Yves here. It’s appalling to see not just persistent ICE jack-bootery but also far too many knee-jerk defenses of its lawlessness in the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. And if you check Twitter on the Portland shootings, you’ll find more ritual denunciations. Nevertheless, there are also some informative takes”:
If the man and woman who were shot were wanted criminals, why were they allowed to drive away to an apartment complex to ask for help and be picked up by Portland police? Why weren’t they followed? Where was ICE after the shooting? https://t.co/Xo68rPrbuS pic.twitter.com/yEKv81R0y8
— Hotspur’s Daughter (@nanabeads) January 9, 2026
🚨BREAKING: Portland police says the two people shot by Customs and Border Protection called the police themselves after being shot by federal agents — and the police provided medical assistance.
Both people are in the hospital and their condition is unknown. pic.twitter.com/Q4zTGTDxYs
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) January 9, 2026
In response to the Border Patrol shooting of 2 people in Portland today:
Oregon Congresswoman Janelle Bynum released a statement saying “Don’t fuck with us.” 👇 pic.twitter.com/xHrZlsdkve— Anarie Whit (@anarie_wit) January 9, 2026
A key point with the Minneapolis murder-by-ICE that seems to be generally in play (for instance, the use of masks and not presenting badges, statements that they are not subject to normal police accountability):
Analysis of what happened from a retired FBI 30 year veteran pic.twitter.com/2daFm5zNLY
— MAGA Cult Slayer🦅🇺🇸 (@MAGACult2) January 8, 2026
And at least as of now, protests are kicking off:
🔊 Nationwide protests erupt after ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, in Minneapolis. Listen on the Reuters World News podcast https://t.co/Gb7xXsqHal pic.twitter.com/GiDe2N3bYk
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 9, 2026
France has such a strong history of taking to the streets because demonstrations were effective, particularly before the days under the Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empire. Then, Baron Haussman led a massive redesign of Paris, carving out what were to be grandes boulevards. Modern accounts oddly sanitize the main reason for this massive urban project: better police control of the city. Rabbits’ warrens of narrow streets aid defenders.
We Americans lack such traditions and see protestors as the enemy of the propertied classes, as in a major threat to order, as opposed to defenders of liberties. It seems unlikely geographically separated urban centers can make a stand against ICE, but the quick succession of ICE shootings in different cities are leading to a serious try.
By Jake Jackson, a staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
The mayor of Portland, Oregon told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leave the city after federal agents shot and wounded two people on Thursday, just a day after an ICE agent killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
“We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement. “Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences. As mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed.”
The shooting took place Thursday afternoon during what the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) described as a “targeted vehicle stop” conducted by Border Patrol agents. Echoing its narrative about the deadly Minneapolis shooting—which was contradicted by video footage from the scene—DHS said the driver “weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents.”
But Wilson said Thursday that the Trump administration could not be trusted to provide an accurate account of events or conduct an honest investigation.
“We know what the federal government says happened here,” said Wilson. “There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time has long passed.”
The man and woman shot by Border Patrol agents were reportedly married, and both were taken to a nearby hospital. Neither their identities nor their conditions were immediately made public.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said late Thursday that his office was investigating the shooting to determine “whether any federal officer acted outside the scope of their lawful authority.”
“We have been clear about our concerns with the excessive use of force by federal agents in Portland, and today’s incident only heightens the need for transparency and accountability,” said Rayfield. “Oregonians deserve clear answers when people are injured in their neighborhoods.”
The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were hardly the first time federal immigration officers have used deadly force during US President Donald Trump’s lawless mass deportation campaign.
The Marshall Project noted earlier this week that “federal officers have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months.”
“Agents have also shot other people,” The Marshall Project added. “The Trace, the nonprofit news organization covering gun violence, has counted more than a dozen such shootings. In some cases, the victims survived, including a woman who suffered multiple bullet wounds in an incident in Chicago in October. The Border Patrol officer who shot her appeared to brag about it in a text message, later presented in court evidence. The message reportedly read, ‘I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.’”
