Thousands of masked, heavily armed agents, some with minimal training, have been unleashed on the streets of an American state. They have been promised near-total legal immunity by the president, effectively unshackled from any constitutional constraints. They have been given limitless license to abduct anyone, not just the undocumented immigrants but American citizens who happen to look foreign, whatever that might mean.
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In Minnesota, the sound of whistles wafts through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, as community members alert their neighbors that ICE agents are patrolling the area. Volunteers in green vests are stationed near mosques and Somali-owned businesses in the area, which has a large Somali population, said Suleiman Adan, the deputy executive director at Cair Minnesota, a Muslim civil rights organization.
Adan said that community members have also shared that ICE has patrolled the Karmel Mall, where many Somalis frequent. “It’s like you’re looking for game,” he said about ICE’s tactics. “It’s like you’re hunting; who can I prey on today?”
“Right now, it’s like ‘to hell with the constitution’,” said Adan. “Freedom for whom is really the question.”
Melissa Hellman, "'It's like they're hunting': US citizens and legal residents report increase in racial profiling by ICE." The Guardian, 1/22/2026.
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Elizabeth Shockman, "ICE detains 5-year-old boy; school leader says agents used him as 'bait.'" MPRNews, January 21, 2026.
Shockman reports that the child and his father were going through the asylum process and includes this quote from their lawyer: "Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just … cruelty."
'This surge has changed nearly everything about our daily lives,' [Columbia Heights School Superintendent Zena] Stenvik said. 'Students are watching abductions on their way to school, on their way home and through their windows.'
'Imagine the trauma of a child being picked up by masked and armed agents, seeing their parents in handcuffs and being used to attempt to lure their mother out of the house and into danger. What has become of our country?'
Elizabeth Shockman, "ICE detains 5-year-old boy; school leader says agents used him as 'bait.'" MPRNews, January 21, 2026.
Shockman reports that the child and his father were going through the asylum process and includes this quote from their lawyer: "Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just … cruelty."
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Minneapolis has been heroic. Even after the murder of Good, people continue to show up, continue to organize, continue to resist. In a Somali neighborhood, a crowd prevented one man from being abducted; a singing patrol is among the many trying to protect the neighbors; violence is being documented across the region by ordinary people with phones and by journalists; and "six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter." A Minneapolis minister, writes Bill Lindeke, says “You’ve probably seen the videos of agents saying to protestors and legal observers, ‘You saw what happened. Didn’t you learn your lesson?’ The only lesson learned is the love for our neighbors is growing three sizes each and every day.”
Rebecca Solnit, "Weak Violence, Strong Peace: Who We Are in this Crisis." Meditations in an Emergency, January 14, 2026.
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As [Victor] Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply. (A prerogative power is one that allows a person such as a monarch to act without regard to the laws on the books; theorists from John Locke onward have offered various formulations of the idea.) In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies of the Nazi regime. ...The key here is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state. The two states cohabit uneasily and unstably. On any given day, people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one.
Aziz Huq, "America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State." The Atlantic, May 2025.
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Ask any people who have lived in a country that became an autocracy, and they will tell you some version of a story about walls closing in on them, about space getting smaller and smaller. The space they are talking about is freedom. ... The only way to keep the space from imploding is to fill it, to prop up the walls: to claim all the room there still is for speaking, writing, publishing, protesting, voting. It’s what the people of Minnesota appear to be doing, and it’s something each of us needs to do—right now, while we still can.
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Wherever you are, get organized now. Figure out who your likeminded neighbors are. Set up your Signal chats. Get some whistles (I can spare a few if you need them). This administration has made it clear that Minneapolis is just the beginning, and when they come to your city, you’ll want to be ready.
Scott Meslow, "How much can a city take?" The Verge, 1/19/2026.
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One of my favorite books to read out loud when Hugh was small was Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book. In it, she catalogs a number of things, whimsically distilled, and this line has been running through my mind: "The important thing about the sky is that it is always there. It is true that it is blue, and high, and full of clouds, and made of air, but the important thing about the sky is that it is always there."
The sky has not fallen yet, and it will not fall. And the important thing about that is that every one of us can find a way to help. Some can walk alongside and blow whistles and stand in the cold; some can drive and deliver and donate. Some can organize and coordinate; some can make calls and post signs. Some can make soup and bring neighbors together so they know who to trust; some can sing and make art so that we remember what we are fighting for—kindness, neighborliness, safety, plenty, generosity. There are so many, many ways to resist. The important thing is that we find one, and do it.
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Some resources:
A useful mnemonic: SALUTE.
And for folks in northeast Ohioans: a 1/29 training on building community defense.
