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Transcript: A Dem Senator’s Harsh Takedown of Trump: “Breaking Point”
New Republic • Jan 27, 2026

Transcript: A Dem Senator’s Harsh Takedown of Trump: “Breaking Point”

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 27 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. As the political world absorbs the shocking news of Alex Pretti’s murder by federal agents in Minneapolis, President Trump is realizing that these horrors are becoming a major political problem. He just sent his border czar to Minnesota and even claimed he had a constructive conversation with Minnesota’s Democratic governor. Meanwhile, numerous reports show Republicans and even senior ICE officials panicking about the situation. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to say whether Trump backs officials who labeled Pretti a domestic terrorist. Democrats are now demanding major restrictions on the Department of Homeland Security and vowing to oppose funding if they don’t get them. Will Democrats hold the line? We’re talking today to Senator Chris Murphy, who has been a leader in calling for a serious congressional effort in restraining ICE. Senator Murphy, thanks so much for joining us.Senator Chris Murphy: Yeah, absolutely. Good to be with you. Sargent: So just to recap, after the horrific murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Democratic senators vowed not to fund the Department of Homeland Security without major, major restrictions on it—and maybe not to fund it at all.Democrats are debating what to demand from Republicans in the White House to restrict ICE. Senator, where are those discussions among Democrats right now?Murphy: Well, we’re working it through. I’ve been on the phone pretty constantly over the last three to four days trying to get consensus. Obviously, I have been of the mind for a while that it made no sense to fund a Department of Homeland Security that was out of control even before these last two murders. To me, it looks like it was a violation of our oath to hand billions of dollars to a Trump Department of Homeland Security that every single day is violating the law.I think it’s important for us to understand that this is not just about Minneapolis. I understand that the country is seized by the mayhem and the chaos there—the murder of American citizens. But in every state all across the country, there is a degree of terrorism happening. I was in Texas last week, Greg, and I spent the morning at an immigration court. This is a place where legal immigrants are showing up to apply for asylum. And what’s happening there is just fundamentally immoral.These immigrants are coming to the courtroom. They’re going in for their hearing. They’re advancing their case. And then they walk out of the door and they get disappeared by ICE, never to be seen again.So whatever reforms we construct have to apply not just to what’s happening on the ground in Minneapolis, although I think that should be our primary focus, but to the illegality that’s happening all over the country right now. Sargent: Well, let’s just back up and look at what’s happening with Trump right now. Trump just announced that he’s sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota. He claimed he had a constructive call with Governor Tim Walz.Meanwhile, we’re seeing Republicans splitting: Senator Bill Cassidy and others are calling for a full investigation. Some in the administration are leaking that the politics of this have turned against them. Anonymous ICE officials are leaking that there’s extreme frustration with DHS for blaming shooting victims.Senator, I think Trump wants to be seen as trying to get the situation under control amid Republican panic. How do you read it from your side?Murphy: I don’t know. I’m glad you’re optimistic. I mean, first of all, what a low bar we have for Republicans. So the story is that Republicans are splitting because they want a state investigation of a murder? That’s something that we never, ever argued about. Of course a state has a right to investigate a murder of its citizen. There is no sign that Republicans are breaking on anything that would actually have a substantive change in the way that ICE and DHS are operating.Tom Homan is not some avatar of restraint. He’s been lying through his teeth about what ICE has been doing since he was put on the job. He’s a fundamentally corrupt leader and somebody who has been cheerleading the brutality from the start.So I hope that things are going to change in Minneapolis for the sake of the citizens of that city. But I don’t want to put too much optimism in the rumblings we’ve heard out of the White House today. Let’s see for ourselves what happens on the ground.Sargent: I want to play some audio of Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. First, here she is refusing to say whether Trump endorses Stephen Miller’s description of Pretti as a domestic terrorist.Reporter (voiceover): Secretary Noem said Alex Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. Stephen Miller labeled Pretti a domestic terrorist. Does the president agree with them? Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): Look, as I’ve said, I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretti in that way. However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts in the investigation lead itself. Sargent: And here she basically says Homan will replace Greg Bovino as the point man in Minneapolis, essentially throwing Bovino under the bus. Reporter (voiceover): Is Gregory Bovino also going to remain in Minnesota overseeing his ICE operation? Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): Mr. Bovino is a wonderful man and he’s a great professional. He is going to very much continue to lead Customs and Border Patrol throughout and across the country. Mr. Homan will be the main point of contact on the ground in Minneapolis. Sargent: Senator, what’s your reaction to that? I think it’s very clear that if you’re putting Tom Homan in charge of your damage control, you’re not in a good spot—accepting your point about how we don’t really know how they view this and they’re completely out of control. I think that there’s some clear evidence now that Trump himself seems to recognize that there’s a real political problem here, especially in labeling these victims domestic terrorists.Murphy: And an assassin, right? I mean, within minutes of that shooting, they were labeling him a domestic terrorist and an assassin, when everyone could see with their own eyes exactly what happened, which was that he was exercising his First Amendment rights, that ICE and CBP approached him, and that he was murdered.And I think it’s just bone-chilling to the American public that our federal officials at the highest level lie to us and that Trump hasn’t cleared up what his top advisers have said. Karoline Leavitt had an opportunity there to say, Donald Trump does not believe that he’s a domestic terrorist. He does not believe that he was an assassin. But she won’t do that.And yes, their bench is Tom Homan. I mean, the problem is the only people that they have available to go in and try to manage Minneapolis are also fundamentally unprepared individuals who have no history of doing anything other than making a mess of people’s constitutional rights. So again, I’m hoping for de-escalation. It just doesn’t appear that by picking Tom Homan, they are paving a path to things being much better.Sargent: Well, let’s go back to Democrats for a sec. Sources are telling us that a group of Senate Democrats are kind of coalescing around some specifics: requiring warrants for arrests, requiring federal agents to identify themselves, requiring DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations into horrors like this one—that would be a real advance—and requiring Customs and Border Protection to stay confined to the border, as opposed to invading communities in the interior.Is that what Democrats are starting to coalesce around? Is there a group of Democrats who wants that as the basic bottom line?Murphy: Yeah, I’ve been a part of a bunch of different conversations over the last 48 hours in which we are—you’re trying to come up with a list of reforms that meets the moment. And what I mean by that is this: I understand that under the gun of a government shutdown, we are not going to be able to do a comprehensive immigration reform package.I also know that these reforms have to be substantive; it can’t just be window dressing. And so I think that the list that you articulated is consistent with those two goals. So yes, we have been talking about de-escalating the practices by requiring warrants for immigration arrests.You basically stop the most abusive practices, which are these street-by-street sweeps, the “show me your papers” practice, and the home-to-home confrontations—requiring identification and body cameras—again, that gets at accountability. A state investigation would at least clear up and allow for accountability for what happened in these crimes.And then getting CBP back to its mission. It’s trained to be at the border; it’s not trained to do crowd control or criminal investigations. I think that’s really important as well. Again, none of those reforms, even if they were all passed, would fundamentally ... address every single one of the abuses we are seeing. But it would make Minneapolis much more safe. It would make the cities in Texas that I visited much more safe. It would be a real, important set of reforms.Sargent: Well, can I ask, do you expect at the end of the day that that’s essentially what Democrats will demand in exchange for any funding for DHS? That basic package?Murphy: I can’t say that. That is certainly a package that unites a lot of Democrats. I would add to that list restrictions of ICE and CBP operating in sensitive places like churches and schools. But this full conversation with the caucus has really begun after Alex Pretti’s murder. And in the next 24 to 48 hours, you’ll hear what our consensus requests are.Now, of course, it requires Republicans to agree with us, but I think when people see what we’re asking for, they’ll see that it’s reasonable. It really is simply about getting ICE back to obeying the law. And I think there’ll