NEWS YOU MISSED: ICE Tells Agents to Break Into Homes Without a Warrant + How Trump Changed ICE Into Fascist Secret Police
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Good afternoon, everyone.
In the “our work is never done” department, my first video to go viral on Facebook did so on the wings of trolling MAGA Americans, laughing at my pushback on the mass delusion that non-MAGA Americans are paid to protest.
Donald Trump and his surrogates lie to us every day in a strategic effort to pollute information flow, and thereby generate toxic beliefs like those above. A diseased public is a weak public without the strength to object. A diseased public that views organic mass protest as totally faked will never engage in dissent. Rather, they will excuse atrocities!
I sift through the noise to provide the reporting and ideas that matter and point readers toward journalism that actually improves understanding. If this work makes staying informed or communicating with your MAGA loved ones easier for you, support it here.
Top-down MAGA disinformation campaigns ensure that a portion of the population will come down with this type of cognitive cancer.
The same process that has led to so much division and pain can be reversed. They flood the zone with shit. You flood the zone with facts. Spread fact-based pro-democracy information every time you see it. Don’t let up.
Share this great journalism to your social media or to your friends directly. Then take a concrete action to uplift and defend our democracy’s immune system by subscribing or donating to any of these outlets. Information, as we see clearly above, becomes our outcomes. Fight for healthy information before it’s too late.
Here’s what you may have missed:
Minnesota Star-Tribune, Yuen: My parents thought we had made it. Now we carry papers.
In recent weeks my 80-year-old Asian American parents have started to carry their passports each time they leave their suburban townhouse. Neighbors on their Ring doorbell app will alert users when ICE agents are spotted on nearby roads. My mom has canceled appointments after receiving such warnings. A practical woman, she says she’s in a game of “cat and mouse” with federal agents, and she’ll be damned if she gives them the upper hand.
This is something the headlines often miss when describing what it’s like to be living with ICE in Minnesota…
…A quiet, pervasive fear that has taken root in the Twin Cities, forcing some people of color who are not even immigrants to change our behaviors. We take extra precautions. We carry the passport. And we question our belonging.
Federal agents have been recorded on video, acknowledging that they’re homing in on individuals who speak with foreign accents. In one encounter, a man named Ramon Menera had just returned home to Columbia Heights with his daughter after getting ice cream when he was approached by a Border Patrol agent.
“Now, talking to you, hearing that you have an accent, I have reason to believe you are not born of this country,” the agent says in the video.
Journalism in the public interest means columns offering the perspectives of U.S. citizens who travel their once free country in a constant state of fear of being accosted by violent federal agents.
Racket, Voices of the MN Occupation
Local Minnesota outlet, Racket, gathered together an oral history of the ICE occupation of Minnesota by reaching out to readers for submissions.
What follows is a real-time oral history of the invasion that began in December, as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it. Submissions have been edited lightly for clarity and length, but what you’re reading is the direct testimony of everyday people living through a horrible and historic moment.
The entries are anonymous because a vindictive federal government is targeting anyone who helps their neighbors…
…I have seen ICE pepper spray peaceful civilians at close range, sometimes directly into their eyes. I have seen them toss tear gas at crowds. I have been gassed three times. They throw flash grenades for seemingly no reason whatsoever. This behavior almost always takes place as they are leaving a scene, a kind of farewell “fuck you” to the residents of the city they are terrorizing. They seem to enjoy hurting people.
What I have also seen is people of Minnesota helping each other, forming all manner of resistance and care. There is care in the moment, improvised on our feet. There is organized care, burrowing through the fear and danger, delivering aid to whoever we can. This is what defines us. Every day more people are out there doing what we can. We do it while armed thugs brandish their weapons on our streets, abduct and abuse innocent people, mock us, gas us, and create an atmosphere of terror. We do it while the government incessantly publishes brazen lies about what is taking place here. We do it because it is who we are. We will always do it.
That’s why we will win.—Anonymous
It’s well worth taking the time to read all of the entries. Especially share this with a MAGA friend or loved one who would never be exposed to these perspectives.
