Thursday, January 29, 2026

The ICE Man Cometh

Sounds like the fantasy criticism of NYC in the’70’s. The concept of NYC as a hell hole prison was not sui generous in “Escape from New York.” It fit perfectly with popular opinion that in the near future NYC would only be fit as a federal prison.

These people are mentally ill.
If you want to round up immigrants, you gotta murder a few innocent citizens in the street and call ‘em “agitators.” I don’t make the rules. In secret. By the DHS. Without any outside oversight. How about unlawful acts BY law enforcement in the community?
CNN: How did we get to a place where we had Bovino having Border Patrol agents stopping citizens in the interior of the country, asking them for ID, creating this fear? Who made the decisions to allow this kind of operation to proceed?

HOMAN: The reason for the massive deployment is because of the threats and violence
Pretty sure the former caused the latter. And the latter is all coming from the former. Unless you consider whistles a deadly weapon. Whistles? O, the humanities!  Is this Administration smarter than a fourth grader? Questions with obvious intent. The first doesn’t raise the issue of due process or equal protection, as well as the 1st Amendment. The second is based on a false premise. Entering this country without permission is an administrative, not criminal, violation of law.

And Homan doesn’t say anything about complying with the 60+ federal court decisions in MN regarding the due process rights of those ICE/CBP has detained.

 Is Homan going to change this? Then he can piss off.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Now Maybe The 8th Circuit Will Pay Attention?

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FREE LIAM RAMOS

I blame the violent Minneapolis protesters for being mean to ICE.
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Lacking Faith Or Compassion

They’re only surprised he’s so delusional. How many people in Trump’s “retribution” campaign have “faced justice” so far? His DOJ has set a record for grand jury no bills; more AAG’s declared unqualified and improperly appointed than any administration in history (eliminating every case they touched); and plenty of jury nullifications. Obama will face justice? Not from this administration. Where some see generosity...
Jennings: I care about where Alex Pretti came from, what part of what group was he in? Was he part of any kind of a training organization? I believe that there are well organized, well trained and well-funded agitators who are showing up

West: Where you see professional agitators, I see courageous citizens who have a righteous indignation and a moral outrage
...others see cold commerce. All a matter of what you’re capable of seeing. Which goes to the quality of the observer. And how much training does it take to blow a whistle? Granted, some people need training to show compassion; and never learn. (And I don’t give a shit about Jennings. He’s paid to be a troll (irony!). And equally ironically, he was actually the rational and almost reasonable one in the opposition for this discussion. See? CNN does it for the clicks, and the audience share. Shame on us for clicking, so we can complain about it.) She would, too. I’ve seen the tape. If only we could get the Cabinet and VP to agree. Which is what bewilders Trump; and Jennings. Maybe this is the training Jennings is worried about. I can see this question of compassion is going to be part of the national discussion for awhile. It certainly separates out the sociopaths. That does, too.
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Like The Constitution, International Treaties Are Made To Be Trampled

I did not have “ICE breaking international law,” on my Bingo card.
In a statement released following the incident, the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry said an ICE agent “attempted to enter the consulate premises,” but “consulate officials immediately prevented” the officer from getting through the door, “thus ensuring the protection of Ecuadorians who were present at the time and activating emergency protocols.”

The ministry said it “immediately presented a note of protest” to the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, “so that acts of this nature are not repeated in any of Ecuador’s consular offices in the United States.”

Under international treaties, law enforcement officers of host nations are barred from entering foreign embassies and consulates without permission.

One eyewitness to the incident in Minneapolis, a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s violent mass deportation efforts, told Reuters that they saw ICE agents “going after two people in the street, and then those people went into the consulate and the officers tried to go in after them.”
Stephen Miller has yet to pronounce the proper protocol for this situation. Kristi Noem reasserts that she was only following orders.

And I had thought Mayor Frey was just pulling a wild example out of thin air:
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Might Makes Right

Or: Dieu et mon droit. I’m surprised Trump hasn’t fallen back on that one, yet. Well, yeah. 😈 I mean, it’s not like Trump has ever been guilty of fraud, or anything.
Marco Rubio: "The oil proceeds are being deposited into an account that ultimately will become a US Treasury blocked account here in the US. We will say 'this is what this money can be spent on.' They will submit to us a budget request -- 'we want to use the money on these things.' Part of the proceeds will go to fund an audit process."
“Trust us. Have we ever lied to you?” I know that’s going to reassure the world. They have completely lost the plot. 😈. Again.
"Deep" is relative. The first time I heard a Philip Glass composition, it was “Einstein on the Beach.” You wanna go deep, you got for some of his songs. Or his music for “Dracula,” or “La Belle et la Bete.”

Granted, I’m not up on his symphonic works.

