In Cold Blood

An ICE agent has killed an American Citizen. A new era is upon us.

A US citizen was shot by a masked ICE agent in Minneapolis this morning

When the state points guns at its own people and pulls the trigger we have crossed the Rubicon. There is not turning back from this moment.

This morning in Minneapolis, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a 37-year-old American citizen. Video of the incident shows masked ICE officers approaching a Honda Pilot stopped on Portland Avenue near 34th Street. One officer yells at the woman behind the wheel: “Get out of the fucking car.” He tries to open her door. She backs up slowly, then pulls forward. An officer at the front of her vehicle fires three shots through the windshield. The SUV travels a short distance before crashing into a parked car.

Witnesses say she was there watching out for her immigrant neighbors. An ICE vehicle had gotten stuck in the snow. As more ICE vehicles arrived, bystanders blew whistles in protest. The woman positioned her car to block them. Witness Caitlin Callenson, who filmed the shooting, saw no one being detained before or after the killing.

The Department of Homeland Security immediately called her a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle” in “an act of domestic terrorism.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, after watching the video, called that narrative “bullshit.” He saw what witnesses saw—a woman driving away from armed agents when she was shot. Not toward them. Away.

I will not be posting the video but you will see it all over the internet if you haven’t already.

After the shots were fired, the driver was “completely slumped over in the vehicle,” said witness Emily Heller. Federal agents refused to let a man identifying himself as a physician examine her. Emergency medical technicians didn’t arrive for fifteen minutes. When protesters later blocked ICE vehicles trying to leave the scene, the officers fired noxious gas at close range, causing demonstrators and journalists to vomit in the street.

All of this happened the day after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem filmed herself observing ICE operations in Minneapolis—a propaganda performance that preceded a killing.

This is the pivotal moment. This is when we must decide what kind of country we are willing to become.

The Trump administration has deployed over 2,000 ICE and HSI agents to the Twin Cities in what they’re calling “the largest DHS operation ever.” They doubled ICE’s personnel nationwide in the past year, adding 12,000 new agents. They’ve given these agents extraordinary latitude to operate with impunity in American cities, treating neighborhoods as combat zones and citizens as enemy combatants. And now, inevitably, they’ve killed someone.

An American. On American soil. For watching out for her neighbors.

The parallel to Venezuela is not coincidental—it’s foundational. Last week, this administration sent a thousand soldiers and forty warships to intimidate Caracas. The message: might makes right. Values are negotiable. Due process is expendable. The rule of law is whatever those with guns say it is.

In Venezuela, they project force abroad. In Minneapolis, at home. The logic is identical. So is the contempt for human dignity. So is the willingness to use violence first and manufacture justifications later.

“She tried to run us over”—we’ve heard it before. Sometimes it’s true. Often it’s not. What matters is that in this administration, the benefit of the doubt always flows one direction: toward the people with badges and guns.

You will see it with your own eyes and you must judge for yourself. You are going to be lied to. You will be gaslit. You will be told that what you are watching is not true. You were told it was a peaceful demonstration. You were told we took over a country because they were drug dealers.

This woman’s death wasn’t an accident. It was the predictable outcome of deliberate policy. When you militarize immigration enforcement, when you send thousands of masked agents into cities to “wage” operations and create “chaos,” when you tell those agents their targets are “terrorists,” when you strip away oversight—people die. That’s the design. The objective.

The administration wants the world afraid. They want Americans afraid. They want us watching neighbors with suspicion instead of solidarity. They want us thinking twice before we bear witness, before we stand between armed agents and vulnerable people. They want us calculating whether speaking up is worth the risk of having guns pointed at us next.

This is how authoritarian power works. Not through grand declarations, but through incremental normalization of state violence. Through the slow erosion of boundaries separating police work from military occupation. Through transforming neighbors into threats and citizens into suspects.

We are watching the militarization of American streets in real time. Not in some abstract future, not in some other city. Here. Now. Today.

And the question before each of us is painfully simple: What will we do?

This isn’t about politics anymore. Not about Democrats or Republicans, immigration reform, or border policy. This is about whether we will permit our government to kill its own citizens in the streets and call it law enforcement.

This is about our souls. Our collective soul as a nation, and our individual souls as human beings. When the state kills someone for watching out for their neighbors, everyone who remains silent becomes complicit. Every rationalization, every “but what about,” every time we accept the official narrative without demanding evidence—we chip away at our own humanity.

Our freedom is at risk. Not metaphorically, but concretely. The freedom to witness. To document. To protect each other. To move through our cities without armed federal agents demanding compliance under threat of death. To speak truth.

A woman is dead in Minneapolis this morning because she tried to drive away from men with guns. That is the state of American freedom in 2026.

A country that militarizes its streets can’t expect anything other than violence against its own people.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is pushing for a local investigation—“the only way to ensure full transparency.” U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum has called on Secretary Noem to immediately stop ICE operations “to restore order and prevent further injuries.” Minneapolis Police officers, who aren’t supposed to assist with immigration enforcement, secured the “crime scene” while protesters hurled insults at them for enabling federal violence in their city.

The resistance is already happening. The question is whether the rest of us will join it.
This is the moment when all good people are called to stand. Not just to tweet outrage or share articles. To actually stand. To bear witness. To document. To organize. To demand accountability. To make the political cost of this violence so high that even those who want to wield it must think twice.

We stand not just for immigrants or for the dead woman whose name we don’t yet know. We stand for ourselves. For our children. For the kind of country we can still become if we refuse to accept what we’re becoming now.

The choice is ours. At least for the moment.

The window is closing.