be a real groundswell of support across the country behind the reasonable but impactful reforms that we’re going to be asking and demanding.Sargent: Well, so let’s look ahead. Do you expect the entire Democratic caucus to hold the line here? It’s sort of easy to see a handful of Democrats breaking away and supporting continued funding to DHS. How do you see that unfolding?And would you urge Senator Schumer to make sure that doesn’t happen? Would you urge Senator Schumer to keep the caucus united behind no funding unless you do this package of restrictions?Murphy: Well, I would be a fool to make a prediction. Obviously, we have a really diverse caucus. I think we held together very well when we were demanding an end to the plan to increase people’s health care premiums. But then in the end, we had a handful of Democrats that crossed over and ultimately agreed to something that was not sufficient to protect our citizens.I don’t know what’s going to happen this time around. I think right now my sense is that we are pretty united around, A., demanding that there be a separate standalone vote on the Department of Homeland Security budget and B., that there will be a conversation around significant restraints. Beyond that, I can’t predict the future.Sargent: Right. Just to clarify for people, what you’re referring to there is that Democrats want to advance other appropriations bills separate from DHS funding before the deadline. Do you expect Trump and Republicans to agree to that? I guess indications are that they won’t. If not, what happens then? You really need Democrats to hold the damn line here and refuse to budge until they get what they want in terms of DHS restrictions.Murphy: Well, I mean, that’s not an unreasonable request at all—especially after Alex Pretti’s murder—to simply say, Let’s isolate the budget that we have disagreements on and then we can pass those other budgets. Now, disclosure: I’m not a big fan of those other budgets.I don’t think the Department of Defense budget or the Department of Transportation budget actually have sufficient restraints against Trump’s illegality in those departments. But I submit that there are probably enough Democrats who will cross over and vote with Republicans to fund DOD, the State Department, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.So if [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune chooses to keep those all lumped together, then it’s his decision to shut down half of the federal government. I think Democrats would be prepared to vote on all those other budgets. Those departments would stay open and the fight would just be over the Department of Homeland Security. So if there’s a shutdown—a broad shutdown of many federal agencies—that’s the Republicans’ decision. That’s a Republican shutdown.Sargent: Right. And given the emergency that is clearly unfolding in places like Minneapolis, you would think that it would be an easy case for Democrats to make. They could just say, Look, we’re in the middle of an actual, serious emergency. Americans are getting killed by their own government. We’re not doing this. We’re not going to vote for a funding bill if you’re not going to have a real debate over what to do about this.Murphy: And listen, this is a moral moment. I know that sometimes Democrats are afraid or reluctant to engage in a fight on the issue of immigration or border security because I think we believe that we too consistently in the past have lost those fights.A., this president has lost any political advantage he has on the issue of immigration and border security, because people don’t believe anything that’s happening in Minneapolis has to do with border security. But, B., it’s not really an issue about immigration or border security any longer. It’s an issue of abuse of power. It’s an issue of humanity and morality.And that’s a fight that we can win, again, because we aren’t demanding broad immigration reform. We are simply saying: Stop murdering U.S. citizens. Stop purposefully evading the law. We want ICE to behave lawfully. And if they do that, they will likely get enough Democratic votes to pass this budget. That is absolutely a fight that we can win.Sargent: Right. And I think a lot of liberals worry that the Democratic leadership in the Senate and potentially maybe a small block of senators doesn’t see it the way you see it. And I think you’re absolutely right. I’d even go further and say I think Trump is losing the country on immigration itself.But so it would really be a catastrophe for the party at this point if senators broke and supported something insufficient in terms of restricting DHS. Would it not? I mean, you’ve been willing to sort of push the party in this kind of direction—it sure seems to me like it would be an absolute calamity for the party if something goes wrong and they don’t really get actual restrictions on DHS.Murphy: I do think that we’ve reached another one of these breaking points where the public is looking at a runaway democracy and they feel like maybe no one can save it. Well, Senate Democrats are in a position to save it, because they do need our votes to