Pretty sure I’ve got those I mentioned around here somewhere….

I know I’ve wandered into the wilderness on no clear path, but there’s just so much crunchy goodness this morning.
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The Light That Persists In The Darkness

My only comment on Mr. Server’s analysis is that social media didn’t rise up among the garden of Eden that is America and strangle our agency, or lead us to eat the forbidden fruit of tribalism.

Americans have always found it easy and even popular to hate the “other.” The “melting pot” finally melted Americans down into “white” and “non-white,” but the divisions on who are the “right” white, and who aren’t, remain. It’s just that from time to time the retrograde gets the upper hand.

Social media didn’t cause it, and social media isn’t making it worse. In fact, it can be fairly said right now social media is curing it. What is the algorithm that’s keeping videos and comments about Minneapolis and Renee Good and Alex Pretti front and center? Why are people marching in Cleveland and outraged in Iowa? And why hasn’t TikTok and Xitter controlled the outrage and led us all like cattle into MAGA agreement?

Maybe it’s because we have agency after all. And even a willingness to take responsibility…?
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“Are You Drunk?”

It’s a fair question.
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The America You Wake Up To

"I watched him die… then I watched them maneuver his body like a rag doll— only to discover it was because they wanted to count the bullet wounds and see how many they ‘got’, like he was a deer.”
Twitter won’t let me embed that one. All I can do is quote the caption. But we don’t need to indulge dark conspiracy theories about Twitter.

And we certainly don’t need any more discussions about the 2nd amendment. We need to be demanding justice.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Who’s Next? White House Watch

"Worst of the worst? Like five-year olds? Or like the murderers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were removed from the state to avoid prosecution? And is this protocol?
Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, said shortly after Pretti's death that he attended a Minneapolis protest over the weekend with the intent to "massacre agents." Axios reported on Tuesday that Miller forced Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to use similar talking points about Pretti, including the assertion that he was a "domestic terrorist."

Miller was forced to walk back those claims after the Trump administration faced significant pressure to reform its immigration regime. CNN's Kristen Holmes read his statement on "Erin Burnett OutFront," and described it as "stunning."

"He is essentially conceding or acknowledging that there might have been a breach of protocol when it comes to the shooting of Alex Petti," Holmes said. "And just a reminder, this is the same person who said that Pretti in the aftermath was a would-be assassin."

"This is what the statement says, and he lays this out very clearly," she continued. "He says that 'The White House provided clear guidance to DHS, that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota to force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disrupter teams, goes on to say, we are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.'"
Somebody doesn’t want to be responsible.
BREAKING via @CBSNews
: Notice sent to congressional officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection with details on fatal shooting of protester Alex Pretti says two federal immigration officials discharged their weapons, both Glocks. During the struggle, a Border Patrol yelled, "He’s got a gun!" multiple times. There's no mention of Pretti brandishing his gun prior to the shooting. Minutes before, at 9 a.m., a CBP officer was confronted by two female civilians blowing whistles. The women were ordered to move out of the Minneapolis roadway, but did not move. Pretti was pronounced dead at 9:32 a.m. Via @camiloreports
While in the White House, nothing changes.
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Meanwhile, The POTUS…

Trump would rather be the sole proprietor. It’s what he knows. 

TRUMP ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Is he talking about ICE? 🙄
Too bad it's not 2023. Does he mean like ICE?
You can go back to MAL. I understand they’re having a party tonight. And you can wish in one hand and piss in the other. Which one fills up faster? Unfortunately for Trump, he can’t be on the ballot anymore. He’s not running against Kamala this time. He’s running against Trump. And losing.
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Nothing To See Here

Q: is conservatism about bending the knee? Or is conservatism about requiring government to follow the rules?

Asking for a friend.

From BlueSky:
Explosive WaPo article Since July, DHS has fired shots at 16 people; has hit 10 , including 4 US citizens. 10 victims charged, but 4 cases later dismissed. No agents charged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/01/27/ice-border-patrol-shootings-immigration-trump/
Speaking of which:
Jake, I very much don't agree with that... If you want to lay blame at somebody's feet, it is squarely on Tim Walz in the Minnesota officials who have called ICE the modern day Gestapo, who have told ICE to get the f out of our city, who have encouraged their citizens to protest against ICE, to blow whistles against ICE, to organize Signal chats against ICE," Mizelle said. "You know, not the Signal chats thing directly, but all of that type of agitation has been heavily encouraged. And it's exactly that type of agitation that leads to unfortunate circumstances, like we saw with Alex Pretti.

That's when Tapper unleashed on [Chad] Mizelle — who at several points appeared to be tongue-tied and surprised by the fiery response.

