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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.
I find the pretense of caring about employers a sanewashing exercise, a firmer straw grasped in the sea of bad excuses of why the state is wrong to enforce borders. "Its hypocrisy!" is currently the complaint of choice because "its morally good!" got destroyed as an argument by voting populations repeatedly. The enemy is the evil white man, so every effort must be made to support those the evil white men hate, which is what sets me as a good white man away from the evil white man.
This complaint that ICE is bad is proceduralist wheelgumming. Whats the end objective of this complaint? Better ICE practices? Deporting actual criminals exclusively? Noninterference with peaceful protestors? Every wargame ends with "never deport illegals". Garcia Zarate killed a US citizen and for that he was acquited of his crimes and deported just like his previous deportations and allowed to saunter back in effortlessly. Complaining that ICE is targeting US citizens is just the latest attempt to stymie any attempt at The Bad Guys (white men) getting any win at all.
Employing illegals likely also involves financial crimes. After all, they do not have a social security number, so how are you paying social security for them? Even making sure they pay income taxes would create a paper trail most employers would likely avoid.
I would argue that the median case of illegal employment is not the woke Starbucks owner who employs an illegal out of her kindness of heart and spends as much money on him as on her legal employees.
Rather, it is some farmer or hotel owner who systematically employs illegals at wages which would not attract legal workers.
I am enough of a classical leftist to believe that freedom of contract should not be unlimited. There are cases where both parties agree to a transaction, and it is still exploitative. Sex work, selling your kidney, renting your womb, indentured servitude, or working with dangerous machines or chemicals are all fields where governments restrict the freedom of individuals to make contracts (sometimes beyond what is appropriate) with the aim to protect one party, and possibly also to protect society from the negative externalities of the transaction. (For employing illegals, these externalities certainly exist -- if an illegal working as a farmhand in Texas needs urgent medical care, the costs of that will be paid by the US society, not by him or his employer.)
I have read here the argument that tolerating illegals will create an underclass without rights which can be exploited by others, and I find it sound. Of course, the efforts of the Trump administration have not changed this situation for the better, now people being exploited in certain industries will be exempt from deportation while their exploitation continues, which gives their employers more power.
"Form a farmhand union you say? You're fired. Now watch me as I call the DHS tipline to report an illegal not employed in a Sanctuary Industry."
And Trump's abortive attempt to get rid of birthright citizenship can be best described as looking at the status of servitude and thinking "what is wrong with that is that it's not hereditary". I mean, they have not said that they have nothing against illegals as long as they know their place (working masta's fields), but from their priorities this seems to be their revealed preference. The pearl-clutching of "but the Blue cities will not enforce our immigration laws" would be a lot less pathetic if Texas enforced immigration laws consistently.
If your business can not compete with others without relying on illegal exploitation, I have zero sympathy. Sell your business, do something non-evil with your life. I am sure a lot of hard-working Americans lost their sugar cane or cotton businesses after the civil war due to increased labor costs too, and I have little sympathy for them either.
Being far more familiar with the blue collar labour market in areas with lots of illegals than you probably are, I can't really give a source but you'll have to take me at my word- illegals do not get lower wages than legal workers. Part of this is doing more physically demanding hazardous work, sure, but part of it is also that any part of America which attracts illegals(they are, after all, not going to rural Mississippi) has a severe labour shortage anyways. Illegals make a very similar dollar amount to legal workers doing the same jobs, although usually without healthcare, retirement, unemployment insurance, etc. This is cheaper for the employer, but not due to wages. Illegals are preferred partly because of this, but as much because they don't smoke weed every day, ask for overtime, etc. They're there to work and make money, and the employers which hire them are used to paying cash because legal workers prefer it too(can't get child support deducted that way, can spend it on drugs without having to go to a shady gas station and pay 10% to a middle easterner who mutters racial slurs while he cashes it, etc)- but the illegals' preference for cash is far more sympathetic to most people, including the mildly racist who are nonetheless disgusted at the behavior of the lower working class that competes with them for jobs. And blue collar management in the lower midwest speaks Spanish anyways.
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