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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Don Lemon Is Among Several More Arrested Over Church Protest
The former CNN anchor and three others were arrested on charges related to a protest this month in St. Paul, Minn., Attorney General Pam Bondi said. Protests were beginning in Minneapolis against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
By Mitch Smith, Sonia A. Rao, Dan Watson and Hamed Aleaziz, January 30, 2026
Journalist Don Lemon reporting in Illinois in October. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Federal agents arrested the former CNN anchor Don Lemon late Thursday on charges that he violated federal law during a Jan. 18 protest in St. Paul, Minn., against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, his lawyer said. The case had been rejected last week by a magistrate judge.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she had ordered the arrests of Mr. Lemon and three others in connection with the demonstration at a church: Georgia Fort, an independent journalist; and Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy, both activists. The announcement came as new protests began in downtown Minneapolis over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, and as organizers and student groups called for demonstrations from coast to coast.
The backlash against the administration has intensified since the killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this month. Tom Homan, sent by President Trump to oversee the operation in Minnesota, acknowledged on Thursday that it needed to be “fixed” and that not “everything that has been done here has been perfect.”
Mr. Lemon, who was scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday morning to contest the charges, has said he was reporting as a journalist when he entered Cities Church in St. Paul to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown. Ms. Fort also said she was documenting the protest as a journalist and called the case against her a violation of her constitutional rights.
Protesters interrupted the service this month at Cities Church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.
A magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence last week approved charges against only three of the eight, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied.
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2) How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are
Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said.
By Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik, Jan. 30, 2026
Sheera Frenkel reports on defense technology and Silicon Valley. Aaron Krolik reports on data and technology.
On the morning of Jan. 10, Nicole Cleland was in her car trailing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent through Richfield, Minn., her hometown.
Suddenly, the agent turned into a series of one-way streets and stopped, getting out of his white Dodge Ram, said Ms. Cleland, who volunteers with a local watchdog group that observes the activity of immigration officers. The agent then walked over to Ms. Cleland’s car and surprised her by addressing her as Nicole.
“He said he had facial recognition and that his body camera was on,” said Ms. Cleland, 56, who had not met the agent before.
Ms. Cleland was one of at least seven American citizens told by ICE agents this month that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology in and around Minneapolis, according to local activists and videos posted to social media, which were verified by The New York Times. None had given consent for their faces to be recorded.
Facial recognition is just one technology tool that ICE has deployed in Minneapolis, where thousands of agents are conducting a crackdown. The technologies are being used not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track citizens who have protested ICE’s presence, said three current and former officials of the Department of Homeland Security who were not authorized to discuss confidential matters.
ICE is using two facial recognition programs in Minnesota, they said, including one made by the tech company Clearview AI and a newer program, Mobile Fortify. The agency is also using cellphone and social media tools to monitor people’s online activity and potentially hack into phones. And agents are tapping into a database, built by the data analytics company Palantir, that combines government and commercial data to identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing, the current and former officials said.
“The technologies are being deployed, or appear to be deployed, in a much more aggressive way than we have seen in the past,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the Homeland Security Department over the immigration operation in Minneapolis. “The conglomeration of all these technologies together is giving the government unprecedented abilities.”
The Homeland Security Department has not disclosed which technologies immigration agents are using in Minneapolis. A spokeswoman said the agency would not detail its methods, adding: “For years law enforcement across the nation has leveraged technological innovation to fight crime. ICE is no different.”
The reach of the technologies has raised concerns. In November, Democratic senators including Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Adam B. Schiff of California asked ICE for more information on its facial recognition software, and asked that it suspend use of the technology in U.S. cities.
ICE has vastly expanded its tech tools over the last year after an influx of cash. In July, President Trump signed a bill increasing ICE’s annual budget to roughly $28 billion from $8 billion, making it the most richly funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
In April, the Homeland Security Department awarded Palantir a nearly $30 million contract to build a system backed by artificial intelligence that would help find and track individuals for deportation. Palantir was due to deliver a prototype by Sept. 25, according to public tenders issued by the agency. The agency has started using the system, two current Homeland Security officials said.
A person familiar with Palantir said the company works with ICE on a database that integrates different information to help agents identify only noncitizens.
In September, the Homeland Security Department also spent nearly $10 million acquiring at least three social media monitoring tools and services that allow it to delve into people’s cellphones, according to procurement records and public contracts for the project.
One of the tools, which was built by Paragon, an Israeli technology company, lets people take control of phones or remotely hack into them to read messages or track locations. The others were built by Penlink, a Nebraska-based software company. They use social media data scraped from the web and information from data brokers to help build dossiers of anyone with a social media account.
Some details of these tools were reported earlier by 404 Media. Paragon and Penlink did not respond to requests for comment.
ICE’s use of facial recognition software was documented in videos and photos from local activist groups in Minnesota this month and reviewed by The Times. Two photos captured fatigue-clad agents using cellphones to scan the faces of protesters in Minneapolis, while in one video, agents could be heard telling people that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology and that their faces would be added to a database.
The technology visible in the photographs was Mobile Fortify. The app was built on technology that had been created for Customs and Border Protection, the current and former Homeland Security officials said.
A department spokeswoman said Mobile Fortify was a “lawful law enforcement tool” and “lawfully used nationwide in accordance with all applicable legal authorities.”
In a 2024 agency report, the Homeland Security Department said it used a facial recognition tool from Clearview AI for child exploitation investigations. But in a $3.75 million contract with the company in September, the agency said the tool would also be used to investigate attacks on law enforcement.
A Clearview AI spokeswoman said the focus of its contract with the department was supporting investigations into child exploitation and cybercrimes.
ICE is continuing to seek more technology. Last week, the agency published a request for information for ways to better acquire and integrate so-called big data and advertising tech into its operations, saying it was “working with increasing volumes of criminal, civil and regulatory administrative documentation from numerous internal and external sources.”
The questionnaire asked vendors to describe the types of data they could provide on “people, businesses, devices, locations, transactions, public records.” It also asked vendors how their systems could help “identify subjects, entities or locations of interest” and whether people could be searched by identifiers including “name, phone, device, account, location.”
Justin Sherman, a distinguished fellow at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, said the request showed ICE was “doubling down” on buying sensitive data.
Ms. Cleland, the Richfield resident, said that three days after the encounter with the ICE agent, she received an email from the Department of Homeland Security saying her Global Entry and Transportation Security Administration travel privileges had been revoked. No explanation was provided.
Ms. Cleland said she had swung from anger to fear. “I don’t know how far-reaching ICE can be,” she said. “I’m struggling to figure out what I can do, without putting myself at greater risk or putting other people at risk.”
Last week, Ms. Cleland signed a declaration joining a lawsuit against the Homeland Security Department in U.S. District Court in Minnesota. The lawsuit challenges ICE’s treatment of observers. In her declaration, Ms. Cleland asked why her traveler status had been revoked.
“I am a totally average American, and I cannot abide by what is happening right now,” she said.
Daniel Wood and Kashmir Hill contributed reporting.
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3) ‘It’s All Just Going Down the Toilet’: Police Chiefs Fume at ICE Tactics
Many police departments adopted major changes after civilian killings. Now, police chiefs worry ICE is ignoring those lessons and setting back efforts to improve public trust.
By Shaila Dewan, Jan. 30, 2026
Federal agents confronted people in Minneapolis on Saturday. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Five years ago, local police departments faced a tidal wave of criticism over racial profiling and the unnecessary killing of unarmed people. Many citizens looked to the federal government to rein them in.
Now the tables have turned. It’s police officials who are complaining about federal agents, saying they are endangering residents and violating their civil rights.
Police chiefs who have spent half a decade trying to persuade a skeptical public that officers would curb their use of violence are contending with widespread alarm over federal officers ushering an innocent man into the snow in his shorts, arresting a 5-year-old and killing U.S. citizens. While local officials have vowed to hold officers accountable for misconduct, Trump administration officials have been quick to declare that their agents did nothing wrong.
Some chiefs have worried that the fragile trust they have worked toward is coming rapidly undone.
“It’s all just going down the toilet,” said Kelly McCarthy, the police chief in Mendota Heights, a Minneapolis suburb. “We do look good by comparison — but that won’t last because people are really frustrated.”
Trump administration officials have defended their operations and blamed state and local officials in Minnesota for the unrest, saying they have incited insurrection and failed to assist federal agents.
Some local departments have taken steps to distance and differentiate themselves from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents. The city of St. Paul, Minn., has distributed photos showing what their police, fire and animal services uniforms look like. “St. Paul Police Department does not ask people about their immigration status” and “cannot impede or interfere with federal agents,” one advisory said.
On Jan. 20, top brass from about a dozen Minnesota police departments held a news conference to say that while they had nothing against immigration enforcement, they were receiving “endless complaints” about the behavior of federal officers and that city employees and off-duty officers had been illegally stopped on the basis of their skin color.
“It’s impacting our brand as police officers, our brand of how hard we work to build trust,” said Chief Mark Bruley of Brooklyn Park, another Minneapolis suburb.