fund this illegality.And I think if people don’t see us fighting on something as existential as whether we condone the federal government murdering our own citizens, then there will be a mass withdrawal from politics altogether.I do think this is a critical moment. The whole country is seized by what they have seen—the statistics suggest that 80 to 90 percent of Americans have seen these videos—and they desperately want somebody to stand up for the rule of law. So yes, if we do not make a fight right now, I think it could result in just a massive withdrawal of participation in our civic life.And that is how democracies die. Democracies die not often simply by force—it would be totalitarian—but by citizens deciding that there’s no one that is willing to stand up and save them. And we have to show as the primary opposition party, Senate Democrats, that we are willing to stand up and fight for the ideals of this country. This is a pivotal, pivotal moment in the fight to save our democracy.Sargent: Right. And to be clear, you’re also talking here about the Democratic base. The Democratic base would just withdraw if they actually see their leaders in this situation not standing up.Murphy: Yeah. And again, this isn’t a hard moment for us to stand up because the people are with us. 60 to 70 percent of Americans don’t support what ICE is doing. People want to see us fight for our values right now. And yes, the result will be a lot of voters who tend to turn out in midterm elections just won’t.And a lot of Democratic activists who we rely on to protect our democracy—they’re the ones that show up at these national and local protests. I think many of them will also start to scratch their heads and say: Wait a second, if I’m alone out here and my national leaders aren’t willing to fight, then it’s not worth it.But let’s not be pessimistic about this. We’re talking today because Senate Democrats this weekend stood together and said: We are not going to fund the Department of Homeland Security without reforms. And so I am very hopeful. I am planning for my colleagues sticking together to demand those reforms.We’ve got to show strength. And I will say in the past, Republicans have just waited us out because they thought that we would break. And we have broken in the past. And this would be, I think, a very dangerous moment for us to do that because of the very specific moral question being put to the nation: Does the president of the United States get to murder American citizens? The answer to that question has to be no, but it likely will only be no if we’re in a position to win this fight.Sargent: Well, since you’ve been willing to push the party along these lines, I want to ask you if maybe we need something even bigger from the Democratic Party right now: some sort of unified statement, maybe by senators, House members, governors, attorneys general—in some form, just coalescing behind the idea that Trump’s paramilitary warfare against Americans and American cities just has to end.I think I’ve seen some people suggest a move by Democrats almost similar to Europe defending Greenland, which ended up humiliating Trump. Where are you on that? Would you like to see something even bigger at this point, given the existential nature of this moment? Murphy: Well, I’m up for anything. I guess I don’t put a lot of political stock in joint statements. I think the fight is in the Senate right now. I mean, we have real power. A statement is important. It’s a visual of what you stand for, but we actually hold power in the Senate.We can decide—not to shut down the entirety of these operations because, as you know, even if the Department of Homeland Security didn’t have appropriations funding, they still have $70 billion left over from the reconciliation bill—but it is not easy for them to transfer over all their operations from regular budgetary appropriations to money from the Big Beautiful Bill. It would slow them down. It would slow the illegality down. So I just think we should focus on this legislative moment in which we hold power; we can constrain their illegality. That probably is the most important thing: to show people that we’re not willing to back down, and that we aren’t powerless.Sargent: And do you anticipate that Democrats actually might hold the line if it comes to that—if there’s actually a protracted confrontation, a shutdown of some kind?Murphy: Well, I plan for success always. So I’m planning for success here. And listen, we’re going to be in constant contact with our colleagues. I’m sure there will be offers from Republicans or even offers from the White House to make paper changes, executive orders—things that might look different in Minneapolis to try to distract you from the fact that there’s still a dystopia happening in San Antonio.And so for those of us who know immigration law well, who have worked in and around immigration law and ICE enforcement for years, our job is to help our colleagues not fall for reforms that are paper-thin.Sargent: Senator Chris Murphy, best of luck at this mission. It’s pretty damn important. Thanks so much for coming on with us.Murphy: Thanks, man.

