Insurgency on ice
The Minnesota anti-deportation riots are straight out of the revolutionary anti-west playbook
This is an extended version of my column in today’s Times (£).
The term “culture war” is an idiomatic way of describing the clash of ideologies in the west. On the streets of Minnesota, however, it looks uncomfortably like a real civil war in which two people have now been killed.
The mass arrests and deportation of illegal immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have provoked protests in several states and resulted in particularly violent scenes in Minnesota.
At the weekend Alex Pretti, who was part of a crowd attempting to hinder such arrests, was shot and killed by ICE agents. What actually happened is deeply disputed, as was the shooting dead three weeks ago of Renee Nicole Good, another agitator who was trying to impede ICE agents while in her car. But it looks as if Pretti’s shooting may have been the result of a tragically mistaken assumption by ICE agents in conditions of chaos and perceived threat.
President Trump has now backed down from his officials’ earlier claims that Pretti had “brandished” a firearm at federal agents or was a “terrorist,” and said instead his administration was “reviewing everything”. He has sent the border tsar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota to oversee ICE raids, reporting directly to Trump himself. This effectively sidelines not just Gregory Bovino, the pugnacious top Border Patrol official who has now been demoted, but also Kristi Noem, the hardline Homeland Security Secretary.
No-one could ever accuse Homan of being a soft touch. But he focuses in steely manner on the task to hand — namely, stopping illegal immigration — rather than treating the issue as a platform for personal grandstanding, as Bovino and Noem made their hallmark to show how tough and militarised they were.
Trump’s move comes after increasing pushback by voters, including many of the MAGA core vote, for whom such aggressive displays only reinforced their belief that ICE had gone too far. The immigration issue that was originally owned by Trump, and was a major factor behind his election, was rapidly turning into a liability.