The grievances are not limited to the Twin Cities. In Maine, a sheriff complained about “bush-league policing” after one of his correction officers, who he said was authorized to work in the United States, was detained by ICE officers. In Brookfield, Ill., outside Chicago, an ICE officer was charged with misdemeanor battery after a man reported that he had been attacked while trying to film the officer.
The criticism aimed at federal agencies is tinged with the irony that for years, the federal government was the nation’s policing watchdog. But under President Trump, the Justice Department has walked away from efforts to force deeply troubled departments to improve — efforts that some chiefs had called intrusive and heavy handed.
The Justice Department announced plans to drop federal oversight of the Minneapolis and Louisville Police Departments last year, within days of the fifth anniversary of the very episode that triggered so much soul-searching over American policing: the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by Minneapolis officers.
State and local officials have no comparable tool with which to hold federal agencies to account, but elected prosecutors are investigating reports of abuse and conferring on how they might curb warrantless entries and unlawful detentions.
Longtime critics of American policing were quick to say that they remain frustrated with local departments and that people in some predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods still regard the police as an occupying force. DeRay Mckesson, the executive director of Campaign Zero, which seeks to reduce police violence, said he believed the recent violence by federal officers — and the fact that the victims in the two fatal shootings, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were white — could lead more people to demand more accountability from law enforcement.
“ICE has helped people understand that the system is broken, that it’s not just one or two bad officers,” Mr. Mckesson said.
He pointed to Trump administration accounts of the shootings that were contradicted by bystander videos. “People are for the first time are like, ‘OK, the government’s lying to me,’” Mr. McKesson said. “Before, that would have sounded like a conspiracy theory.”
For one former police chief, Brandon del Pozo, the contrast with ICE is an opportunity for local departments to show that they are committed to improving even when no one is compelling them to do so.
“Never before in our lifetime have they had a better foil than they have in ICE,” Mr. del Pozo wrote in Vital City, a Columbia Law School journal that covers urban issues. “The nation’s attention is rightly focused on flagrant abuses at the federal level that constantly dominate the news and provide a clear moral compass for how police shouldn’t behave,” he added.
ICE has not learned the central lesson that the nation’s police departments learned after Mr. Floyd’s death, said Jerry P. Dyer, the Republican mayor and former police chief of Fresno, Calif. “In order for police to be accepted in communities, they have to have permission to police those communities from the people who live there,” he said.
Instead, Mr. Dyer said, federal agents are not using policing techniques that build trust, like de-escalation and the use of body cameras. “They’re not trusted because of the manner in which they operate,” he said.
Mr. Dyer and other police officials said they had no problem with immigration enforcement, done properly. And many Americans support the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Differing views have translated into conflicting requests for local departments, with some residents asking the police to do more to assist federal agents, while others demand that the police block or even arrest them.
Even when local officers are doing neither, their very presence on the scene can be viewed as siding with or protecting federal agents. And while they are taking the heat from the public for not doing more, or less, they are also experiencing treatment not unlike the kind that have long generated civilian complaints against the police.
Chief Bruley described an incident where, he said, an off-duty officer in her car was illegally stopped by federal agents and asked to provide proof of citizenship. When she tried to take a video of the encounter, her phone was knocked out of her hands, he said.
When he tried to get answers, he encountered another chronic problem that some local departments have been pressured to fix — a lack of transparency. “When you call ICE leadership or you call Border Patrol leadership or you call Homeland Security leadership, they’re unable to tell you what their people were doing that day,” the chief said, adding, “They like to give you a website to go file a complaint.”
For her part, Chief McCarthy said that on a recent day when she was off duty, she had gone, out of uniform, to act as a legal observer outside an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting conducted in Spanish near her home. There, she encountered a Border Patrol agent.
“He told me to get a job, and that I was a paid agitator,” she said. “I would have been embarrassed if he had been one of my officers.”
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4) Grief, Whistles and Bad Dreams: Minnesotans Describe 2 Months in an Immigration Crackdown
Federal agents began Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities late last year. After the deaths of two U.S. citizens, many residents say they feel overwhelmed.
By Julie Bosman, Lauren McCarthy, Talya Minsberg and Sheila M. Eldred, Jan. 30, 2026
People gathered around a makeshift memorial after Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, was shot and killed by federal agents. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Molly Phipps, a consultant in St. Paul, never considered herself much of a crier.
That was before Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities: before roving federal agents arrested thousands suspected of illegal immigration and killed two U.S. citizens, before the protests, the fear of going out in public, the Signal chats, the cellphone videos and the fweeeeet of the whistles.
“All of a sudden, a thought will come to my head or I’ll see a headline, and I’ll tear up,” said Ms. Phipps, the mother of two children. “Sometimes it’s just because regular people are doing amazing things. Or sometimes it’s because it’s so sad to walk into these once-thriving businesses and see them empty.”
Two months into the crackdown that the Trump administration has called the largest immigration enforcement effort in the agency’s history, residents of the Twin Cities say the constant strain of the operation has become overwhelming, compounded by a lingering uncertainty over when it will end.
This week has brought some hope to Minnesotans who oppose the operation. Those monitoring the news closely have seen small signals that the administration could be wavering in the face of intense public backlash. On Monday, officials said that Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol leader who has directed aggressive operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, was leaving Minnesota, along with some Border Patrol agents.
On Wednesday, a Department of Homeland Security official said that two of the agents involved in the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who was killed after filming federal agents on Saturday, were on leave. Stephen Miller, a top aide to Mr. Trump who initially called Mr. Pretti an “assassin,” suggested on Wednesday that the agents who killed Mr. Pretti after he had been restrained and disarmed “may not have been following” protocol.
Still, with no firm signs of an end to the operation, anxiety in the Twin Cities is unceasing.
Many Latinos and Asian Americans, even those with legal immigration status, are afraid to step outside, keeping their children at home to attend school remotely on video calls. As they have for weeks, volunteers stand guard outside day cares and Mexican supermarkets, ready to alert everyone around if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are spotted. Bleary-eyed friends swap stories of their vivid nightmares about running, frightened, being chased by ICE agents.
Eduardo A. Colon, 72, a retired psychiatrist and a U.S. citizen, has lived in Minneapolis since 1979, when he moved from Puerto Rico to attend college. His family has been terrified for him to leave the house since the surge of agents started.
He said he feels drained by the hypervigilance of wondering what is going to happen next, and a feeling of rage over the entire crackdown.
“I have immediate fear in terms of safety, and violence we’re surrounded by,” he said, “and being disappointed with the legal pathways and options to try to make it all slow down and stop.”
Groups of residents that formed during the federal surge as “rapid response” networks, crowdsourcing where agents have been spotted, are as active as ever. Sarah Linnes-Robinson, the acting director of the Lyndale Neighborhood Association in Minneapolis, is a member of 14 separate Signal chats for rapid response groups, monitoring sightings of ICE agents making arrests and requests for help among neighbors.
There has been an outpouring of generosity from neighbors, but she worries that eventually the mutual aid will run dry. How much longer, she wonders, will people be willing to deliver groceries, donate money and volunteer their time to push back against a crackdown that they see as unjust?
“I feel honestly like I’m living in a video game,” Ms. Linnes-Robinson said. “I keep wondering what ICE agents are talking about when they go home at night. Are they talking about how they’ll level up and change the game, and what tactics they’re going to use?”
Even in the heavily Democratic cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, some conservatives have blamed protesters and activists for raising tensions in the area by pushing back on ICE tactics and trying to stand in the way of federal agents.
But a sense of widespread disapproval of ICE’s tactics has reached across race, class and politics in the Twin Cities. At a walkout at the University of Minnesota this week, one nursing student, Mahmoud Toumeh, 33, described his political views as centrist. He said he had not voted in the last presidential election because he could not decide between Mr. Trump and Kamala Harris, the Democrat.
Mr. Toumeh, who said it had taken 13 years for him to go through the process of becoming a naturalized citizen, said he believed that people who are in the United States illegally and have committed crimes should be deported. But he said he opposed the sweeping tactics of this federal crackdown. Department of Homeland Security officials have described their efforts as targeted and lawful, but Mr. Toumeh said he was disturbed by reports that agents were now questioning people simply because they had accents that sounded foreign.
And he said he has heard from his high school friends from North Dakota, including many who now live in the Twin Cities, who have conservative views on immigration but are still opposed to the tactics of the crackdown.
“This is not really a political issue,” he said. “This is a humanitarian issue. And human decency, at its core.”
Sean vanNatta, a 55-year-old in West St. Paul who described himself as politically moderate, said he had been troubled by the methods the Trump administration was using. One of the players on his pickup soccer game on Saturday mornings has stopped coming, afraid of ICE even though he has legal status.
“I hope that they can stop what they’re doing and go about it in a more peaceful and legal manner,” he said of the administration’s approach.
And for Twin Cities residents who have lived through other traumas, including the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the riots and protests that followed, the impact of the ICE operation has seemed to reach even broader.
“It’s affecting everyone — Black, white, Native, Hispanic — it doesn’t matter,” said Jonquil Broyles, 33, a home health care worker in Roseville, Minn. “In reality, it’s the whole state that’s being affected. It is very heavy.”