Doomsday Scenario, “ICE 101” — How Trump changed ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police
The brutality of the occupation in and around Minneapolis — scenes from the Global War on Terror transplanted from Kabul or Baghdad to Minnesota — has a lot of people asking basic questions about ICE and CBP, so I thought I’d devote today’s column to trying to explain what ICE and CBP are and what they aren’t, what powers they have, and what’s changed in America to bring this war to our streets.
This epic, 29-minute read brings you through the entire evolution of these agencies. It’s a valuable resource to share with anyone trying to understand how they have eroded our freedom. Garrett Graff is one of the best journalists we’ve got.
The New Yorker, Do Federal Officials Really Have “Absolute Immunity”?
The New Yorker spoke with Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck to discuss “why the law on these questions is so unsettled, how the Trump Administration could try to sabotage potential state actions, and how the Supreme Court might view future cases that feature a clash between executive power and states’ rights. Here’s just one question and answer from the interview:
I would also imagine that a reason any case needs to be done in state court as opposed to federal is that the President cannot pardon people in a state prosecution, right?
It’s sadly accurate. And even though a state prosecution of a federal officer would almost certainly end up in federal court, it is still a state prosecution, and so it would still be exempt from the President’s pardoning power. It shouldn’t be the case that we’re worried about reflexive pardons from the President, but that’s yet another reason why a state criminal prosecution might seem attractive to so many people at this particular moment.
Head straight to Steve Vladeck’s Bluesky profile and add him to your media diet. Better yet, pin my Bluesky list—Legal Experts—to your Bluesky feed so you never miss expert commentary on what’s happening with SCOTUS and the Constitution.
The New Republic, ICE Tells Agents to Break Into Homes Without a Warrant: Whistleblower
ICE reportedly gave itself permission to violate the Fourth Amendment in order to accelerate President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign, according to a new whistleblower disclosure.
In a secret memo distributed in May 2025, ICE Director Todd Lyons gave ICE agents permission to forcibly enter homes without obtaining a judicial warrant. The memo told officers they could rely on a Warrant of Removal—an administrative warrant rather than a judicial one—to enter the residence of any target using “a necessary and reasonable amount of force.”
…Rather than being distributed to all DHS employees, the memo was distributed to certain DHS officials who were instructed to verbally pass down permission to start breaking down doors, according to the whistleblower disclosure. Those who reviewed the memo were not permitted to take notes—which seems like a pretty damning sign of its dubious legal basis.
This whistleblower leak was originally brough to the Associated Press but I feel this TNR piece provides a clearer summation. The leak stands as another reminder that we absolutely rely on legacy journalism institutions for the robust safeguards they can provide to vulnerable whistleblowers.
404 Media, ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid
Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.
The findings, based on internal ICE material obtained by 404 Media, public procurement records, and recent sworn testimony from an ICE official, show the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. The tool receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) among a range of other sources, according to the material.
The public deserves to understand the ways government contractors, via our taxpayer dollars, are creating systems of mass surveillance. This piece is behind a paywall, but 404 Media is 100% worth subscribing to!
Popular Information, ICE has stopped paying for detainee medical treatment
ICE’s failure to pay its bills for months has caused some medical providers to deny services to ICE detainees, an administration source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, told Popular Information. In other cases, detainees have allegedly been denied essential medical care by ICE.
ICE was unable to respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
In lawsuits, numerous ICE detainees with severe illnesses allege that they cannot obtain treatment. For example, Viera Reyes, a detainee being held at ICE’s California City Detention Facility, has symptoms and test results that suggest he has prostate cancer.
But despite often being in excruciating pain, Reyes cannot obtain a biopsy. All of his requests to see a urologist have been ignored. Without a biopsy, Reyes has no formal diagnosis and cannot begin chemotherapy or take other steps to slow the cancer’s progression. Reyes was one of seven ICE detainees to sue over inhumane conditions at the California City facility.
How did this health crisis inside ICE detention facilities begin?
The rest of this article does a great job of explaining how we arrived at this level of neglect in our system.
Washington Post, Trump Cabinet secretaries conspired to violate Constitution, judge says
A federal judge Thursday decried what he said were “breathtaking” constitutional violations by senior Trump administration officials and called the president an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to “toe the line absolutely.”