You know what struck me as I’ve been watching videos of ICE agents accosting this or that individual in the streets of this or that city? Even before the shooting in Minnesota, which, by the way, media in Russia and Iran have immediately posted up the full video of the incident with you can imagine what sort of editorial comments. The world is watching, in other words…
…but what struck me is just how similar some of these ICE vids are to the “busification” videos out of Ukraine, where masked and armed agents suddenly jump a rando in the middle of the street and drag him off. Except there, they drag him off to be thrown into the meatgrinder; here, it’s presumably an ICE prison and, possibly, a deportation flight. But if you removed the sound and any other identifiers like street signs or whatnot, one might not be able to tell which is ICE, and which is Ukrainian military recruiters.
Funny that.
Notice the statement from Noam that sounded like the kind of “it’s all Hamas’s fault” language we hear from the IDF. She said something like, “it’s the fault of the violent protestors that non-violent protestors got shot”
The USofA has been spreading this kind of violent behaviour around the world for decades, it seems that it is coming back home. You reap what you sow.
Yes, with the imperial footprint shrinking, all those brutal methods of control are re-shored.
If the MAGA folks wanted to escalate, they could hardly have picked a better target than Portland, the ‘Antifa HQ and one of the few American cities that will reliably put up Paris-sized protests. I worry that MAGA has gamed out how violence in either direction works to their benefit, with the other side having no effective counter. But then I also worry that we’re told that half of the Butterball Brigade are still in ‘training’, and lord knows what escalation will look like when they hit the streets.
These are not smart people, so I wouldn’t give them too much credit.
I certainly think they want to provoke, but I doubt they’ve given any serious thought to what the consequences might be.
I wouldn’t be so flippant on this. Sure Trump is buffoonish and some of his acolytes BUT those lurking behind the scenes as well as Miller are very intelligent and very deliberate in their ways.
tl;dr – avoid thinking the Trump administration is all buffoonery
I’m with Janeway here. I used to think Trump et al were too stupid to do much serious damage. But I no longer feel that way. The chaos in the US and around the world is scary and dangerous. It hurts me to think of all the people so willing to let all of this happen because they are comfortable and making money. I just read a novel set in Victorian London and the descriptions of the homeless and destitute in the streets seemed to me to be descriptions of our cities today. Pretty soon those Victorian poorhouses are going to seem like a luxury. How is it that we are no better and perhaps worse than we were in the 1800s?
Minneapolis perhaps?
I for one do suspect a deliberate escalation. The Minneapolis and Portland incidents both involve shooting suspects within vehicles. I wonder what recent training ICE agents might have taken.
The revelation that the ICE shooter in Minneapolis was an Iraq war veteran gives me bigly vibes of the Syrian civil war and the mass recruiting of jihadi militants (themselves also Iraq war veterans). There the goal was general chaos, and I suspect the same for the US also. Giddy plots to seize power and crack down on the population, all on the back of US taxpayer funding. It is par for the course abroad, therefore why not at home? The administration is doing nothing to disabuse me of these notions.
At some point will you get people shooting back?
In my idle moments I wonder about what kind of event could kickstart a US civil war. These ICE shootings certainly meet all the criteria.
ICE officers are the closest thing we have in the US to the kind of thuggish colonial police you’d get somewhere like Algeria.
If people start shooting back we’re gonna start seeing those night raids that took place in Afghanistan and Iraq happening here. This can all go pear-shaped in so many ways.
Or we’ll get action like The Siege (1998) where the military locks down Manhattan or whatever. That movie was hilariously prescient about the kind of overreact we’d get from a domestic terrorist attack, although with 9/11 it was more focused abroad, with the surveillance state profiling muslims in New York and New Jersey afterwards.
Kickstart a 2nd American Revolution is what I think you mean.
Don’t wish that Civil War shit on us, bro
“At some point will you get people shooting back?”
