By Prashant Shah
The United States, long lauded by politicians and pundits alike as a beacon of freedom and human rights, now stands revealed in chilling contrast: a nation whose enforcement of immigration laws has devolved into a tableau of indiscriminate violence, systemic abuse, and moral bankruptcy. In cities across the country—but most painfully in Minneapolis—the repeated killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by masked federal immigration agents have exposed a merciless apparatus that not only brutalizes immigrants but also terrorizes ordinary American citizens. This is not a distant tragedy; it is a crisis unfolding on America’s own streets, eroding trust in institutions that once claimed to protect liberty and justice for all. ICE and allied federal forces have become symbols not of security, but of fear—and the silence of those in power makes them complicit.
America’s immigration enforcement has crossed a line. In January 2026, Minneapolis was flooded with ICE and Border Patrol agents under the banner of “Operation Metro Surge,” a name that now reads like grim irony. What followed was not public safety but lethal chaos. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, a US citizen, was shot dead by an ICE agent. Federal authorities rushed to justify the killing, claiming she attempted to run over an officer. Video evidence and eyewitness accounts dismantled that narrative almost immediately. Her car was turning away when the shots were fired. The state killed her—and then lied about it.
Weeks later, history repeated itself. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, an ICU nurse who spent his career saving lives, was gunned down in the same city. Officials again reached for a familiar script: threat, weapon, justification. But the cameras told a different story. Pretti was recording federal agents with his phone. He was pepper-sprayed, forced to the ground, and shot multiple times while immobilized. This was not split-second self-defense. It was execution under the color of law.
These killings obliterate the convenient myth that ICE brutality affects only the undocumented. When a citizen nurse can be killed in broad daylight for filming officers, no one is safe. This is how police states function: force first, justification later—if at all.
And Minneapolis is not an exception. It is a warning. Over the past year, at least 32 people have died in ICE custody, the deadliest stretch in decades. Detainees have collapsed from untreated medical conditions. Elderly men and women have died behind bars for the crime of existing without papers. Santos Reyes Banegas died within hours of detention. Others died slowly, anonymously, forgotten by a system that treats human beings as disposable inventory.
Inside ICE detention centers, cruelty is policy. Overcrowding, denial of medical care, sleep deprivation, hunger, isolation—these are not allegations. They are documented realities. Facilities like Florida’s notorious detention centers have earned infamously nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” that would be unthinkable in a functioning democracy. Children, including a five-year-old boy, have been detained. Pregnant women have been neglected. Families have been shattered. This is not immigration enforcement; it is institutionalized abuse.
The public sees it. The protests erupting across the country—from Minneapolis to New York, Chicago to Los Angeles—are not fringe movements. They are mass expressions of moral revulsion. People are demanding accountability, transparency, and restraint. What they are getting instead is denial. The Department of Homeland Security continues to defend the indefensible, clinging to narratives that collapse under the weight of video evidence. This gaslighting only deepens public rage and confirms what many already believe: ICE operates above the law.
And where are the loud defenders of “law and order”? Where are the Republican lawmakers who sermonize endlessly about constitutional values? Largely silent. Their quiet is not accidental—it is strategic. As long as the victims are immigrants, protesters, or politically inconvenient civilians, brutality is tolerated. This silence is not neutrality. It is consent. It exposes a moral rot at the heart of modern conservative governance: power without responsibility, force without accountability.
Democratic lawmakers, to their credit, have begun to push back. Congressman Shri Thanedar’s Abolish ICE Act recognizes what millions already know—that this agency is structurally broken beyond reform. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi’s investigations into ICE raids and detention centers are attempts to shine light where secrecy has thrived. Senator Tammy Duckworth’s amendment threatening real consequences for failure to investigate use-of-force incidents is a rare example of urgency matching the moment.
State leaders have been forced to step in where federal leadership has failed. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s demand that ICE operations cease in his state after a second fatal shooting was not political theater—it was desperation. When federal agents repeatedly kill residents and then stonewall investigations, states are left to protect their people by any means available.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice and the FBI—institutions meant to safeguard the rule of law—have been accused of sidelining local authorities and centralizing control over investigations in ways that obscure transparency. This is how impunity is maintained: investigate yourself, delay endlessly, release nothing.
The United States cannot credibly lecture the world on human rights while running detention centers that degrade, terrorize, and kill. It cannot condemn authoritarian regimes abroad while tolerating execution-style shootings and child detention at home. This is not leadership. It is hypocrisy at its most grotesque.
Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti and 32 people died in ICE custody are not symbols—they were people. They had families, futures, dignity. They deserved to live. If America continues to excuse their deaths, it is not merely failing its ideals—it is abandoning them altogether. The choice is stark: accountability or collapse, reform or repression. History will not be generous to a nation that chose silence over justice.
(With the input of news reports)