"So you have an issue with the First Amendment?" Tapper shot back. "You don't think that people should be exercising their First Amendment rights to speak about policies that they don't like. You have more of a problem with that than you have with people killing American citizens. Did I get that right?"

Mizelle attempted to argue that people protesting were disobeying law enforcement and blowing whistles in their ears — and Tapper pushed back again on the claim.

"So you think that he should have been killed? It was all his fault?" Tapper asked.

"I didn't say that at all, Jake, but what you are trying to..." Mizelle said.

Tapper interjected and pointed out Mizelle's comments.

"You don't think that they have a First Amendment right to blow a whistle," Tapper responded. "And just FYI, in terms of not having your ID on you, that's like a negligible misdemeanor in Minnesota. That's not some major crime."

Tapper continued to challenge Mizelle, specifically over what Americans saw in the video footage compared to what the Trump administration and its DHS officials have claimed. Tapper called him out over the hypocrisy of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and how Republicans responded to that compared to the public response to ICE killings and aggressive tactics in Minnesota.

"That it seems to be that people in the Trump administration, and I guess that includes you, even though you're former member, think that there's one set of rules for Trump supporters and another set of rules for people who are not Trump supporters, like people who assault law enforcement, people who assault law enforcement," Tapper said. "On January 6th, that's fine. They should be given pardons. But people who assault law enforcement and I don't think Alex Pretti that describes him, that's not allowed. People who are MAGA supporters and carry guns with them to protests. That's fine. But Alex Pretti should not have had a gun on him even though he was a concealed weapon holder. And it's just like it doesn't make any sense to most Americans, because it's really just supposed to be one set of laws and one set of rules."
Jake Tapper’s balls drop. Film at 11.
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And Yet…

And back home: Trump is only concerned with what makes him look bad in headlines. On the other hand, the headlines still aren’t helping him: Is it wrong if I consider this 👇 good news? Fine. I’ll be wrong. From your lips to God’s ear. And the ears of the Democrats in Congress.
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FUBAR Down In Texas

 I have to rotate back to this because Gov. Abbott didn’t so much challenge Trump, as prove he’s on the White House party line; or at least got the newest memo:

Abbott made the comments on the Mark Davis Show on Monday, Jan 26, while speaking on the podcast about the Texas winter storm, the state's upcoming primaries and the protests in Minnesota. When asked by Davis whether he was "concerned that ICE's popularity ratings are going down," Abbott responded that the White House needs to recalibrate.

"They, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be reinstilled," Abbott said on the podcast. "That's not an easy task, especially under the current circumstances, but I know that they (the White House) are working on a game plan to make sure that they are going to ... recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to get what they wanted to do to begin with — and that is to remove people from the country."

Gov. Greg Abbott visited El Paso Wednesday, Jan. 14 to announce the reelection endorsement of the El Paso Municipal Police Officers' Association and other Borderland law enforcement agencies at the El Paso Municipal Police Officers' Association Memorial Hall.
No, he doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. That would be a triumph of voter laziness and indifference, not a ringing endorsement of Abbott’s governance. But I digress.
Abbott also said that the issues from Minnesota's deadly events stem from gubernatorial and mayoral leadership inciting violence.

"Texas actually ranks number one for ICE removals and yet we don't have fighting and protest like that ... and that's because we have leaders, whether that be the governor, or local mayors or other local leaders, no one's tried to incite violence here in the state of Texas."
I question that statistic, but there’s no doubt all the violence, across the country and inMinneapolis, is coming from ICE/CBP: And: And: And Abbott is still saying the best response is to bend the knee. Because, I suppose, this looks like violence to him?
Today, I knocked on ICE’s door.

“ICE is circling the block outside my school,” my friend, a teacher, texted me earlier today.


An elementary school.

After the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, I know I took a risk in tapping on ICE’s window. I urge you to please use caution when approaching ICE and do so at your own risk.


But I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to know who these masked, anonymous people are. ICE didn’t want to talk to me. They ran away rather than have a normal conversation.

Armed, masked individuals in large SUV’s with tinted windows, who refuse to identify themselves. What justifies this? These are not the “worst of the worst.” These are children, teachers, and their parents.
Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti's deaths are what violence looks like. And this: What did this little girl do, to deserve to die in ICE custody? I’d like to ask Gov. Abbott that. Even prisoners get medical care; but ICE detainees? Do they have no civil rights at all? That’s not “law and order.” That’s anarchy.

Not that Abbott is bothered by that.
There are mixed reviews of the impact of Abbott's Operation Lone Star efforts. [To obtain “operational control” of the border with Mexico.] The operation has fortified the border with concertina wire, restricted access to the Rio Grande and contributed to an increase in fatal crashes during law enforcement pursuits at the border.
So he’s still comfortable with the “right” people dying. Another reason he doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. But again, I digress….
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Kill 🧊 With 🔥

UPDATE: OFFICIAL ALERT. 🚨

​The German Foreign Office has just issued a formal travel warning for the US.

