy who appears to be causing no issues, other than being illegal? I understand that in the minds of many, that is sufficient, and that anyone who's illegal should be deported - ok, but what is pursuing that goal worth? Is it worth sending agents of the state to chase people down? The optimal level of any crime isn't zero, there are costs in lives, time, and tax dollars to enforce any law, and sending the government door to door for this guy is an insane waste of resources.
c) Thirdly, many of ICE's immigration enforcement actions are beyond "prosecutorial discretion should be used" - and thus, making the case for protest more important - they are actually lawless and illegal themselves. Take this case out of Minnesota. Let's assume that whatever this minor criminal history described is, it's highly objectionable, and this guy should be deported. You cannot just detain and deport someone with a pending application for lawful permanent residency, who is otherwise following the rules. If you want to deport him, you should file the paperwork to adjust his status, and give him a chance to contest it. This one is even more egregious - forget the tearjerking identity of the person arrested, just focus on the facts. This person applied for refugee status on entry, was vetted, and granted refugee status. The position of the administration, contrary to the law, appears to be that they can just arrest and detain anyone foreign present in the United States, even if they followed the rules. This is utterly lawless. Suppose that the Biden administration made a terrible mistake, and this woman is in fact a Burmese spy or a fugitive war criminal - how likely is it that figuring that out requires physical detention without warning? Has DHS actually raised a national security concern here? No - they're simply sweeping up whomever they can find, arresting people with valid paperwork, who entered lawfully, on the basis that the government has decided it wants to re-think prior decisions. This policy is illegal, cruel, arbitrary, and capricious. This is what ICE is doing in Minnesota - illegally kidnapping lawful migrants. If this alone is not worth taking to the streets to protest, what is?
d) Fourthly, and most importantly IMO, there are much better mechanisms to get to where ICE wants to go. We already have a surveillance state for the IRS that involves essentially all banking institutions and Paypal. Why won't Congress pass any number of measures that would criminalize, fine, and prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants? If the economic opportunity were much more limited, nobody would jump the border if they couldn't feed themselves after! This would have immediate negative consequences for mostly red states, however, it would likely gut their economies in short order.
The whole reason ICE is in Minneapolis has nothing to do with criminal illegal immigrants. The federal government has decided that it wants to send poorly trained, armed, and disguised agents to a city, to intimidate and cause chaos. Those who condemn the protests miss the point - the point is to show that they're not intimidated! And this is why various administration figures spend their time slandering protestors, because the goal isn't to arrest (Criminal/Illegal/Previously Prosecutorially Discretion Tolerated, pick a combo) people, or even to reduce the number of illegal immigrants living in the USA. If that were the goal, there are cheaper, faster, easier methods that don't risk the life of any agents, unless you think Tyson Foods executives are going to shoot at federal agents if their HQ gets raided. The entire operation is political theater, not a sincere attempt at policy enforcement, and utterly illegitimate from conception.
Two other arguments that I see made frequently here are:
a) All of this is necessary because of Sanctuary Policies that the Police Don't Co-Operate with DHS, so ICE Must Go Looking For The Criminals. Why don't they hang out outside the county jail and question people on their immigration status there on their release? Why don't they hang out at the courthouse - recall, a judge was just convicted of obstruction for preventing ICE from arresting someone at a hearing, they can sit in the gallery and question everyone's immigration status at the end of every hearing! You would be much more likely to arrest people guilty of criminal acts if you did this, than going door to door and getting into fights with protestors.
b) If nobody protested or interfered, then there would be much less chaos - aren't you giving Trump what he wants? Largely, no - Trump recognized pretty quickly once he watched the Renee Good video that it was regrettable and would hurt his poll numbers and his statements reflect that. Furthermore, no, I think it's good and justifiable that people protest when the state decides to waste tax dollars and commit illegal acts while acting like an occupying force rather than servants of the public! My least favourite (former) congressional representative makes the point rather well here. The behaviour of the feds, to inefficiently pursue questionable goals of questionable legality with strongarm tactics is to blame. It is the sign of a healthy, engaged citizenry that ten thousand people decided to go out in extremely cold temperatures and make their voices heard, peacefully.
In talking to blue people IRL, my sampling so far is:
Quite frankly, if we were all on the same page about doing deportations quickly, we wouldn't even have much of an argument.
I'm seeing more framing like you're presenting here. Transparently, I don't believe it. People don't show up to these protests to prove they aren't intimidated. None of the people protesting are going to be stopped by ICE's detention or deportation. The most charitable way I can frame it is that they view illegal immigrants as the people working at their favorite mexican place or mowing their yard and think it makes their cause righteous.
In reality, it's just garden-variety TDS. The anti-ICE riots are happening exclusively in blue cities where a critical mass of people and opinions are relishing the opportunity to get in a fight with agents of the state they view as extensions of Trump himself. But of course, they'd riot if he offered free ice cream.
I mean, look at this framing from NPR: "A Third of people arrested by ICE have no Criminal record". Are we for real here? ICE's track record so far is such that even wildly dishonest, leftist institutions admit that 66% of them are criminals, and now we're talking about why we need to stop that activity?
The new argument ("We just want smart deportations") is because moderates do grok how insane it is to be using cars as weapons, to wrestle with cops while carrying a gun, and then to pretend like you're a victim. I've only heard it in the past 3 days. And I say this while believing that Saturday's shoot was not a good one - it's a huge bummer that he got killed, and it looks like a mistake more than anything else.
The admin shouldn't worry about the hardcore Democrats who weren't going to vote red anyway. The admin also shouldn't be worrying about trying to appeal to the hardcore GOP base who is going to vote regardless.
The people who matter are the moderates and centrists who make up an increasing number of independent identified voters. Elections are very close, look at the swing states and just how few percentages of voters needed to have shifted for a dem win instead in 2024. Pennsylvania needed only .85% of voters who voted for Trump to instead go for Harris for instance.
That's right, if you piss off less than a percentage of voters then you could lose the state instead of win. And as Nate Silver points out Trump is losing the normies on immigration. The normies and independents don't want violent criminals in the country and you win them on the topic if you handle that. But they don't have much of an issue with Maria the house cleaner, Jose the roofer, and the nice abuela across the street. And if you go after Maria, Jose and the abuela, they'll sour on you as we're seeing now. And they might not like disruptive protests too much, but they also don't like the feds beating up and shooting people either.
This site is filled with overly online internet addicts fetishizing over some sort of race war roleplay, while the average normie voter is way more moderate. They want low prices, they want good jobs, and they don't want to see a bunch of scary violence. There's a reason why Trump with his better political instincts is pivoting away after this fiasco, because he knows seeing a bunch of masked agents shooting people is scary and a bad look.
Is he? I haven't seen any sign of this, it seems like he's doubling down. He certainly has good political instincts, but he doesn't have to worry about politics anymore. I seriously doubt he cares about what happens to the republican party after he's retired.
Greg Bovino is reportedly out. I hate to let the agitators get away with a win, but Bovino really botched the messaging after the Pretti shooting.
I'm not sure that's a climbdown. Historically, Trump has reshuffled personnel during major actions as people fail/prove themselves (that's how Bessent got to his position of power within the admin), and he's simultaneously sending in Tom Homan. We'll see.
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