by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis | Jan 26, 2026 | Article, ICE, Minneapolis, Opinion, Police Accountability Report, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing
After the extrajudicial killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, federal officials were quick to put the blame on him. Pretti was accused of planning a “massacre” of cops, while videos depict him filming and rendering aid to a woman before he was shot in the back.
This has been the Trump administration’s playbook since federal agents occupied Minneapolis: A controversial use of force, then false accusations blaming the victim without evidence or investigation.
Renee Good suffered the same fate after she was killed by an ICE agent earlier this month. Kristi Noem called her a domestic terrorist just hours after she was gunned down. Again, an accusation without evidence.
Shortly after the killing of Good, we interviewed the MAGA conservative Rep. Chip Roy on the steps of the US Capitol about ICE’s actions.
His answers were revealing and worth revisiting in light of the continued use of the victim-blaming playbook, if only to understand what all this rhetorical posturing implies about the continuing presence of ICE in American cities.
Roy is one of the most conservative members of Congress. He’s also a MAGA stalwart. When we asked him if Renee Good’s killing was justified, he initially stuck to blaming the victim.
“I think she put herself in a bad position by interfering with law enforcement and by hitting the gas in a car with a law enforcement officer right in front of her. That’s what I think,” Roy responded.
Then, as the interview progressed, his defense of ICE shifted.
“Do we talk about the ICE officer who was dragged down the street in a car? Do we talk about the ICE officer who had a steel
by Julia Conley | Jan 26, 2026 | Article, Minneapolis, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 25, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As Minnesota residents and people across the US were reeling from the killing of protester Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents on Saturday—the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in the city in less than three weeks—US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz, telling him it is in his power to “restore the rule of law” in his state.
One suggestion the attorney general gave amounted to a “shakedown,” said US Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and had nothing to do with the Trump administration’s persistent claims that immigrants have caused a crisis in Minnesota. Bondi demanded the Democratic governor turn over voter rolls for the state, as she has called on all 50 states and Washington, DC to do, prompting legal challenges from voting rights groups and voters.
Bondi wrote that Walz must allow the Department of Justice (DOJ) to access voter rolls to “confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”
“Fulfilling this commonsense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law,” she wrote.
Gallego accused the DOJ of “using fear to get their hands on voter information.”
Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying hand over the voter rolls, or ICE won’t back off. That’s a shakedown. They’re using fear to get their hands on voter information. In America, you don’t get to strong-arm your way into our elections. pic.twitter.com/IbJc3ufl9k— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) January 25, 2026
The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit last September against Minnesota and several other Democrat-governed states to demand personal information for all voters, including driver’s license numbers
by Jaclynn Ashly | Jan 23, 2026 | Article, Climate Crisis, Iraq, Politics and Movements: International
In the central Iraqi city of Fallujah, the joy of pregnancy is overshadowed by dread. For many families, the anticipation of new life is replaced by the fear of what might be born into their arms. More than 20 years after the second major US assault on Fallujah in November 2004, its toxic legacy still seeps into the city’s wombs.
For about six weeks, US forces, backed by a British battalion, waged one of the Iraq War’s most ferocious campaigns, saturating the city with white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions. The assault leveled neighborhoods and killed hundreds of civilians.
Today, researchers warn that toxic remnants remain embedded in Fallujah’s soil, water, air, and the bloodstreams of its residents. Each year, newborns bear the silent inheritance of war: cancers, twisted limbs, missing organs, and severe congenital abnormalities.
“I just want to be like other kids,” says 12-year-old Fatema Ahmed, who was born with debilitating deformities in her arms and legs. “I feel embarrassed to be different like this.” Sitting in her Fallujah home, she stares at the floor, shyly swinging her legs.
Fatema’s mother was likely exposed to toxic material from the US assault, according to the family’s doctor. Fatema is one of scores of children in Fallujah whose bodies carry the scars of a war they never lived through.
The war’s toll is inscribed on Fatema’s body. Born with severe deformities in her arms and legs, she embodies Fallujah’s toxic legacy—one of many children afflicted by conditions that families and experts trace to heavy metals left behind after the 2004 US assaults. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
A close-up of Fatema’s arm deformities,
by Shane Burley | Jan 22, 2026 | Article, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Portland, Prisons and Policing
While protests have been continuous in Portland, Oregon—and around much of the country—over the last year, crowds have flooded city streets as a reaction to shocking moments of ICE violence. On Wednesday, January 7, ICE agents shot and killed a Minneapolis legal observer, Renee Good. The community response was swift as protests filled the icy streets of the Twin Cities, and Mayor Jacob Frey vocally demanded ICE “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” The federal government’s response was to have the FBI take over the investigation of the shooting, blocking local and state law enforcement. The White House blamed Good’s death on a “left-wing conspiracy” and lied about the events that took place.
The following day, two people were shot by ICE officers in their vehicle near Adventist Health hospital in the southeast side of Portland. ICE claims, like the officers did in Minneapolis, that the two alleged Venezuelan migrants had “weaponized their vehicle.” After being shot the two fled in their vehicle three miles to an apartment complex parking lot where they ultimately made an emergency medical call and were subsequently arrested and sent to separate critical care hospitals. DHS then went to social media to post photos of the alleged arrestees, saying, without providing evidence, that they were associates of the Tren de Aragua gang and involved in sex crimes.
“This is Oregon. We do not need you. You’re not welcome. And you need to get the hell out of our community,” said Oregon State Senator Casey Jama, himself a former refugee from Somalia, at a press conference just hours after the shooting.
Within hours, organizations called for demonstrations. Labor unions
by Adam Johnson | Jan 22, 2026 | Article, ICE, Minneapolis, Opinion, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing
In response to the January 7 ICE murder of Renee Good and the broader, untenable ICE terror campaign Trump unleashed on Minneapolis—and other major US cities—congressional Democrats are under increasing grassroots pressure to do something, anything, to fight back against the lawlessness and brazen violence of Trump’s deportation machine.
Democratic leadership, who yesterday refused to fund an upcoming DHS bill because it did not “do enough to rein in ICE,” have spent the past few weeks establishing their line in the sand. And what they appear to have settled on is a typical suite of pseudo-reforms, cosmetic PR and HR tweaks, body-worn cameras, and more money for “training,” all of which will do nothing to meaningfully alter the calculus for the Trump White House or ICE. Democrats are running through the motions of opposition in exchange for “guardrails” that will do little to nothing to address the central issues, while refusing to meaningfully tackle the source of ICE’s power—namely, its immunity from prosecution and obscene funding levels. Put another way: Democrats are responding to the killing of Renee Good by pushing reforms that would have done nothing to prevent the killing of Renee Good, and thus will do nothing to prevent future killings of other Renee Goods.
Democrats are running through the motions of opposition in exchange for “guardrails” that will do little to nothing to address the central issues, while refusing to meaningfully tackle the source of ICE’s power—namely, its immunity from prosecution and obscene funding levels.
The exact prescriptions offered by Democrats are difficult to pin down. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in particular, has remained vague about what his demands
by Sharon Zhang | Jan 21, 2026 | Article, Canada, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