​The reason: Violent clashes with migration and security authorities (ICE) in Minneapolis and other cities. This is not a "narrative"—it is an official security alert for European citizens.

​When state authorities become a threat to allies and journalists, the "cards" have officially changed. 🇪🇺🇺🇸
Just a quick note about Bovino being moved and the other aesthetic politicoplasty the Trump administration is undertaking:

Don't be fooled. Don't get all Susan Collins-y about it. Trump hasn't learned his lesson. He never will.

The march to fascism may pause or slow down briefly, but it doesn't end until Trump and his minions are totally and completely gone. He must be impeached and removed.
What has unfolded in Minneapolis this past month betrays our most basic values as Americans. We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street. We are not a nation that allows our citizens to be brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights. We are not a nation that tramples the 4th Amendment and tolerates our neighbors being terrorized. The people of Minnesota have stood strong — helping community members in unimaginable circumstances, speaking out against injustice when they see it, and holding our government accountable to the people. Minnesotans have reminded us all what it is to be American, and they have suffered enough at the hands of this Administration. Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.

No single person can destroy what America stands for and believes in, not even a President, if we — all of America — stand up and speak out. We know who we are. It's time to show the world. More importantly, it's time to show ourselves.

Now, justice requires full, fair, and transparent investigations into the deaths of the two Americans who lost their lives in the city they called home. Jill and I are sending strength to the families and communities who love Alex Pretti and Renee Good as we all mourn their senseless deaths.
NEW: One of Pope Leo XIV’s top U.S. allies, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, is calling for the defunding of ICE.

Echoing the pope’s moral warnings, Tobin says the “lawless organization” is perpetuating a “machinery of death.”

This marks the first time a senior Church leader has explicitly called for ICE to be defunded. More are expected in the coming days.
Trump makes sounds he thinks other human beings would make. It’s rather like a gorilla trying to use sign language. Is anyone going to point out all the shooting in Minneapolis is coming from 🧊 and CBP?  SNAFU. 

To put this in context, an interview:
But at the end of the day, you're doing amazing work in this country, so that does beg the question," host Sid Rosenberg said. "We need to win in November. We need to win. ... Impeach, I hate that word. We need to win in November."

"Do you really feel, in your heart of hearts, we got a good shot?" the host asked.

"I think so," Trump replied. "Other than statistically, you know the numbers better than anybody, you report them as well as anybody, but statistically, when a president wins, they lose the midterms."

"I don't know why," he continued. "It doesn't make sense. Even if it's a successful president, and I don't think any presidents had a better first year than we've had."

Trump went on to praise himself for "the biggest tax cuts in history, biggest regulation cuts in history," and ending "eight wars."

"I do it almost by second nature," he crowed. "You know, I just, I know how to do it."
He repeats the same driveling nonsense over and over, for every occasion, as if he’s stuck in a time loop. If it’s not a sign of dementia, it’s certainly an example of gross incompetence. 

FUBAR.

And he’s a completely unreliable narrator: This is where the discussion ends. 👇 Kill it with 🔥.
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Monday, January 26, 2026

The Beat Goes On

I feel better already. Heads below the parapet don’t get shot off.
Jennings: For whatever you want to say about Stephen Miller, the local politicians have a responsibility to be more measured in their own rhetoric

Collins: Speaking of being measured in your rhetoric, the vice president also retweeted Stephen Miller, calling Alex Pretti an assassin, something that no one is even repeating today.
I knew there was an underlying reason. Is it too much to hope? The tell will be whether the GOP cuts 🧊 funding loose from the appropriations package; or tries to bash Democrats for shutting down the government to “defund ICE.” And lets the government shut down.
This, from @DavidAFrench : “One of the saddest things about the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti is that you could tell that neither of them seemed to know the danger until it was too late. They believed they were operating in some version of the normal state . . . where the police usually respond with discipline and restraint.”
There are reports Wiles and Miller are putting the blame for this on Noem and Lewandowski. Bovino may be out, Noem’s time may be up, Miller may even be isolated…but this is far, far from over.
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B-I-N-G-O

Raw Story:
It was not immediately clear why the body camera footage had not been released.
Sure it is. After all... That actually didn’t sound desperate. And then... But why would they do that? Oh… Besides: Somebody wants him erased from existence: You almost have to admire ruthlessness once in a while. And other people are now aware of that, and how it looks: Got to admit, that was never on my bingo card. There’s always someone who still hasn’t gotten the memo. Others did, and are scared shitless.

One wonders who's next.
It seems it’s finally come; but it’s come at too high a price.
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