In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief, U.S. District Judge William Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech that would seek to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”
Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.
On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms. “Talking straight here,” he said. “The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”
As I say, it’s a weird time to be a news consumer. This article is paywalled and the owner interferes with the newsroom’s independence, but the Post still has great journalists reporting in the public interest. This story can be found elsewhere but the Post had the best headline and best opening of any article I came across.
Mother Jones, DOJ’s “Ransom” Letter to Minnesota Reveals How Trump Plans to Rig the Midterms
On Saturday, the same day that a federal immigration officer killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a pointed letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stating that if he wanted to “bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” he should comply with some “common sense solutions.”
Those “solutions,” according to Bondi, included Minnesota providing the Department of Justice with access to the state’s complete, unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive personal information like voters’ Social Security numbers, drivers license data, and party affiliations. Bondi claimed that the DOJ needed the state’s full voter roll in order to “confirm Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”
But state election officials and election security experts say Bondi’s letter is an outrageous attempt by the Trump administration to coerce Minnesota into providing confidential voter data that could be weaponized by the president and his allies to amplify false claims of voter fraud, wrongly remove eligible voters from the rolls, and challenge election outcomes.
Current Affairs, Why the Right Manufactured a Somali Crime Panic
The truth is that Somali Muslims in Minnesota are a law-abiding community with the same or lower crime rates than other Americans, as shown below. Their rates of self-sufficiency are high, and measures of assimilation are also high relative to the historic record. So why the bigotry? The lies serve to distract attention from bigger fraudsters and divide working people from confronting those with real power over their lives.
This article examines the Manhattan Institute origins of much of the bigoted targeting of Somali Americans by the right. Read if you want to understand the strategies used by well-paid operatives to mislead our fellow Americans.
The 19th, Here’s what’s really happening with child care fraud in Minnesota
…while child care fraud is something Minnesota has been working to reduce in recent years, “these are not new issues, but they are being repackaged and they are being promoted in ways to make it seem like there is an epidemic,” said Elliot Haspel, a national child care expert, on a call with reporters this week.
Nick Shirley’s propaganda video about Somali day care facilities has now become gospel to our MAGA friends and loved ones. This fact-check from The 19th is an essential tool for public understanding that, when combined with the Current Affairs piece above, may help you start a productive conversation about reality with a friend, neighbor, or colleague.
Status, Legacy Media’s Risky Bet
…prediction markets are not measures of broad sentiment or proxies for voter intention. At best, they reflect the behavior of a narrow group of people motivated enough to wager money. At their worst, they are ripe for manipulation by political operatives or foreign actors with both the means and the incentive to move gambling lines in their favor.
Notably, most news organizations did not include prediction market odds in their coverage prior to striking what are likely lucrative deals with companies like Kalshi and Polymarket. That suggests they did not actually find the data to be very informative for viewers prior to inking fruitful agreements…
…And there’s other reason for concern. U.S. intelligence agencies have long warned about foreign efforts to influence American public opinion. Imagine a scenario in which a well-funded actor quietly funnels millions in crypto into a prediction market to spike the odds of Trump’s attempted Greenland takeover—only to have a major cable network report that movement as a meaningful signal. The effect could create a feedback loop: money moves the market, the market is credibly reported by news outlets, and the news moves public perception—and potentially reality itself.
Opinion polls are already undermined by a public swimming in a sea of toxic disinformation. The public hears propaganda and regurgitates it back in response to polling questions, the results of which are reported widely, further swaying public sentiment. And our politics already suffer from limitless infusions of cash by the wealthy and powerful. Now, disinformation may be manufactured via anonymous bets that literally alter outcomes. Cool!
Democracy Americana, The People Struggle Against Tyranny
On November 26, a 29-year-old Afghan national attacked two West Virginia National Guard members deployed to Washington, DC, killing one and severely wounding the other. The Trump government wasted no time using the attack as justification to escalate its crusade against immigrants and anyone who doesn’t belong in MAGA’s conception of “real America.” The president immediately started raging against Somali immigrants in Minnesota, who had nothing to do with the DC shooting, of course, but had been the target of racist agitation led by rightwing activists and think tanks who had been focused on welfare fraud among some Somalis in Minnesota.