Many people in the Twin Cities spoke of a sense of isolation, a feeling that people elsewhere don’t understand the severity of the crisis.
Recently, Sue Morrison, 69, of St. Paul, was chatting on the phone with a friend from California, who asked how she was doing.
“I hope the craziness of Minneapolis isn’t bothering you,” Ms. Morrison recalled her friend as saying.
The question almost shocked her. “And I said, ‘Yes, it’s bothering me,’” she said. “I live here. How can it not bother me?’ If you think it’s somehow isolated to some tiny little pocket, you are badly mistaken, because it’s everywhere.”
By Thursday, Senate Democrats in Washington who had pushed back against the crackdown had struck a deal with President Trump and Republicans that would allow them to negotiate restrictions on the operation. And more Republicans were chiming in with criticism of the Department of Homeland Security and, in particular, Kristi Noem, who heads the department.
That backlash brought some hope to Sun Yung Shin, 51, a writer and teacher in Minneapolis. Her daily life is still fraught, she said, and she carries her passport and copies of immigration papers, just to be safe.
But she has been encouraged by the fact that a few Republicans have rebuked the administration over the operation and the deaths of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti.
“If there’s a tipping point, we might be at it,” she said. “I’m hopeful there will be investigations.”
Around the Twin Cities, many people said they were seesawing between feeling angry and heartened, furious at the violence in their midst while moved by their neighbors’ response to it.
Eric Swanlund, a nurse anesthetist who lives in the suburb of Edina, had worked with Alex Pretti at the Veterans Affairs hospital.
Since Mr. Pretti was shot and killed on Saturday, Mr. Swanlund has been sick with anger, nauseated and grinding his teeth.
On Sunday evening, he and his neighbors held a small vigil at a park, where he felt a sense of solidarity. “A lot of people gave me hugs that have never given me hugs before,” he said. The next day, dozens more in Edina gathered for a weekly protest of ICE.
He held a sign taped to the end of a hockey stick. “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance,” it read.
Mr. Swanlund has imagined what it would be like if ICE were to end its operation in the Twin Cities, but there is little satisfaction to the thought.
“I would love for them to leave, but I feel like a lot of the damage is done,” he said. “And I don’t think the people of Minnesota are going to forget what they’ve done.”
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5) In Minnesota, America’s Federal System Is Coming Apart
The state is in a standoff with the federal government over who has the power to investigate the killing of protesters. It’s not a fair fight.
By Emily Bazelon, Jan. 30, 2026
Federal agents confronting protesters in Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents killed a protester last week. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Since the 1960s, a familiar pattern has unfolded when law-enforcement officers kill or brutalize American civilians. State or local police are accused of excessive force; local residents protest, demanding accountability; the federal government steps in to undertake its own civil rights investigation to provide a measure of justice and restore calm. Think of George Floyd’s murder in 2020; Rodney King’s beating in 1991; the disappearance of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964.
The killings this month of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration-enforcement officials have turned this dynamic upside down. And the fight over who will investigate these killings — and if anyone will be held accountable — are part of a growing confrontation between federal and state governments. The balance of power between Washington and the states has been one of America’s central political dramas from the nation’s founding. Now, as it has before at certain dim moments in the country’s history, that delicate system is cracking.
Minnesota is trying to assert its prerogatives by taking the Trump administration to court. One suit seeks access to the evidence related to Pretti’s killing, which the administration has barred state investigators and the county prosecutor from reviewing — while opening only narrowly circumscribed inquiries into the agents’ use of force in killing Pretti and Good.
Minnesota officials have reason to fear that if the state cannot do a full and independent investigation, no one will. Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made the outcome of any investigation sound like a foregone conclusion by accusing Good and Pretti of attacking the agents who killed them — despite all the video evidence to the contrary. Then the Trump administration took the unusual step of putting Noem’s agency in charge of the investigation, asking the public to trust that D.H.S. will oversee itself. The decision to box out state and local officials is “contrary to core principles of federalism embodied in the U.S. Constitution,” the complaint states, relying on the 10th Amendment. Minnesota “has a core sovereign interest in investigating and enforcing its own criminal laws.” Another suit, also citing the 10th Amendment, challenges the federal immigration surge as a violation of state sovereignty.
The 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people the powers that the Constitution does not delegate to the federal government, is the legacy of James Madison. He was the Virginia framer who would worry most after the founding about protecting states from federal overreach. Madison saw the United States as a “compound republic,” ascribing to the national government “few and defined” powers, mostly over war and foreign relations, he wrote in the Federalist Papers in 1788, and reserving “numerous and indefinite” authority over “the lives, liberties and properties for the people” to the states.
When President John Adams expanded federal power a decade after the founding, by backing the Alien and Sedition Acts — which made it a federal crime to criticize the president or Congress — Madison urged states to fulfill the right and duty to protect their citizens against a “dangerous exercise” of unconstitutional federal power.
But then states’ rights became a tool of the antebellum South. In the 1830s, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a former vice president, said the states could “veto” federal tariffs. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, said in the run-up to the Civil War that the 10th Amendment allowed for secession because the states didn’t give the federal government the power to suppress it.
When the war ended, federal authority was necessary to stitch the country back together and, for a brief time, implement Reconstruction. And in response to a wave of terror against Black people that Southern states abetted, Congress made it a federal crime in 1866 for anyone acting “under color of law to willfully deprive another of rights protected by the Constitution.” When Congress and the states ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868, the federal government became the guardian more broadly of civil rights.
The federal government rarely enforced the 1866 law during the era of Jim Crow and has never done so perfectly. But the lesson of Minneapolis in the last few weeks is that trying to resurrect Madison’s construction of state power, as a bulwark against federal abuse, is fraught. That’s not only because states’-rights arguments remain associated with discredited causes like the fight against desegregation. It’s also because in the decades when the federal government was protecting civil rights, it amassed enormous power.
The 10th Amendment isn’t dead. But the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, which gives primacy to federal law, has gained more sway. Since the New Deal, under which federal agencies expanded, the Supreme Court has ruled that federal laws pre-empt state laws if they conflict.
However unfortunate it would seem to Madison, today there is no easy path for a state to vindicate the rights of its residents when the federal government is accused of trampling them. “Minnesota versus the federal government is a David-versus-Goliath story,” said Jefferson Cowie, a historian at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Freedom’s Dominion.” “Maybe you get a one-off win here or there. But it’s not a long-term strategy.”
Making Up for Lapses in Justice
After Reconstruction, for many decades the federal government did little about state-perpetrated violence. Southern sheriffs, for example, had relative impunity to abet lynchings and beatings of Black Americans. Then in 1957, the Justice Department started a civil rights division. Its first leader, John Doar, lived in a dorm for weeks with James Meredith during his struggle to register for classes in 1962 as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi.
Two years later, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were in Mississippi to register Black voters when they disappeared after a county deputy sheriff, Cecil Price, arrested them for speeding. He later tipped off the Ku Klux Klan to their whereabouts (or handed them over).
When the state failed to investigate, the F.B.I. flooded the area with agents. With the help of an informant, the men’s bodies were found in an earthen dam. The state refused to charge anyone in connection with the murders. Doar conducted a civil rights investigation based on the 1866 law, and seven men were convicted, including Price, who served four and a half years in prison. “That’s how some justice movements started to get recourse from the federal government,” says Joshua Clark Davis, a historian at the University of Baltimore and the author of the new book “Police Against the Movement.” “It was a travesty that the defendants were never charged with murder. But convicting them of civil rights violations was much better than nothing.”
Since then, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s civil rights division effectively made up for state lapses in response to a series of law-enforcement shootings that threatened to set communities, or the country, on fire. Democratic presidents tended to be more likely than Republicans to investigate a whole police department for a “pattern or practice” of discrimination, as federal law also allows. But Republican administrations have also been aggressive about pursuing individual police officers in instances of state-based violence. Various officers who committed crimes — the ones who beat Rodney King in 1991, those who shot six unarmed civilians on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and those who murdered George Floyd in 2020 — received prison sentences based on civil rights investigations opened by the respective Justice Departments of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump in his first term.
At the same time, it’s notable that many federal investigations of shootings by law enforcement conclude without a prosecution. The standard for bringing charges is high: Officers are authorized to use deadly force when they reasonably perceive a serious threat. The law leans in their favor given the split-second decisions they make in the line of duty. “These cases are hard to prosecute,” says Vanita Gupta, a Justice Department official in the Obama and Biden administrations. “I had to close investigations any number of times. But the public could have confidence that the Civil Rights Division had conducted an independent, full, and fair investigation. Until now.”
One difference regarding the deaths of Good and Pretti is that federal agents, not state or local law enforcement, did the killing. In a sense, the 1993 federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is an antecedent — and though the Davidians were largely blamed for starting the fires and gun battle that ended in mass deaths, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed a special counsel to investigate. In the absence of an independent Justice Department investigation, Gupta warned, federal agents “can act with impunity, and that is incredibly dangerous.”
Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which usually investigates an officer’s use of deadly force, has vowed the state will continue its inquiry. Mary Moriarty, the local prosecutor, directed people to submit video evidence through an online portal. On Tuesday, following a barrage of bipartisan criticism, Trump promised a “very honorable and honest” inquiry. But the president continued to blame Pretti for legally carrying a gun at a protest, even though one federal officer had already seized it before another opened fire. And there’s no federal civil rights investigation.
The Coming Clashes With the States
The investigations into Good and Pretti’s deaths are the most urgent clash between Minnesota and Washington, but others are building.
From the Trump administration’s point of view, state and local officials are the lawless ones, impeding the federal government from enforcing the nation’s immigration statutes.
The tension stems from the sanctuary cities movement. In December, Minneapolis strengthened the ordinances that restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, barring the use of any city resources or data-sharing. The police aren’t allowed to set up perimeters or control traffic when ICE and border-patrol agents conduct arrests. (The Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can’t commandeer state officials to perform federal duties.)
More states and cities are considering such laws. A new list of bills would directly challenge federal tactics, for example, by banning the masks that federal agents now commonly use to hide their identities. A group of progressive prosecutors including Mary Moriarity, the county attorney with jurisdiction in Minneapolis, announced this week that they’re banding together to assist in prosecuting federal officers who break state laws. The idea, Moriarty said, is to share knowledge across cities and reduce the sense of isolation that comes with crisis.
Her office would certainly face legal hurdles to prosecuting the officers who killed Good and Pretti. Among other issues, federal officers have some immunity from state prosecution. “But I keep saying it’s not absolute,” Moriarty said. “There has to be some form of accountability. You don’t get deterrence by saying to ICE, ‘No one can touch you.’ ”
It’s telling that after Good’s death, the Trump administration trained its power of criminal investigation on several Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and Moriarty. The F.B.I.’s top public-corruption agent in Minneapolis resigned rather than conduct the inquiry. Six federal prosecutors resigned in mid-January over an order to investigate Renee Good’s widow. A seventh resigned this week, and more are considering doing so.
As the federal and state moves and countermoves multiply, it’s a sign of how the federalist compact is splintering. And yet state and local power are important as a counterweight when the president uses the national government to act like an authoritarian. Madison was right about that.
“We can’t stop what the federal government is doing,” Moriarty said. “Our actions may seem like a small piece. But they are a big piece to people here. They are showing up for each other, and trying to stand up to their own federal government, and they are asking, ‘Who is here to protect us?’ We have a lane here. We are doing our job.”
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6) Justice Dept. Opens Civil Rights Inquiry Into Killing of Alex Pretti
The announcement marked a significant reversal in the department’s approach to Mr. Pretti’s killing.
By Alan Feuer, Jan. 30, 2026
A memorial for Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who was killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse who was killed in Minneapolis last weekend by federal immigration agents, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said on Friday.
The announcement marked a significant reversal in the department’s approach to Mr. Pretti’s killing, suggesting that after a week of lacerating criticism, it had decided to handle the high-profile incident in a manner more in keeping with how investigators have traditionally dealt with fatal shootings by law-enforcement officers.
But even as Mr. Blanche disclosed the existence of the inquiry, he sought to downplay it.
“I don’t want to overstate what is happening,” he said. “I don’t want the takeaway to be there is some massive civil rights investigation. I would describe it as a standard investigation by the F.B.I.”
Still, all of this sounded quite different from the Trump administration’s stance at the beginning of the week.
On Monday, for instance, officials revealed in court papers that the inquiry into the shooting would be led by investigators from the Department of Homeland Security and would focus not on the broad question of whether immigration agents had deprived Mr. Pretti of his civil rights in the incident, but rather on the narrower issue of whether the agents’ use of force had violated internal protocols and training standards.
The court papers also said Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, would take the lead in the inquiry, assisted by both Customs and Border Protection and the F.B.I.
But on Friday, a Homeland Security spokesperson said that the bureau would now take the lead in the inquiry and H.S.I. would play a secondary role.
Mr. Blanche also asserted that the F.B.I. would be in charge of the investigation, along with lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
“We are looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day,” he said.
Mr. Blanche’s remarks about the investigation came at a news conference where the central topic was the release of millions of pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
But facing a series of questions from reporters, he pivoted to the department’s scattershot handling of events in Minnesota. He declined to say much about new federal charges filed on Friday against the independent journalist Don Lemon and several others in connection with a demonstration this month at a church service in St. Paul.
He also brushed aside questions about the Justice Department’s refusal to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good while she was behind the wheel of her car in Minneapolis, two weeks before Mr. Pretti was killed.
“Cases are handled differently by this department depending on the circumstances,” Mr. Blanche said.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
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7) Trump’s Board of Peace Is Anything But
By Thant Myint-U, Jan. 30, 2026
Dr. Myint-U is a historian and the author of “Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World.”
A United Nations chamber in New York City around 1947. FPG/Getty Images
The most striking thing about President Trump’s proposal for a “Board of Peace,” a new group he has billed as a global conflict-solving body, is not its billion-dollar permanent membership fee or the eccentric list of nations, such as El Salvador, Belarus and Saudia Arabia, that have apparently signed on. It’s that for the first time, the United States — the primary architect of the United Nations — is openly experimenting with a rival body at least nominally aimed at peacemaking. “I’m a big fan of the U.N.’s potential,” Mr. Trump said last week, “but it has never lived up to its potential.”
This move is best understood, though, not as a sudden break between the United States and the U.N., but as an accelerant. It is the latest chapter in a much longer history of America’s estrangement from its own creation, made possible by a global forgetting, often willful, of how war was once restrained.
For much of the postwar period, the United Nations helped prevent crises from spiraling into wider war, acting as a firewall when bilateral diplomacy failed. As much of that history has faded from view, political leaders from around the world have come to think of the U.N. as an obsolete talking shop of empty words. This amnesia has narrowed the horizons of those shaping foreign policy, leaving them unable to envision a security framework that isn’t a zero-sum game of rival blocs. If we continue to let ourselves forget the lessons of the mid-20th century, when the U.N. was a successful bulwark against conflict escalation, we will find ourselves unable to imagine the kind of international cooperation needed to prevent future catastrophes.
Just over 80 years ago, the United Nations was established by men and women who had lived through the deaths of tens of millions across two world wars. It was not a utopian project but a practical effort by battle-hardened founders alarmed by the destructive potential of the atomic age to permanently remove war as a tool of international relations. They believed a new kind of politics was possible, and sought to create a body that could impose discipline on the use of force, institutionalize multilateral diplomacy, safeguard state sovereignty and foster the economic conditions essential for stability.
Much of the world signed on. In its first few decades, dozens of newly independent states from Asia and Africa that had been shaped by decades of anticolonial struggle joined the United Nations, transforming it into humanity’s first near-universal body. Although the Security Council, with China, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union as veto-wielding permanent members, was often deadlocked by the politics of the Cold War, a surge of ambition from the new so-called Third World energized the U.N., turning its secretaries general into the world’s pre-eminent peacemakers.
For a time, they were remarkably effective. In 1956, Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold helped prevent the Suez crisis from intensifying into a great-power war by deploying the U.N.’s first peacekeeping operation. In 1962, his successor, U Thant (my grandfather) proved indispensable in de-escalating the Cuban missile crisis, mediating between John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro — a part of the story that has been almost entirely erased from popular memory. A year later, in Congo, an Indian-commanded U.N. force under Thant’s authority routed a Belgian-backed secessionist army buttressed by white-supremacist mercenaries, protecting the newly independent state from dismemberment. Over the following years, Thant and his deputy, Ralph Bunche, helped end or contain half a dozen conflicts, from Cyprus to Kashmir.
Throughout this period, the United Nations enjoyed overwhelming support among American political leaders and the U.S. public. Washington was comfortable with an organization that seemed broadly aligned with, or at least did not obstruct, its own desires to strengthen American military and economic primacy around the world.
Eventually, though, the U.N. started to become unfashionable in Washington — not because it was ineffective, but because it began to take opposing positions on what were seen as core American interests. The first decisive break came in the mid-1960s over Vietnam, when Thant publicly challenged the war, questioned its strategic assumptions and pressed for a negotiated settlement, provoking the ire of President Lyndon B. Johnson and hawks on Capitol Hill. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war marked another turning point. In its aftermath, the U.N.’s push for a Middle East accord that included a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories fueled a growing belief among many Americans that the organization was institutionally biased against the Jewish state.
In the 1970s, efforts among developing nations within the U.N. to fashion a fairer global economy through commodity agreements, technology sharing and development financing were judged inimical to the globalization of U.S.-anchored free markets. Tensions also emerged in the body over Washington’s opposition to action against apartheid South Africa throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, when the United States favored more conciliatory policies over the sweeping sanctions that the U.N. General Assembly demanded.
Throughout the 1980s, even as Washington’s focus pivoted further away from the global body, Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and his team of veteran mediators quietly unlocked peace accords in conflicts in Central America, Southern Africa and Cambodia. In the process, they ensured that the proxy wars unfolding in these countries would not continue to poison superpower relations, setting the stage for an end to the Cold War.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in an era of American global supremacy. But the triumph of this U.S.-led so-called liberal international order also required that the achievements of an earlier, more internationalist order centered explicitly on the United Nations be quietly slipped down the memory hole. As the U.N. was increasingly retooled by the United States and other Western countries as a technocratic mechanism for managing faraway civil wars, largely through humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations, its previous role as a mediator between states withered from view. What emerged was an institution deeply enmeshed in the U.S.-led order but peripheral to the strategic thinking of policy elites in capitals everywhere.
