It was the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti that punctured the bubble of the comfortable and launched Minneapolis to the top of international news. I understand why that is: the whiteness of the victims combined with unbelievably damning, stomach-churning video were something that a whole lot of people who’d been tuned out simply could not ignore. And those murders alone are so horrific that either one •should• be sufficient to pop the bubble of comfort — but they’re just the tip of an iceberg here.

2/

For many people who’d been inside that bubble of comfort, particularly at national news orgs, the story •started• with those two murders. They now seem to have a half-formed mental narrative that runs something like this:

❝
1. First the Trump administration started deporting a lot more people.
2. Then ICE murdered Good and Pretti.
3. Those two escalations caused widespread unrest in Minneapolis.
❞

That narrative is wrong.

3/

White people did not start protesting because ICE murdered Good and Pretti.

ICE murdered Good and Pretti •because• white people were protesting — and fighting back.

4/

People were jumping into action here in Minneapolis — droves of people, comfortable people, white people — not in mid-January, but in •early December•. (And the groundwork started much earlier!)

Community meetings overflowing. Signal groups exploding. Observer trainings filling day after day after day. Mutual aid networks popping up like mushrooms. On and on.

Why? Because we saw brown and Black neighbors being dragged from their cars, dragged from their homes, stalked, terrorized, •kidnapped• with barely the slimmest shadow of due process or legal oversight.

5/

Increased deportations would be bad enough. An increase in the kind of immigration nightmares you see in, say, “Mo” on Netflix would be awful already. But that’s not what we were seeing.

We were seeing anonymous masked thugs abducting people and disappearing them. We were seeing a secret police with blanket immunity. We were seeing a complete breakdown of the rule of law. We were seeing an authoritarian police state forming.

And we were expected not to care, because it was targeting dark-skinned people.

6/

That is the horror that spurred Minneapolis-St. Paul into action. That is the horror we’ve been fighting. That is the horror that Renee Good and Alex Pretti died fighting.

And it is the horror that is destroying countless lives of people whose names you do not know.

7/

I see that misguided narrative in the gutless business leaders who talk about “de-escalation” and “finding real solutions” — as if the problem is just that a few ICE murdered two people, not that all the ICE agents are an authoritarian secret police in the making.

I see that misguided narrative in the elected officials who decry ICE, but then talk about “better training” and “more oversight” — as if the secret police will become humane if they just get a few new rules to ignore and have to sit through a Powerpoint about them.

8/

I also see that misguided narrative in the people who still (but increasingly rarely) dredge up stats about how many Obama- and Biden-era deportations there were, thinking it’s some kind of mic drop, thinking that deportations are the whole of the evil here, an evil we can just tally up with a bean counter.

And to be clear: those deportations •were• inhumane and evil. US immigration has been morally intolerable since long before I was born. I need you to know that I know that when I tell you that this is a whole other level.

9/

I see some posts arguing that everything in Minneapolis is just more of the same that people of color have been living with forever, and white people are just waking up to it. I have never once heard that sentiment, however, from a BIPOC person who’s been living •in Minneapolis• for the last two months.

There is a crucial point there: this •is• precedented. It’s all precedented. But it’s not just more of the same.

10/

This •is• precedented:

DHS murdered Pretti and Good the exact same way police have been murdering Black people for generations. The ICE+CBP abduction patrols sure look a heck of a lot like the bounty hunters who operated in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The terror tactics of CBP and ICE bear an uncanny resemblance to the tactics of the KKK.

None of that is a coincidence. It’s the same historical thread. It’s basically the same people.

Precedented.

11/

Precedented, but not the same:

If ICE and CBP are basically the reincarnation of the KKK, it’s the KKK with a budget the size of Russia’s entire military.

Literally. In the literal sense of “literally.” The incoming ICE + CBP budget is ~$140 billion.[1] Russia’s military budget is ~$145 billion.

[2](If I’m misreading these numbers, please correct me.)

[1] appropriations.senate.gov/imo/…

[2] reuters.com/world/europe/russi…

12/

Not just more of the same.

Note that this eye-popping graph only includes ICE, and not CBP, which saw a similar explosion.

npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-56748…

13/

My neighbors definitely do not think this is more of the same. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at how many Somali and Latin-American restaurants were thriving in November and now are closed, or getting almost no business if they are taking the risk of staying open. Look at how many kids are staying home from school — regardless of legal status, just because of the color of their family’s skin. Look at how many families are living in houses filled with dirty laundry because they won’t even take the risk of leaving the house to go to the laundromat.

My neighbors are living in •terror•.

If it’s more of the same, why did all of this suddenly change in the last two months?

14/

All of what’s happening in Minneapolis is deeply rooted in US history. And in Minneapolis and St. Paul history specifically: Read about the Rondo neighborhood, for example. It’s no accident the the flagship lake in the City of Lakes was named after the vice president of the Confederacy until just a few years ago. Don’t get too excited about making saints of us all here.

It’s crucial for us to recognize that historical precedent. It’s also crucial for us to recognize the extreme new danger of the present moment.

15/

The KKK but with a budget the size of Russia’s military. Running mass detention camps.

Think about that for a minute.

Think about what it could mean, what it •already is•:

degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/in…

16/

Into the abyss

The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.

^{Degenerate Art}