If things continue to escalate, seems likely. Back in 2020 there was plenty of violence between between left and right, including shootings. Now I guess you could say the right faction is manifested in ICE, and the worse things get, I think the barrier of being a federal agent will matter less and less.
David Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He studies civil wars for a living. Here is his 2025 update on Civil War Comes to the West, Part II: Strategic Realities. His set of criteria may be clarifying.
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_your_ground
The masking and refusal to ID will get some (putative) ICE people shot when kidnapping people.
…which will then be used as pretext for martial law, insurrection act and other escalations.
vance saying theyre gonna be going door to door harshed my mellow this early morning.
unsure about the logistics of that,lol.
its like all that tacoing stripped the teeth off the reverse gear, and theyre too embarrassed to tell anybody.
…and i look out at the world from way the hell out here, and aside from the distant highway, and those damned airliners…it would be easy to forget that theres a country, out beyond the cattleguard.
but ive been “on a list”…and am still outspoken when confronted with bullshit….ive even been strangled for this.
and know full well that my obscurity and isolation and lack of all that much of a footprint will not exempt me.
so i cleaned my weapons for the 3rd time since last march.
and hung a sign that says “curtilage” on every gate, just for good measure(even as just an opportunity to educate) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage)
all of this appears to be leading to a purge…clownish and absurd as it may be…of anything even sorta-kinda of the Left…and maybe even any dissent at all.
that lonsdale guy really let it slip…as if stephen miller hasnt been clear as day about what he wants.
it was Eldest’s 24th birthday yesterday, and we had a little shindig at his fiance’s house in the Old Barrio.
wifes local familia was all there, and aside from the handful of other gueros and gueras like me, who married brown folks, everybody was varying shades of brown.
all of them are targets…even though most of them are as many as sixth generation american citizens…most of them born right here, when this place used to have a rudimentary hospital.
and i kept going to the back porch for a smoke, and looking out into the half-dark Old Barrio.
i know everybody who lives in that neighborhood.
and all of them are under threat from this gang of morons.
The members of the current regime in Washington appear to be enjoying the spectacle and distraction in typical perverse and sadistic fashion. Some people appear openly to take pleasure, or be amused by the deaths of others. This goes for the deaths of those abroad and the deaths of US citizens at home. One could think they want to create a reign of terror intimidation. Those who resist just might get shot, so we better think twice before protesting or resisting tyranny.
As usual, I wonder if this also conveniently distracts from the Epstein scandals, and distracts from other issues, while at the same time an attempt to re-mobilize the disgruntled “base”?
Yes, there’s a necrotic aspect to the whole thing. Enough to put me in mind of Fromm’s “Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”.
Minneapolis and Portland. What a coincidence!
If someone wanted to stop illegal migration they’d round-up the employers who are exploiting them — when we ratified the 13th Amendment did we make it a crime to be a slave? However, if someone were to have designed a way to rile-up mass protests as a justification for martial law and the suspension of elections, could they have chosen better locales than Minneapolis and Portland?
Michael Wolff wrote just yesterday that after Steve Bannon introduced him to Stephen Miller he winked, “You see? Goebbels.”
Right? Long ago I figured this out. We have long had this nudge and a wink toward biz big and small relying on the work of the undocumented. Yet the people who created the “cross” and are benefitting the most from it are allowed to continue without any real consequences. Long ago I realized the government wasn’t serious about this.
Yes, local protests could provoke martial law. So maybe a massive strike? Give me a date and I’m game.
My impression of ice is that they may be a precursor to death squads. The earlier comment by Safety First about their resemblance to “busification” seems fitting as well. I don’t think that there is any plan to create death squads, but rather they will slide into the role as the political situation destabilizes in the US.
It has taken just over 40 years, but the Dirty War looks like it may make it home.
How long will it be before we start hearing about the threat “Antifa Death Squads” pose to the “Guardians of our Freedoms” ?
I know right?!?! Next thing, the FBI will start using terms like Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) and Militia Violent Extremists (MVEs) like the Biden administration did in 2021.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like many Americans only realized ICE was out of control after a white person was killed.