War and instability are once again on the rise, as is the risk of nuclear confrontation. We’ve suffered periods of intensified conflict and great-power rivalry many times since 1945. But for the first time since the Second World War, we are confronting these crises amid the near-complete erosion of the U.N. norms, institutions, and practices that, however imperfectly, constrained escalation and identified pathways to negotiated resolution. Only reinvestment in a radically remade U.N. — not Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace, whatever its ultimate remit — can fill that void.
Peace cannot be improvised. It needs to be designed, carefully and deliberately. An international politics unmoored from the core U.N. principles of universality, sovereign equality and clear limits on the use of force, combined with a collective amnesia about how wars were once prevented, can lead only to our sleepwalking back into the cataclysmic bloodshed of the early 20th century.
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8) ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants
An internal memo changed the standard from whether people are unlikely to show up for hearings to whether they could leave the scene.
By Hamed Aleaziz and Charlie Savage, Reporting from Washington, Jan. 30, 2026
Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.
The shift comes as the administration has deployed thousands of masked immigration agents into cities nationwide. A week before the memo, it came to light that Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of the agency, had issued guidance in May saying agents could enter homes with only an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. And the day before the memo, Mr. Trump said he would “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, after agents fatally shot two people in the crackdown there.
The memo, addressed to all ICE personnel and signed on Wednesday by Mr. Lyons, centers on a federal law that empowers agents to make warrantless arrests of people they believe are undocumented immigrants, if they are “likely to escape” before an arrest warrant can be obtained.
ICE has long interpreted that standard to mean situations in which agents believe someone is a “flight risk,” and unlikely to comply with future immigration obligations like appearing for hearings, according to the memo. But Mr. Lyons criticized that construction as “unreasoned” and “incorrect,” changing the agency’s interpretation of it to instead mean situations in which agents believe someone is unlikely to remain at the scene.
“An alien is ‘likely to escape’ if an immigration officer determines he or she is unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained,” Mr. Lyons wrote.
The Times shared a description of the memo’s contents with several former senior ICE officials from the Biden administration. Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE, called the new definition “an extremely broad interpretation of the term ‘escape.’”
“It would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” she added.
Mr. Lyons’s memo explicitly portrays the revised interpretation of “likely to escape” as a change from how ICE had “previously applied the phrase.” But Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said that “this is not new.”
“This is simply a reminder to officers,” she wrote in a statement, to keep “detailed records on their arrests.”
The Trump administration has pushed ICE to significantly increase arrests per day as part of its mass deportation campaign. The agency has carried out more indiscriminate sweeps — like rounding up people in Home Depot parking lots looking for work — rather than targeted operations in which agents set out, warrant in hand, to arrest specific people.
Such roundup operations could still involve administrative warrants if supervisors on the scene quickly fill out the paperwork, known as a Form I-200. The change lowers the standard for arrests even without a supervisor’s approval.
Mr. Lyons’s memo lists factors agents can consider when deciding whether the standard has been met, including whether someone obeys commands or tries to evade them; has access to a car or other means to leave; has identification or work authorization documents agents suspect are fraudulent; or provides “unverifiable or suspected false information.”
The memo tells agents who make warrantless arrests to fill out a form afterward that documents the factors they considered in determining that someone was “likely to escape.” That includes situations in which agents set out to arrest a particular person and then take others in the vicinity into custody. Mr. Lyons called that group “collateral aliens.”
“If an immigration officer encounters and arrests multiple collateral aliens, his or her analysis as to the likelihood of escape must be specific to each alien arrested,” the memo said. “That one collateral alien is likely to escape does not necessarily mean another collateral alien is also likely to escape.”
But this kind of assessment requirement only goes so far: The memo stresses that “particular factors may be common to multiple aliens arrested at the same time.”
During the first Trump administration, a class-action lawsuit claimed that agents had been illegally profiling in traffic stops as a pretext for warrantless arrests. In 2022, the Biden administration agreed to a settlement that included a three-year nationwide policy. Plaintiffs last year accused the second Trump administration of violating the agreement, prompting litigation.
The policy standard in the 2022 settlement included factors that resembled Mr. Lyons’s list. But it also included “ties to the community (such as a family, home or employment) or lack thereof, or other specific circumstances that weigh in favor or against a reasonable belief that the subject is likely to abscond.”
But Mr. Lyons’s memo noted that when agents encounter people they suspect are in the country illegally, the agents are not likely to be able to know much about them. “This on-the-spot determination as to the likelihood of escape is often made with limited information about the subject’s identity, background or place of residence and no corroboration of any self-serving statements made by the subject,” he wrote.
Scott Shuchart, a former head of policy at ICE during the Biden administration, said the memo would open the door to more frequent warrantless arrests.
“This memo bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval,” he said. The memo, he warned, said that “even that supervisor’s note can almost always be sidestepped so long as the officer can say anything remotely plausible about the person being arrested possibly leaving the area.”
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9) Politicians Are Calling the Protests in Minnesota an Insurgency
The term, used to describe war, poses dangers when applied to American political unrest.
By Greg Jaffe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Jan. 31, 2026
Protesters demonstrating against ICE agents in Minneapolis on Friday. Republicans and Trump administration officials have described slain protesters as insurgents or “domestic terrorists.” Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The day after federal immigration agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine spoke with his supporters about resisting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Graham Platner, a Democrat and Marine combat veteran, urged them to join “watch groups,” “rapid response teams” and “intelligence collection networks” to alert citizens and potential targets to the presence of federal immigration agents in their communities.
“Don’t just join a Signal thread and monitor it,” Mr. Platner told the audience in the coastal town of Kittery, referring to the encrypted texting app. “You’ve got to get in a room with people. You’ve got to develop relationships and trust.”
Mr. Platner was talking about a form of nonviolent resistance that employs methods common in war zones like Syria and Ukraine, where civilians built text chains to track and seek shelter from enemy attack drones and fighter jets.
Increasingly, though, Republicans have described the measures he was highlighting as something else: an American insurgency.
“The issue is always revolution, right? That’s what these people want,” Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona and a former Navy SEAL, told the right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday. “They want to fundamentally remake and tear down the institutions and the culture of this country.”
To Mr. Crane, the resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere added up to “communist insurrection,” and he argued that President Trump should use the U.S. military to reimpose order.
On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson, the right-wing commentator, struck a similar tone. “What you’re watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority,” he said, referring to the protests in Minneapolis.
Such language, reminiscent of overseas battlefields in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, has become a growing staple of American politics, especially among Republicans and Trump administration officials, who have described slain protesters as insurgents or “domestic terrorists.”
A danger, experts on such wars said, is that the martial rhetoric antagonizes protesters, cuts off the possibilities for civil debate and lowers the bar for violence on both sides.
“When you start using the language of warfare and treating someone that has an opposing view as a terrorist or as an insurgent, that legitimizes the use of violence against them,” said Seth G. Jones, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such terms, Mr. Jones added, grossly distorted the situation. The protesters in places like Minneapolis and Maine are standing watch in the cold, sending out alerts on text chats and blowing whistles when they see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Insurgents use violence to overthrow a government and replace it.
“We’re nowhere near any of that,” Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Platner pointed to the government’s heavy-handed approach, captured in videos showing older women “getting thrown to the ground” by ICE agents for recording videos or protesting. Such brutality, he said in an interview with The New York Times, could easily be described as “using the language of militarism.”
“It’s literally what federal agencies are doing in our communities,” he said.
The parallels to war zones extend beyond rhetoric and are reflected in the federal immigration officers’ appearance and aggressive posture on patrols. ICE agents frequently deploy clad in helmets, camouflage and tactical gear that call to mind U.S. soldiers fighting in overseas wars. Many wear masks, which immigration officials say are needed to protect them and their families from retribution.
To Emma Sky, who spent years in Iraq advising U.S. military commanders, the masks evoke the state-sponsored sectarian militias that were often sent out by Iraqi strongmen to terrorize civilians. “It is in dictatorships and authoritarian systems that opposition movements are routinely described as terrorists or insurgents, which signals that violence is the appropriate response,” said Ms. Sky, a lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.
Those who label protesters as insurgents or domestic terrorists and suggest that they must be put down using force or arrest ignore the fact that most insurgencies are resolved through negotiation.
“My challenge to those on the right who have chosen to label what’s happening as an insurgency would be to ask how insurgencies often end, which is usually some of kind of political compromise,” said Andrew Exum, a former Army officer and senior Pentagon official.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “de-escalate” the situation in Minneapolis. He has not specified what tactics federal immigration agents might change after the fatal shootings of Mr. Pretti and another protester, Renee Good. But he replaced Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official whose harsh tactics drew the ire of state and local officials, with Tom Homan, the White House border czar.