Democrats Have Much to Gain—and Nothing to Fear—From Attacking ICE
New Republic • Jan 27, 2026

Democrats Have Much to Gain—and Nothing to Fear—From Attacking ICE

When the Democrats were gun-shy early last year about criticizing President Trump’s ramp-up of immigrant raids and deportations, that approach was substantively bad but made sense electorally. The percentage of Americans who wanted immigration levels to decrease had jumped from 31 percent in 2021, at the start of President Biden’s tenure, to 55 percent in 2024. Similarly, even though support for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is at its highest level ever, only about 46 percent of Americans currently hold that stance. That number is likely lower in purple and red states, making it a somewhat dicey electoral position for the party. But overall, views on immigration and ICE are rapidly shifting leftward as more Americans recoil at the administration’s crackdown on cities like Minneapolis, an ICE agent’s killing of Renee Nicole Good, and the shooting of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection officers. There is a huge opportunity for Democrats to push for a new vision for immigration enforcement in America—basically anything short of abolishing ICE, and eventually that too. The party should lean into a coming fight over Department of Homeland Security funding (which expires on January 30) and demand that Trump withdraw ICE personnel from Minneapolis and never again deploy them to punish blue cities. Polling tells a very clear story—Americans have seen Trump’s immigration agenda, and they reject it. The number of Americans who want immigration levels dropped has plunged back to 30 percent, according to Gallup polling. Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while only 41 percent approve, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll. Fifty-seven percent disagree with how ICE is conducting its duties, compared to only 37 percent who agree, per YouGov. And all of these surveys were taken before Pretti’s killing, which drew condemnation from professional athletes and others who usually stay out of politics. “Especially on immigration, policy has moved far to the right, and far beyond what the public supports. Hence the huge swings,” says G. Elliott Morris, author of the excellent newsletter “Strength in Numbers.” These numbers should cause a shift in Democratic Party strategy. Post-2024, party leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffies generally settled on an economic-centric approach. So they largely sidestepped aggressive rhetoric or strong opposition as Trump defunded colleges, banned diversity and inclusion efforts, and increased immigration enforcement. They were willing to engage in a government shutdown last fall in part because it was very tied to an economic issue (health care subsidies for Obamacare).Schumer, after watching the 2025 electoral successes of New York’s Zohran Mamdani and other candidates who emphasized affordability, had recently doubled down on this strategy. And while I would have liked to see Democrats do more to try to limit Trump’s autocratic actions on noneconomic issues last year, this strategy made electoral sense. But with Trump’s standing on immigration issues now low and the public more open to immigration and wary of ICE, there is far less electoral risk in directly confronting the president on what had been one of his strongest issues. Democrats of course should still talk about economic issues, but immigration, and particularly immigration enforcement, is now in their favor electorally. And the substantive case has never been clearer. During Trump’s first term, the idea of abolishing ICE became prominent because the agency was conducting overly aggressive raids, often targeting people who were nonviolent. Now, not only are those raids even more extensive but Trump has turned ICE and CBP into a national police force under his command, deployed to cities that he dislikes and literally murdering people who object to his rule. It’s one of the most radical, authoritarian policies of his presidency.So what ICE changes should Democrats push for? I am not sure that national party leaders or figures in red or purple states should call for abolishing ICE right now. ICE abolition is ultimately the right policy. ICE has only existed since 2003. Abolishing the agency and relying on other parts of local, state, and federal governments to enforce immigration would work just fine. Abolishing ICE is substantially different from and easier than abolishing local police departments. But polls suggest the term abolish turns off some voters. And if the idea seems politically risky, the party can’t unify around it because swing-state members will keep objecting to it. But there is plenty short of abolition to do. Democrats should try to roll back the massive funding increases that ICE received last year. They should ban agents from wearing masks unless absolutely necessary. They should put restrictions on how ICE is deployed to cities. ICE immediately leaving Minneapolis must be a condition for any further DHS funding. The administration must allow local and state investigations of Good’s and Pretti’s killings and potentially charges filed against the officers. The quotas for arrests