In several grotesquely racist rants, the president called them human “garbage” who “come from hell and do nothing but bitch. We don’t want them.” Trump always made sure to include Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar in his attacks: “We’re gonna go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.” Spokespeople of the regime quickly added a bunch of lies and insinuated there may have been some connection to the attack on National Guard troops in DC, even going so far as to claim the Somali community formed a “nexus of terrorism.” The legal status of the targeted immigrant population did not matter at all to the regime. When asked on television why ICE was going after Somali immigrants when the vast majority of them are U.S. citizens or legal residents, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan casually asserted that “there’s a large illegal Somali community there.”
The raids on Minneapolis started in early December.
Historian Thomas Zimmer provides a solid breakdown on how the Minnesota occupation came to be in the first place and what can be expected moving forward.
Liberal Currents, Nonpolitical Media Has Been Flooded With Outrage at Alex Pretti’s Murder
…More people are paying attention, undermining Trump regime lies, and shifting public stances. On its own that won’t reverse America’s democratic backsliding, but it’s a significant step, and shows how the Trump regime is faltering.
Reddit was swamped with information about Minnesota, as anti-ICE posts dominated the main feed, and appeared in discussions of just about any topic. Knitting, biking, comic books, pop music, you name it. Football subreddits were talking about it on Saturday, even though the NFL had playoff games on Sunday. Climbing subreddits saw it, even though climber Alex Honnold—subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo—had just scaled a skyscraper in Taiwan without a harness. One subreddit about people patting their cat’s butt like bongos got attention after the moderator announced “if you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you’re not welcome in this sub.”
Many of them, including the cat bongo person, opened by saying they know the forum topic is not politics, and sorry for bringing politics into it, but ICE’s actions are too appalling not to.
Chronicling the shifts in public opinion on ICE, especially in spaces folks go to escape from politics, is essential to understanding a path out of this fascist nightmare. As the article mentions, it’s a big deal when you lose the driving range content creator.
Minnesota Star-Tribune, Perry: Abolish ICE? How about DHS altogether.
A few days after Congress passed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, I met my buddy Kurt to play racquetball at the old rec center at the University of Minnesota. We were yelling about politics as we took out our frustration on the court, and one of us said, “Homeland Security! That’s what’s they’d call it in a dystopian movie!”
We imagined masked thugs parading the streets, kidnapping anyone they wanted to, going door-to-door looking for political enemies, establishing checkpoints where we’d have to show our papers, and otherwise undermining the core freedoms established in the Constitution. November 2002 wasn’t that long ago. “Lose Yourself” by Eminem was the No. 1 song. The latest James Bond flick had just passed the second Harry Potter movie in the rankings.
None of this is ancient history, inevitable or unchangeable…
The answer, for me, is not to focus on ICE at all, but to understand the whole. DHS was created in a very specific moment in history not that long ago, so we have models for how to structure federal immigration oversight that don’t rely on an unaccountable masked secret police force running rampant in our streets.
Perspectives from historians like this column by David M. Perry of the University of Minnesota are essential to a healthy media diet.
The Guardian, US dollar sinks to its lowest level in four years
That’s it. You should be aware of how Trump’s policies are tanking the dollar.
More Perfect Union, At its core, ICE is a money-making scheme
More Perfect is a non-traditional newsroom that features most of its work on its social media accounts, often via 'carousels (a series of images/video) like the one below. Let them show you how ICE is mostly, horrificaly so, about profit. Then share the video to your stories so more people can see.
Share other great journalism you saw this week so I can put it in the next one. Be sure to check out my Bluesky lists for an easy way to find pro-democracy journalism and commentary in just minutes each day.
Quick reminder: You don’t have to navigate our broken information ecosystem alone. I help people understand what’s really going on by pointing them to fact-based reporting and expertise from trustworthy sources. Paid subscribers make it possible for this work to remain available to everyone. To become a paid subscriber click here.
True, more of a critique of the mainstream media and their selective questioning.
Protesters at no kings rallies were asked if they were paid, the answer was always no. They sopke of their personal expense to attend the rally. tRump supporters are never asked the question.