By Friday, Mr. Trump was back to calling Mr. Pretti an “agitator” and possibly an “insurrectionist,” using the inflammatory language that characterized his administration’s initial response to the protests.
In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz also turned to the language of war and insurgency to describe the events in his state. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Mr. Walz mused this week to The Atlantic, referring to the opening shots of the Civil War.
“It’s a physical assault,” he said. “It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.”
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10) A Minnesota School District Guards Against ICE, From Dawn to Dusk
In Fridley, a Minneapolis suburb, school officials are driving nervous teachers and buying families groceries. At dismissal, the superintendent patrols for federal agents.
By Sarah Mervosh, Photographs and Video by Jamie Kelter Davis, Jan. 31, 2026
Sarah Mervosh, an education reporter, and Jamie Kelter Davis, a photographer, embedded in the Fridley school district on Wednesday.
A child walks home from school in Fridley, Minn.
In the predawn darkness, the teacher slips out of her apartment, into the idling car of a colleague waiting in her driveway.
Normally, the teacher, who moved from the Philippines a year and a half ago and does not yet have her own car, would Uber to work, where she spends her days working with disabled children who are nonverbal. It is one of the hardest jobs in education and one of the hardest to fill, which is why her Minnesota school district sponsored her to come teach on a visa.
But ever since immigration raids began sweeping the Twin Cities, and especially since Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot dead, she has been fearful.
She is here legally. But if American citizens are not safe, she wonders, what might happen to her?
Now, a district official escorts her to work each morning. They pull out of the driveway shortly before 7 a.m., the start of another tense school day in Fridley, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb of big-box stores, apartment complexes and modest, snow-covered homes. Twenty-seven other anxious school employees are also being escorted in vans and car pools, the new morning ritual.
In the school district next door, more than two dozen parents and four students have been detained by federal agents, including a 5-year-old boy on his way home from school who was detained with his father.
From sunup to sundown, Fridley school officials are on high alert, worried federal agents might show up on their doorstep next.
Across the district, several hundred children are learning online because they are scared to go to school. Administrators are packing up groceries for families and trying to help with rent for parents who are afraid to work.
It all feels eerily similar to the pandemic, school leaders said. To their frustration they said, this time, the crisis is man-made.
“You have taken away the basic human right of children to be at school,” said Brenda Lewis, the Fridley superintendent. Her district is home to about 2,700 students, including significant Somali and Ecuadorean populations. Nearly 20 percent of students in the district are still learning English.
Though many families are legal immigrants, or U.S. citizens, fears about racial profiling and encounters with federal agents have grown.
As part of its crackdown on illegal immigration, the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance that limited enforcement in or near “sensitive” locations, such as schools, churches and hospitals. Schools officials in the Twin Cities say federal agents have appeared at bus stops, and showed up at people’s homes at times when they are coming and going from school.
Trump administration officials say federal agents do not target or raid schools, and are focused on arresting violent criminals.
“Our ICE law enforcement officers are making arrests of child pedophiles and predators to protect the children of Minneapolis,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
In Fridley, though, fears of ICE are everywhere. Children come to school reporting raids in their neighborhoods and agents at their windows.
The adults at school see it as their job to shelter families in their care, to keep the daily act of going to school, at least, safe. Amid it all, they are also trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, even joy.
At Fridley Middle School, students stroll in, cups of Cocoa Puffs and cans of Pepsi in their hands.
The principal, Jordan Halverson, greets them at the door. “Morning, Antonio.” “A.J., how was practice?” He prods them along. Three minutes until first period.
A former running back and linebacker at Fridley High, Mr. Halverson, 34, is the middle school’s brand-new principal. He knew his first year would come with challenges. He never expected this.
Halfway through the school year, federal agents arrived, leading to tense protests across the region. His voice mail filled with more than 100 messages from parents. He remembers listening to several in Spanish. He could understand only snippets, but he understood enough. “You can hear the fear," he said.
Some parents said they would be keeping their children home. Others asked him directly: What will you do to protect us?
“It’s a helpless feeling,” he said. “As a leader, you try to be there, to be the rock, to have all the answers. But you don’t.”
The helplessness continues at home, where his 7-year-old daughter is asking questions about her classmates who haven’t come to school lately. They looked at a class picture together, and she pointed to the faces of those missing.
Mr. Halverson, who is Black, Vietnamese and white, has few answers for her. In his car, he is carrying his U.S. passport, in case he himself gets pulled over.
By late morning, school officials are out in the cold, loading 50 grocery bags into cars to give away to families. Boxes of macaroni and cheese. Crackers. Applesauce.
About 40 families are expected to pick up food, along with Chromebooks for their children who are learning online. The district officials stage their giveaway near the high school gym, where the sneaker squeaks and whoops of students playing lacrosse during gym class echo.
A few days earlier, the gym had been the site of a sit-in, organized by several students, including the superintendent’s two children, who said they needed to do something, anything, to speak out.
They described worries about friends who had stopped coming to school, and for themselves, in case they are profiled because of the color of their skin.
Yasin, a 10th grader whose parents are from Somalia, said his mother had warned him to be careful and carry extra documents, though he is a U.S. citizen. He says children shouldn’t have to do that just to go outside or go to school.
In the parking lot, parents are pulling up one by one. The first car is a mother picking up a computer for her kindergartner.
“Hello!” says Danielle Thompson, a district official who has been doing weekly grocery shopping. “Do you need food or supplies?”
A little girl in a pink hat waves from the back seat.
2 p.m.
Dismissal time at a Fridley elementary school.
Toward the end of the school day, Dr. Lewis, the superintendent, is in a Chrysler Pacifica minivan, circling the neighborhood.
She sees dismissal as a vulnerable time of day, when parents line up their cars outside school doors and buses drop off children to walk home.
In the driver’s seat is Mark Mickelson, a former police officer now in charge of district security. For the past several weeks, they have spent each afternoon patrolling, looking for federal agents near schools and bus stops.
Across Minneapolis, these kind of patrols, from citizen observers, have at times led to escalating confrontations with federal agents, who Trump officials say are there to do a job.
“Those blaming ICE for low attendance at schools are creating a climate of fear and smearing law enforcement,” said Ms. McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, adding that inflammatory rhetoric had led to an increase in assaults against ICE officers.
Dr. Lewis says she needs to be out monitoring the streets, in part to tamp down rumors and reassure community members, who regularly call in potential ICE sightings.
At 2:11 p.m., one of those calls comes in. It turns out to be a false alarm.
At 2:38 p.m., there is another call. An S.U.V. with out-of-town license plates, spotted nearby.
Mr. Mickelson swears and turns the steering wheel. Quickly, both he and Dr. Lewis start receiving phone calls from school officials keeping watch in the neighborhood.
“We are looking for a Texas plate,” says Dr. Lewis. “A Chevy Suburban, silver.”
They find the vehicle parked at Commons Park, a public park next to several schools. They pull up and peer inside. The driver is wearing a hat and appears to have on a tactical vest. Another man sits in the back seat, his face partially obscured by a mask. The license plate matches one in a community database tracking ICE vehicles.
Dr. Lewis types a text to her principals: “Hi team, we have a confirmed ICE at Commons. Please make sure we have all eyes on dismissal.”
Mr. Mickelson drives around the block and circles back. The S.U.V. is pulling away. As they cross paths, the man in the back seat rolls down his window and waves.
Whatever his intent, it leaves the school officials shaken.
“It’s games,” Mr. Mickelson says. “They know exactly what this vehicle is and what we are doing, and they are just letting us know.”
Dr. Lewis worries the agents could be looking for a family in her district. She wonders whether a news conference she did the day before, denouncing ICE and its impact on schools, could have attracted them.
At one point, Mr. Mickelson thinks he has spotted them again. He speeds down a suburban road. But they are gone.
6 p.m.
School officials said attendance was lower than usual at a boys’ varsity basketball game this week.
It’s rivalry night at the boys’ varsity basketball game: Fridley vs. Columbia Heights, a neighboring district.
Normally it would be standing room only. But tonight, attendance is down. Several Columbia Heights students have been detained, including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose detention while he was wearing a Spider-Man backpack on his way home from school, along with his father, has drawn national attention.
Squinting into the stands, Tanya Moore, a Columbia Heights district employee and one of the few people in “Heights” sweatshirts, counts just six students from her district, aside from basketball players.
One Fridley 11th grader, who has been learning online, is there to work the concession stand with her friends. She feels safe, she says, because there are lots of people around. Police officers and school officials are at the entrance. It is scarier, she says, on a quiet school morning, when agents could be anywhere.
For now, though, it’s almost like any other high school night: back in their teenage bubble of TikTok dances and makeup checks in the girls’ bathroom, their biggest worries over who will win a basketball game.
It’s close, down to the end. But Fridley pulls away in the final seconds, 75-73.
The scoreboard switches off and the crowd scatters from the gym, out into the night.
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11) Minneapolis Residents Wear Their Passports, Desperate to Ward Off ICE
ICE agents can stop anyone they suspect of being undocumented. Now, residents are weighing their rights and their pride against their own safety.