that ICE has set must be withdrawn. At the same time, abolishing ICE needs to be on the party’s long-term agenda. An agency that can be deployed as a fascist police force for future Republican presidents can’t remain in place. The next Democratic president must either outright eliminate ICE or downsize it so that the agency can never repeat its actions of 2025 again. So Democrats in more liberal areas should keep making that case and building support for getting rid of ICE. And it’s critical that Democrats running in purple and red states and more moderate presidential candidates focus on policies short of abolition that they can support now, while also not demonizing the idea of abolition in the future. We can’t afford a repeat of the defunding the police debate, which many center-left Democrats used as an opportunity not to emphasize their reform-but-not-defund proposals but to instead triangulate against the party’s left wing, praise the cops, and weaken the case for any reforms. There are some good signs from moderates on this issue. New York Representative Tom Suozzi, who usually revels in slamming the party’s left and was one of the seven Democrats who voted for increased DHS funding in the House last week, put out a fiery statement on Monday declaring, “President Trump must immediately end ‘Operation Metro Surge’ and ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis.” Even better was a recent remark from Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, who has established himself as a moderate voice in the party and often takes more conservative stands on immigration. Asked in a CNN interview about his opposition to abolishing ICE, Gallego used different language than his more progressive colleagues but didn’t bash their ideas. “ICE needs to be totally torn down. It has to be created in the image of what people want, right? And what does that look like?” he said, according to The Hill. “From my experience running in Arizona, in a very hard, hard state when it comes to immigration and immigration issues, people want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals, right, and focuses on criminals, and immigration enforcement that is actually focused on security, and not the goon squad that has come from Stephen Miller and Donald Trump.”“Totally torn down” may not be “abolish,” but it’s a call for major changes and leaves room for abolition down the line. But that’s in the long term. Right now, what Democrats need to avoid is meaningless symbolic actions. I hate Kristi Noem too, but she is not going to be impeached and removed from office. I worry that the Democrats calling for that are simply trying to duck the underlying issues. The debate over DHS funding gives the Democrats a chance to actually change ICE’s policies right now. They need to take it. There is no longer any electoral excuse not to.

The ICE Resistance That You’re Not Seeing
New Republic • Jan 27, 2026

The ICE Resistance That You’re Not Seeing

The people patrolling the streets of the Twin Cities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents call themselves “commuters.” That just about captures the minute-to-minute experience of being with them. I rode along with these commuters for a day, and the story that no one sees is that it was really no more exciting than any drive to and fro in a medium-size city on an endless kaleidoscoping loop of surface streets. The differences between their old daily routines and their new ones only make these drives more stultifying, not less.There’s an audio Signal chat happening in the background: alternating silence with strong Minnesota accents calling in the license plate numbers of SUVs. You can’t talk. You can’t listen to music. One veteran commuter tells me the experience is hell on his ADHD. “I can’t even listen to podcasts.”Drawing from a spreadsheet amassed from eyewitnesses to ICE activity, the database operator on the call identifies most of the license plates called in as negative or suspected. Others are confirmed not affiliated with the agency. But the indicators of “friendlies” are no longer reliable. ICE agents have marked cars with student-driver stickers and SpongeBob decals. There are rumors that they’re also adding comically stereotypical bumper stickers for various liberal causes. In one chat, someone says they saw an ICE agent disembark from a Subaru with a sticker that just said “queer.” A person I’m driving with laughs. “Can you imagine? Just ‘queer’?”I’ve only been granted access to these drives because friends from my old life here vouched for me. Others checked my social media history. One person consulted a mutual friend who happens to be a well-known science fiction author to make sure I was on the up-and-up. The drivers don’t know how they’re connected to the broader effort except through the crowdsourced database. The Signal chat reorganizes daily. One of the people I drive with, a lawyer, uses his real first name because he suspects attempts at operational security are well meaning but ultimately futile. And indeed, commuters share stories of being approached by ICE agents and called by name, or of starting to follow a car only to be driven past their own homes.Other volunteers say strangers have approached them as they watch over corners and schools—people dressed