Many still don’t realize it. Some even take great pleasure in the “righteous retribution” they’re witnessing. Some of my neighbors.
Scariest time in my life. I’m 60.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but is this the tipping point in a series of events vs an event? I’ll opine that the location matters more as 2020 demonstrated that Minneapolis has some history to account for.
Minneapolis erupted in 2020 when George Floyd, who wasn’t white, was killed by Minneapolis Police. ICE is making the notoriously violent Minneapolis Police Department look like pacifists, which is really saying something.
There’s going to be a Boston Massacre- IMO it’s inevitable at this point, as the Feds are essentially IDF cosplaying as police and the blue state denizens are Palestinians to them- they want to kill us and are merely looking for opportunities.
This administration is reenacting 1930s Germany, both domestically and abroad, and I can only hope that we don’t end up like 1945 Germany.
Warrentless, ID-less, masked ICE, DHS, CBP activity appears to be softening or conditioning the US populace for complete subservience and submission. This seems likely the real goal, these initial deportations are just the cover for likely larger roundups to come once sufficient compliance is achieved.
Then we’ll see operations on the scale of Velodrome Dhiver Roundup – note city and state police and national guard are already assisting with protection of ICE, DHS and CBP, just as Paris police assisted with roundups of Jews, including 4000 children, and even guarded the prisoners until they could be deported (to the camps).
A refresher: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-velodrome-dhiver-vel-dhiv-roundup
heres how i described the shitshow we’re seeing to my cousin, with my Jungian Cap settled firmly on me head:
when trump speaks, we’re not hearing a man.
we’re hearing the multitude behind him, like one of those idiot gods in lovecraft….or whichever representative of Hell, in whichever medieval book((or Milton, or Dante, idk) utters the words, “we are legion”.
all these contradictions…one sentence contradicting the one that came before, and on and on…is all these folks with radical and radically disparate agendas and worldviews, all clamouring through one gaping maw.
their respective agendas contradict one another…and trump parrots the lines, after his fashion.
it comes out as incoherence…which, of course, all these agendas and worldviews are…but its even more incoherent when issuing out of one pie hole…attached to a man who is obviously way out of his depth…and also obviously in severe cognitive decline.
so its a wannabe evil totalitarian empire, run by morons, and filtered through “oh, look! a squirrel!”.
its the worst of all worlds…so far…and we should prolly get busy constructing some organisational chart of all these factions speaking through the orange menace.
i think its safe to say that the icegestapo stuff is Miller…and the end all commie bs is lil marco(lol…remember when he didnt appear to be the smartest guy in the room?…shudder…)
i can sort of see the outline of at least 3 factions of the moneymen…and at least 2 of the techlords.
the christofascists seem to be on the back burner, except for the zionazi kind.
and so on.
scariest time in my life, politically
and see here:.https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2026/01/03/dde25/3
and similar…somewhat hopeful,lol…but i wonder who among the people within 40 miles of me are in that 17%…might be good to know.
I’m not a lawyer, but from what I can see online, U.S. immigration law is bizarre. If (say) you sneak across the Rio Grande it’s a crime for which you can be arrested and criminal due process applies. But if you come in on a valid visa and then overstay or something, it’s a civil violation for which you can be detained and deported, but you’re not being charged with a crime so most due process doesn’t apply. In a weird way you have more rights under criminal law than you do with a technical visa violation.
The Governor of Portland should deploy the National Guard with instructions to block units of the Gesta- oops, ICE until they have produced ID for themselves and their vehicles, letting them proceed after they have complied. Of course this infomation will not be leaked to anybody by anybody, so the agents will be perfectly safe…..
Of related interest: Klippenstein published the ICE use of force policy:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-ice-is-okay-with-renee (ICE Is Okay With Renee Good’s Killing)
As a Louisvillian, I take some solace in the fact that our police didn’t kill Scottie Scheffler when he committed the same offense as Ms. Good.