By Talya Minsberg, Reporting from St. Paul and Minneapolis, Jan. 31, 2026
María Pabón Gautier’s children wear their identities around their necks. Liam James Doyle for The New York Times
María Pabón Gautier has a new routine when she sends her 8- and 15-year-olds off to school in their Minneapolis suburb. Before they run out the door, she slips lanyards around their necks. The lanyards hold their American passports.
“I don’t like it,” her youngest said. “I really don’t like it.”
In the past two months, federal immigration agents have arrested thousands in the Twin Cities, detaining citizens, asylum-seekers, refugees and the undocumented. They have killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. And they have stopped people seemingly at random, asking for identification or simply demanding: “Where were you born?”
Now, many people here are asking a question that is a novel one in America: Is it safe to leave home without proof of citizenship? Has the United States turned into a show-me-your-papers nation?
For many Minnesotans, the answer has been an unequivocal yes.
“We need to be ready before they point a gun to us,” said Joua Tsu Thao, a citizen, retired mental health practitioner and pastor who fought with U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. The 75-year-old now tapes his passport and drivers license to the outside of his clothing.
On Sunday Jan. 18, the Hmong community watched in horror as ChongLy Scott Thao, a naturalized citizen, was dragged from his home in freezing temperatures, wearing only underwear and sandals. He was released hours later, without explanation or apology.
The state is home to one of the country’s largest Hmong populations, and the Thao family was the 27th to arrive, Mr. Thao’s daughter, Kaying Thao, said. That pride has dissipated.
Ms. Thao, who is also a citizen, has canceled two trips out of the country out of fear that officials will seize her passport. She rarely leaves her Twin Cities home, and if she does, she tries to travel with white friends, or her children, “who look more racially ambiguous.”
“This is our real life now,” Ms. Thao said, her voice breaking.
Residents of the United States who are not citizens can be asked to produce immigration documents. In a September 2025 case, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also gave ICE increased discretion to detain anyone based on factors that include race and ethnicity. He wrote that people wrongly detained “may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens.”
Those actions, which opponents call “Kavanaugh stops,” have become ubiquitous.
“I never used to worry about, like, ‘Am I American enough?’” said Zaynab Mohamed, a state senator who carries her passport all the time now. “The past three or four weeks have shown people that your place in this country isn’t assumed, that your belonging is conditional and can be questioned at any point based on your name, your accent, how you dress.”
Even the mayor of St. Paul, Kaohly Her, carries her passport at all times.
The question of whether to carry one’s papers has taken an emotional toll, said Pauleen Le, a communication director who lives in Minneapolis.
“What’s worse, you get stopped, you exercise your rights, and you risk forcibly being taken away?” she asked herself. “Or you just give in?”
Still, for weeks, she refused to carry her passport. It felt like a capitulation: She was born in Minnesota. What did she need to prove?
On Jan. 18, she was going to a ceremony at a Buddhist temple. Could it be a target for ICE, she wondered?
“That morning, the answer was yes,” she said. “I took out my passport and I put it in my purse. And I still get emotional about it.”
Ms. Gautier was raised in Puerto Rico, whose native residents are U.S. citizens, and has lived in Minnesota for 22 years. Soon after President Trump began making disparaging comments about Somali immigrants in Minnesota, she realized her family would “need to figure out how we move differently,” she said.
“I’m trying to create a balance between showing them the reality, what’s happening right now, and not making them feel like an outsider in their own home,” Ms. Gautier said.
Her children — she asked that they remain nameless, for their own safety — came home from school on Wednesday and removed their passports from their necks. The lanyard was heavier than expected, both said; the 15-year-old made it clear that she was speaking both literally and figuratively.
“Every few seconds, I would feel it pressing into my stomach, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I actually have to do this’,” she said.
Being able to prove their citizenship without making a sudden movement, toward a bag or a back pocket, did provide a sort of solace, they said. But “feeling safe” was a stretch.
Ms. Gautier’s younger child furrowed her brow. “It’s all concerning,” she said. “I have a passport, but it’s paper, not a shield.”
Lauren McCarthy, Ernesto Londoño and Bernard Mokam contributed reporting.
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12) Israel Launches Deadly Strikes in Gaza, as Rafah Border Is Set to Reopen
A local health official said at least 26 people had been killed in the attacks, which the Israeli military said had targeted Hamas commanders.
By Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim, Jan. 31, 2026
Natan Odenheimer reported from Jerusalem and Fatima AbdulKarim from Ramallah, in the West Bank.
Palestinians mourning their loved ones after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on Saturday. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, an attack that local health officials said was the deadliest in weeks and that comes as the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was set to move into its next phase.
Zaher al-Waheidi, an official at the Gaza health ministry, said at least 26 people had been killed in the strikes, which hit several locations, including Gaza City and a refugee camp near the city of Khan Younis, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense rescue service.
Several children were among those killed, according to Mr. al-Waheidi and Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, who said his hospital had received some of the injured and dead on Saturday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the airstrikes had targeted commanders and fighters from Hamas and another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It said the strikes were a response to activity the day before, when it said militants had emerged from a tunnel in Rafah, in an Israeli-controlled area. The military described that as “a violation of the cease-fire agreement.”
Hamas described the Israeli attacks themselves as a violation of the cease-fire.
The strikes came before the expected reopening in the coming days of the crucial land crossing at Rafah between Gaza and Egypt, a long-delayed part of the cease-fire agreed in October.
The opening of the border crossing would allow Palestinians who had fled the two-year-long war between Israel and Hamas to return home for the first time.
An Israeli defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive information, said on Saturday that Israel still plans to reopen the Rafah crossing in the coming days.
As part of the cease-fire deal, Hamas released the remaining hostages held in Gaza in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, while the Israeli military withdrew to an agreed-upon line inside Gaza that left it in control of about half of the enclave. On Monday, Israeli forces recovered the body of the last Israeli captive held in Gaza, setting the stage for the cease-fire to advance to its next phase.
But there have been several outbreaks of violence in Gaza since the truce came into effect, with each side accusing the other of breaching the terms of the agreement.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health says Israel has killed more than 500 people in Gaza since the truce was announced. The health ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Israel has previously said that its strikes in Gaza were in response to Hamas’s violations of the cease-fire, including attacks on Israeli troops.
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13) These Gazans May Finally Get a Lifeline to the World
Visuals by Saher Alghorra, By Bilal Shbair and Adam Rasgon, Jan. 31, 2026
Saher Alghorra and Bilal Shbair reported from the Gaza Strip, and Adam Rasgon from Tel Aviv.
Mohammed al-Ser suffered a severe head injury in June that left him partly paralyzed. He is depicted before he underwent cranial surgery this week, but doctors say he needs care outside Gaza to fully recover.
After Mohammed al-Ser suffered a severe head injury in June, which he said was caused by shrapnel from an Israeli missile, doctors reconstructed his skull. But he has yet to regain the use of his left arm and leg.
Mr. al-Ser, 27, is among the thousands of Palestinians waiting to be evacuated for medical treatment as the border between Gaza and Egypt looks set to reopen in the coming days.
When approached for comment on Mr. al-Ser’s account of his injuries, the Israeli military said it had carried out a strike in that area in June 2025, targeting a Hamas operative.
The medical system in the Gaza Strip was decimated over more than two years of war. The border crossing, close to the city of Rafah, was a lifeline for patients seeking medical treatment they could not get inside the enclave.
The expected reopening of the Rafah crossing has brought hope to Gaza’s sick and wounded, and to their families.
Yet it is unclear how many will be able to leave Gaza through the crossing. On Friday, COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for coordinating with Palestinians, said that the crossing would open on Sunday, and that there would be only a “limited movement of people” in both directions.
When asked whether priority would be given to the sick and wounded to leave Gaza, an Israeli security official said Egypt would share lists of those wishing to cross the border with Israeli authorities, who would then approve or deny their passage. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
Here are the stories of some of those waiting to be evacuated.
The expected reopening of the Rafah crossing has brought hope for the parents of Umama al-Astal. Her father, Mohammed al-Astal, 39, said Umama was born with a heart condition in February 2023, and had only the first of a series of surgeries before the war began.
“Her case is very urgent and can’t wait,” said Ghaidaa al-Astal, 36, Umama’s mother, who hopes her daughter will get the treatment she needs abroad.
Umama’s father, Mr. al-Astal, waits in the hallway at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. With him is his 13-year-old daughter, Farah, and son, al-Yamani, who is almost two months old.
Mr. al-Astal is anxious for Umama to leave Gaza so she can get her next operation. “We are still waiting for a chance to save her,” he said.
About 20,000 people need to be evacuated for treatment abroad, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Since the border crossing at Rafah closed in March, about 1,000 Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza for medical treatment abroad by crossing first into Israel, according to the World Health Organization.
Yet those evacuations often required a lengthy approval process, as patients need a third country to host them during their treatment, and must get Israeli security clearance, the W.H.O. has said.
Sami Saad, 12, had acute liver failure and was hospitalized at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah. His father, grandfather and uncle take turns to stand by his bedside, comforting the boy and asking doctors and nurses for updates on his condition.
“I wish they let me travel, anywhere,” Sami said, his cheeks wet with tears.