in liberal mufti rather than the drab ICE camo—saying they’re with Indivisible, or that they just want to help, asking who to talk to about getting involved. There’s now been news coverage of such infiltrations, apparently so easy someone at the Free Press managed to do it.Of course, the commuters and corner watchers organizing this are not experts at subterfuge. As one person told me, “I think we’ve decided that between scale and perfect op-sec, we’ll go with volume.”The code names are the only place where you find a thread of underplayed Midwest surrealism, which put a T-Rex sculpture in the background of the Renee Nicole Good murder footage. I cannot repeat those code names verbatim, but they included references to the state fair, Star Wars, Firefly, sports teams, and phrases that rhymed with Fuck ICE. I suppose it’s OK to reveal there were several variations on Mom.We drove through Home Depot and Menards parking lots, passing businesses with signs indicating that ICE was not welcome, communicated on a politeness scale from “Customers only” to “Fuck off, ICE.” My chauffeurs pointed out the sites along the way.“That’s where ICE dragged a pregnant woman through the snow.”“That’s where ICE pulled two men out and handcuffed them face down in the parking lot.”“That’s the apartment building where they busted down a door.”I was on my way back to a friend’s house when a driver said, “And over there, that’s where they killed Renee Nicole Good. Do you want to drive by George Floyd Square? It’s only a couple blocks south from here.” ICE murdered Alex Pretti the morning I left town; that was a few minutes directly north.Observers have transmitted so much violence from Minneapolis, so much horror flooding our phones. But driving through these now-quiet neighborhoods—my home for a decade—broke me as much as anything. The mundanity. The way life had to move on.Crime scenes, every one of those places, but too many to tape off individually, too many to meaningfully count as crime scenes. A crime scene that’s a life-size map of the world.Ask any survivor of domestic abuse: Physical violence is just the punctuation at the end of the sentence. What makes life unbearable is that it could happen at any moment. The thrum of expectant fear is what abusers are after. Hypervigilance is the real punishment. It exhausts the will.Inside the car, the heater is running and the windshield wipers keep a metronome. It would lull you, except the ice turns the streets to cobblestones. You become very aware of how many dark SUVs there are in the world.Once, a vehicle passing by us was confirmed. We do a gentle three-point turn to follow, losing it. Or, once, we spotted and confirmed an SUV that we followed only to get stuck behind a stoplight. A driver tells me that he once tailed a confirmed car for a few miles then it sped up and changed over three lanes of traffic to exit, “And I wasn’t going to do that.” Another commuter tells me later that reckless driving can be a way to distinguish ICE vehicles but that natives can be careless, too. With just a touch of the judgment that Minneapolians have shucked, she says, “Maybe this will inspire some of us to become better drivers ourselves.”We hear whistles and shouts a block away and drive over. People in high-visibility vests are running toward the sound as well, and I put my phone to the cold glass to record. By the time we get to where the sound seemed to be coming from, people are walking away and there’s no obvious center of whatever happened.There’s an illicit thrill to spotting a vehicle, because all that edginess might finally get some release. But at the same time, when one participant volunteered to go to a site where a confirmed ICE truck had been spotted and said, “Just let them try something, those fucks,” the person I was with looked over at me and raised his eyebrows. It would be very un-Minnesotan to scold. The point of the interventions is not confrontation.Yes, these folks are willing to put their bodies on the line to save their neighbors. But they know they’re only in danger individually. As a crowd, they’re indestructible. You hear it almost constantly: “I don’t mean to be flip about this,” one commuter said, “but they can’t shoot us all.”The instances of physical violence only goose the number of people willing to be targets. Says Chris, “Every time they attack us, another round of volunteers comes in. We refuse to be cowed.”One of the chauffeurs I’m with had previously had a brush with real trouble: altercations in parking lots, ICE goons getting out and surrounding his car, everything just shy of cinematic action. He says, “It’s incredibly boring until someone points a gun at your face.”I tell him I must be a good-luck charm. It’s been so quiet. He says, “Every hour we spend driving around, making them change course or drive away, it’s another hour they’re not dragging people out of their homes.”The winters have taught Minnesotans to withstand the grind of watchfulness. That’s what it takes to make roads and sidewalks safe, even when they look OK. And the persistence of hockey moms undergirds it all: They are prepared with phone trees, scheduling, car pools.So much of the resistance is either carried out by women or coded as women’s work—unheralded, boring, unglamorous, and mostly undocumented. “You’re in the middle of resisting fascism, and someone still needs to do laundry,” Chris points out. A single father and a Parent-Teacher Association president, he stepped forward early on to do admin and dispatch, sometimes pulling four-, five-, six-hour shifts.“I was eating nothing but takeout. I said something, and now I’ve got a full fridge.” The grocery deliveries to immigrant families are vital. What keeps those deliveries happening are the deliveries to the people making deliveries. It’s mutual aid all the way down.Someone even volunteered to do the other volunteers’ day jobs, the work-work—formatting spreadsheets, answering emails. She volunteered to sit at a desk; she has young kids and doesn’t want to leave them alone. So she offered what she could: clerical skills.When I asked to talk to more of those folks—the ones doing the paperwork and laundry—I got polite refusals. Via Signal, someone apologized. “We’re all really scared right now.” Others were more self-effacing. Not sure if they’d make a good interview. Other people were doing so much more.Women’s work. Lightly frustrating in its humility. Labor without spectacle, mostly unnoticed except to each other. Detection can only bring wrath. As my friend Dara pointed out, the people hiding Jews in Nazi Germany couldn’t risk even a hint of noncompliance in any other aspect of their lives. This is what it means to have an invisible job: You’ll only get noticed if you make a mistake.According to the Unidos MN, tens of thousands in Minnesota have gone through constitutional observer training since the ICE occupation started. I know for sure there are people below the surface of that. “For every person you see out there, there are ten more you’ll never see,” one person told me. Credit is due to those who organized after George Floyd, and to those who grieved political inaction after the Annunciation Catholic School shooting and the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her family. This scale of organization could not have happened without those infrastructures in place. One activist wondered if more people have flocked to the ICE resistance because it’s a task that feels—in spite of everything—like it might have an end. It resembles national disaster relief more than a political movement, in how visible the uppermost layers are and how everyone wants to contribute something, and how easy it is to do so.You don’t have to reach out and sign up anywhere. It’s almost the opposite of recruitment, in the traditional sense. ICE is so pervasive, and the conflicts are happening in both the places you’d expect and the places you’d never guess, that the line between “activist” and “person who lives here” gets erased in real time. They’ve made it stupid-easy to get involved. Just wearing a whistle can put you in the middle of it.I was at the march downtown the day of the citywide strike. I made my way to the front, taking snaps of signs and getting in a question or two. It was loud and could have been louder but for everyone trying to talk and scream through their scarves. The scale of it became clear only from the skyway above the street. Dozens of us watched, rapt, as the frozen river of people oozed slowly through the streets. It was so cold that trees were in danger of exploding a little further north, but there were 50,000 people there.It was a powerful message of resilience. But what I’m trying to tell you is that there are no ready-made visuals to represent the larger fight. A cell phone? A spreadsheet? The icon for the Signal app? Movements have always been built on administration, on paperwork, on the jujitsu of competing legalese. The backbone of the Civil Rights Movement was SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We remember the nonviolent part, but we forget the committee. There were a lot of mimeographs to be made between showdowns. There are always invisible gears in the machinery of justice; I just didn’t expect them to be so secret.When I was being driven around the Cities in lightly falling, fluffy snow, the whole scene was rendered in real-life grayscale. I had a shameful, selfish thought: This is the opposite of a color lead. My editor sent me all the way out here for this?I thought of all the useless video I had taken, and then of the terabytes more of data on a thousand other phones. All the interactions that didn’t escalate or even turn out to be ICE action. All those videos are evidence of the terror too—evidence of the wearying watchfulness that an occupation wrests from people. How occupations colonize memory as much as space.The shots of ICE agents leaving a scene, of storefronts that aren’t blasted through, of apartments whose doors remain whole—all of that is abundant but unaccessible proof of what can be accomplished without leadership, just community and will. I thought of all the people, recording all these uneventful videos. If the world is just, the videos will be deleted someday, making room for pictures of grandchildren and lakeside sunsets. And the commuters’ memories of this time will only make the images sweeter, because the person taking them will think of the moments just like those that the disappeared—and Renee Nicole Good, and now Alex Pretti—didn’t live to see.

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