Dr. Raed Hussein, the hospital’s director, said the facility lacked many necessary medications and surgical tools.
Randa al-Bordini, 44, has cancer and is currently being treated at Nasser Hospital.
“I want to go to the Emirates so I can understand what is happening inside my body, and get treatment,” Ms. al-Bordini said, sitting with her daughter Shaimaa.
COGAT did not specify how many people would be allowed to enter and exit Gaza each day. It said crossings would be permitted in “coordination with Egypt” and following “security clearance” by Israel.
The opening of the Rafah crossing was part of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October. Israel had refused to open the crossing in both directions until all of the living hostages held by Hamas, and the bodies of the deceased, were returned to Israel.
The last remains, those of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, a member of the Israeli police, were recovered by Israel on Monday.
Ahmed Rasras, 19, has been lying unconscious at Nasser Hospital for weeks.
On Jan. 4, a bullet penetrated Mr. Rasras’s skull while he was asleep in his tent in northwestern Rafah, according to his brother Tareq Rasras, 26, who was with him at the time. Tareq said he does not know who fired the bullet.
Ahmed relies on a tube to breathe, and doctors at the hospital say that he needs to undergo tests using machines that are not currently available in Gaza.
Tareq said that the family was anxiously awaiting news about the Rafah crossing. “Reopening it is the only hope for patients like my brother to receive treatment,” he said.
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14) An Ocean of Frozen Flowers Grows Where Alex Pretti Was Killed
One week after the I.C.U. nurse was shot dead by federal agents, tributes continue to build on the sidewalk where he fell.
By Jesse McKinley, Jesse McKinley reported from Minneapolis, Jan. 31, 2026
There are flowers, candles and words upon words at the scene of the killing. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The bitter wind blows out the candles and the flowers wilt, victims of the cold. But Alex Pretti’s memorial continues to grow.
Seven days after Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, was shot dead by federal agents on a Minneapolis street, tributes to him and denunciations of ICE have steadily spread outward from the site of the shooting, claiming walls, windows, and street poles on the block where he died.
The makeshift memorial along Nicollet Avenue, a popular stretch lined with shops, restaurants, and grocery stores, has become a solemn gathering place for mourners, who have left hundreds of prayer candles and bouquets, piling one atop another.
More than anything, though, there are words: in letters and handmade signs, on placards and scrawled graffiti. The messages are sometimes angry, and obscene — calls for retribution.
But most are simply wrenching, expressive of the sorrow, anxiety, and dread that many here in Minneapolis — and elsewhere — are feeling. On one storefront, dozens of sticky notes have been left by visitors, offering small messages. Some plead for peace, others for justice.
“Do Not Look Away,” read one on Friday evening.
“Empathy & Patience,” read another.
The street scene — running perhaps 40 feet long now — is demarcated by a feeble length of construction tape, but it makes its own border as the circle of offerings expands. Even a barricade set up to close some traffic has become part of the tribute: “Viva Alex!” someone has written on the orange-and-black sign.
On Friday, hours after thousands had marched noisily through downtown Minneapolis in a defiant protest of ICE, the memorial was quiet. Food and hot drinks were handed out by some Samaritans. Most who came were silent, though some sang softly.
Don Baker, 70, who lives in nearby Saint Louis Park, Minn., and works in insurance, says that the memorial — which he has visited three times — reminded him of New York after the 9/11 attacks.
“I remember feeling sad, anger, hate. Just lots and lots of mixed emotion,” Mr. Baker said. “And I had, Sunday night, the exact same feeling.”
There are small crosses and American flags, and many visitors have left testaments and letters offering prayers and thanks to a person whom they likely didn’t know.
“Alex Pretti was a very good man,” reads one. “Alex Jeffrey Pretti should be alive right now,” reads another. “Nurses are heroes, Alex was a superhero,” reads a third, with a hand drawn picture of a figure in a cape.
Mr. Pretti, who was carrying a licensed handgun, was slain after coming to the aid of another protester; the two agents who shot him are on leave and federal authorities say they are investigating the killing, which Mr. Trump and others in his administration have defended.
For those coming to the site, there seems to be no question about Mr. Pretti’s actions.
“Thank you for being brave, kind and standing up for us when it mattered most,” one note read. “Hopefully you’ll meet my daughter in the heavens.”
Poems both laud Mr. Pretti and decry the actions of authorities.
“One of these days/you’ll go to sleep,” one stanza read. “And wake up/forgetting what freedom means.”
Elsewhere there is gallows humor. “What would Jesus do?,” one homemade placard asks. “He would have been killed weeks ago.”
On a wall opposite the shooting site are two large posters, of Mr. Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, another Minnesota resident who was slain by an ICE agent on Jan. 7. “American Mom,” it reads above her photo. “ICU Nurse,” it reads above Mr. Pretti’s. Their captions, however, are the same: “Murdered by ICE.”
There is a refrain of worry, too, and resolve.
“We Are Under-Reacting,” reads a poster, mimicking the form and colors of an American flag.
“No More MN Nice,” reads another, referring to the Minnesota’s reputation as the capital of politeness.
Some deploy a dash of humor or hope. “I nominate the people of Minneapolis,” one reads, “For the next Nobel Peace Prize.”
Quotations seeking to comfort or explain are common. “Neither love nor terror makes one blind; Indifference makes one blind,” one sign says, quoting James Baldwin.
Some words were more plain.
“Damn, just damn,” one note read. “I’m so sorry for you, Alex. And for us.”
On Friday evening, Steve Anderson, 68, said that those gathering were grieving, letting the community reconnect and “carry on, adapt, survive, move on.”
“I don’t know anything about all that closure stuff,” Mr. Anderson said. “But this is big medicine.”
One handwritten letter left suggested that Mr. Pretti and this stretch of Nicollet Avenue would be permanently linked.
“Your spirit will remain here, at this very site, and in my heart, forever,” it read.
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15) Sherrill Urges New Jersey Residents to Record ICE Action on Their Phones
Governor Mikie Sherrill said the state would begin collecting images of federal immigration agents interacting with the public.
By Ana Ley, Jan. 31, 2026
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill appeared on “The Daily Show” on Wednesday with host Desi Lydic. Matt Wilson/Comedy Central
Mikie Sherrill, the newly inaugurated Democratic governor of New Jersey, said that her administration would soon begin collecting images of federal agents interacting with the public, cementing the state’s growing opposition to President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Ms. Sherrill, who was sworn in this month, made the announcement on Wednesday during an appearance on “The Daily Show,” urging residents to use their cellphones to record immigration officers. State officials said that they would soon create a portal that could be used to upload footage of the encounters. New Jersey is also planning to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from carrying out operations on state property.
“If you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out,” Ms. Sherrill said during the segment. “We want to know.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security criticized Ms. Sherrill’s announcement and said that federal officials had a duty to enforce the country’s laws.
“New Jersey will be less safe as a direct result of these policies,” the statement said. “Our partnerships with state and local law enforcement are key to removing criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and terrorists from American communities.
“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with us, that is when we have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” the statement continued.
Sean Higgins, a spokesman for Ms. Sherrill, said that the governor was trying to protect New Jersey residents from federal overreach. State officials will use the database to track the activity of federal agents as they work to deport more immigrants.
In neighboring New York, the attorney general, Letitia James, has created a similar portal to collect photos and videos of ICE officials to determine whether they were breaking the law during enforcement actions.
Ms. James set up the portal in October after more than 50 federal agents descended on a stretch of Canal Street that is famous for the African men and Chinese women who sell bootleg luxury merchandise to tourists. The raid caused outrage in the city, and several hundred protesters rallied at 26 Federal Plaza, the New York City headquarters of ICE.
After winning key races in November, Democrats in New Jersey tried to strengthen immigrant protections in a state with one of the highest percentages of immigrants in the country. This month, lawmakers passed three measures to reinforce existing protections and to make it more difficult for federal agents to target undocumented immigrants for deportation. But in his final hours as governor, Ms. Sherrill’s predecessor, Philip D. Murphy, vetoed two of the bills. The bill that Mr. Murphy did sign into law protects the rights of undocumented residents at schools, courthouses and health care facilities.
Immigration had been a divisive issue in the governor’s race, and before taking office, Ms. Sherrill had carefully avoided taking a clear position on the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive, a policy enacted in 2018 that limits the help that local law enforcement officers can offer to federal immigration agents. Her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, had vowed to repeal the directive as he tried to appeal to voters supportive of Mr. Trump’s efforts to curb illegal immigration.
The response to the actions of federal immigration officers has gained urgency since the killing of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen who was shot during an enforcement action in Minneapolis. Less than three weeks later, agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse.
In her television appearance, Ms. Sherrill said that agents have acted dangerously and with impunity, pointing to the killing of Ms. Good, a mother of three, and Mr. Pretti. She also said that federal officials have not been transparent about who they are arresting, at times detaining American citizens. Ms. Sherrill referred to federal immigration officials as a secret police force because many agents cover their faces while conducting raids and wear tactical gear without identifying insignia.
“We want documentation,” Ms. Sherrill said. “We are going to make sure we get it.”
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