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Ending Migrant Detention is the Only Way Out
Lessons from Minneapolis
Julia Piaskowski
January 28, 2026
When ICE Came to Minneapolis
A few days ago, a protester in Minneapolis was shot dead in another example of unnecessary, unjustified violence by masked ICE agents, many of whom were wearing balaclavas, an image that evokes paramilitaries throughout the world committing violent acts against their own people. The protester, later identified as Alex Pretti, was forced to the ground by several agents, beaten and while held down, he was shot repeatedly. and administered no first aid by the onsite Federal agents. It is a horrifying act, all caught on video. In addition to this, there have been many other examples of other human rights violations committed in Minnesota by government officials from the Department of Homeland Security: young children being chased, tackled and handcuffed, people being restrained and pepper sprayed at point blank range, so many kidnappings that there is rash of cars left in the streets.
At the same time, there are incredible efforts by Minnesotans to protect one another. There is a robust ICE watch, mass gathering of people in opposition to ICE, volunteers supplying groceries to people scared to leave their homes, free or discounted towing to families with kidnapped members that resulted in a car left abandoned, a statewide general strike (!), and all of this happening despite DHS killing two ICE observers in the last month.
There is a feeling that our government leaders are out of step with the people they are leading: some have embraced disinformation and completely abandoned us in pursuit of supporting Trump’s agenda; others seem lost in trying to triangulate politically (ahem: Schumer, Jeffries). In Idaho, our 4 congressmen and governors are largely trying to pretend that this is not happening, focusing on the most mundane aspects of their jobs rather than the armed Federal law enforcement terrorizing people across the nation. The social media feeds for Senator Mike Crapo, Senator Jim Risch and Representative Russ Fulcher are talking about anything but immigration and ICE (what are these guys even doing on X given it's been overrun with racism and non-consensual AI porn?). But representative Mike Simpson recently published a unequivocal defense of ICE, completely endorsing the false narrative fed to us by the Miller/Trump White House. Embarrassingly, he linked to a DHS site to support his claims. (Did he miss that this agency has lost credibility among the public after repeatedly lying to us? That Trump’s attempts to create an alternative narrative are collapsing? Seriously, where has this guy been??) Repeating these obvious lies like we just fell off the potato truck insults us.
Up and down Idaho, there were large protests against ICE: Coeur d’Alene, Boise, Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, Caldwell, and more. Many of us in Idaho and the United States overall feel abandoned and condescended by our elected officials. Others have a less charitable view of the U.S. political establishment after experiencing kidnappings, attacks and brutality at the hands of Federal immigration enforcement. ICE’s activities are more unpopular than ever among the U.S. population, but that doesn’t appear to faze our government. In 2025 and 2026, ICE has done thousands of terrible things to people living in the United States in the name of removing undocumented people, people our government labels “criminal illegal aliens". Killing people in detention, putting people in dangerous chokeholds, detaining and brutalizing citizens, This is all happening in our name, since this is our government.
We, that is ordinary people who do not wield extreme power in any political system, are in the process of rediscovering our collective power, to comply and ultimately legitimize our government’s actions or not. Our government operates with our consent, and it’s clear that increasingly, many of us are unwilling to give it. I am inspired by the mass activation of people in Minneapolis and the rest of Minnesota to protect each other. Trump’s government is trying to manufacture consent by redefining the narrative and reality, with increasingly ineffective results.
Recently, I stumbled upon this apparently common definition for a state: “a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence” (within its territory) (Max Weber, 1921). A (translated) portion of his seminal essay “Politics as a Vocation” states:
“specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.”
It stuck with me for its profundity; that we as society have decided we need violence and there is a government body that does it. The essay goes on to discuss qualities for claiming power and legitimacy and how that power is maintained. It’s too long and complicated to summarize and I don’t want to sound like the psuedo-intellectual Peter Thiel waxing eloquent about political philosophy he hardly understands. But, it does not take a PhD in social sciences to recognize that the state violence ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) are doing, at the behest of our government, in our name, is not an admirable or desirable expression of the "legitimate use of force.” I do not think the state has the right to murder people on the open street for protesting them, or the right to at gunpoint kidnap people from their homes, schools, job and families. No one should have this power.
Considering this definition is a reminder to me that we can reject the framing that violence is required for certain situations. We do not have to violently kidnap, imprison and expel people from this country simply for being foreigners. In her essay, “Into the Abyss” (subtitled, “the correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards”), Andrea Pitzer presents a compelling argument that the United States is well on its way to solidifying concentration camps as a part of our culture and government. She indicates that from a historical perspective, there is a critical window in years 3 to 5 of concentration camp establishment where we might hope to dismantle them before they calcify as part of the political landscape. Her argument is that we need to abolish the system that enabled this and do it soon: “We need to dismantle the current system and remove the possibility for it to exist again.”
For me, this means ending migrant detention altogether. Abolishing ICE is a welcome start, but it’s not enough. We must stop imprisoning people simply for immigration crimes (or accusations of immigrants crimes). Immigration “crimes” aren’t even crimes, they are civil violations (making defendants ineligible for public legal defense). When we have migrant detention, we inevitably have family detention (including children). When we have migrant detention, we inevitably have neglect and cruelty towards the detained and deaths, through neglect or outright murder.
While for most Americans, prisons seem natural and inevitable, migrant detention is very new; it underwent its main growth as part of post 9/11 policy changes, when the overall detention capacity was dramatically increased. We do not have to keep doing this; and morally, we should stop imprisoning and dehumanizing people for the act of trying to migrate here. Our elected leaders will tell us repeatedly that abolishing ICE and ending migrant detention is naïve, unrealistic and risks our safety; do not believe them. Idaho’s congressional delegation has shown a willingness to parrot any lie that keeps them in Trump’s good graces, regardless of how it aligns with Idahoans. We do not have to accept that our government harming, imprisoning, and killing immigrants and those that support immigrants is necessary.
Worthwhile Reads
I Don’t Know How To Do This by Emily Atkin. A beautiful essay linking climate destruction, imperialism and anti-migration policies, and what she does to stay whole.
While doomscrolling this weekend, I came across a video of birds flying south for the winter, with a text overlay that said “migration is an earth right.” It had more than 900,000 likes. That simple 20-second clip was powerful to me, not just because of the actual message of the video—that immigration is natural, that borders are manmade—but because of how many people seemed to understand that connection.
Watching Humanity Go Down the Drain at Idaho’s Firing Squad Facility by Kelsey Segrero. A newly minted architect ponders what happens when her profession designs death-making machines.
Architecture at its best simultaneously embodies and nurtures our collective values. At its most basic, it shelters human life. It is not meant to be an instrument of death. The American Institute of Architects recently amended its professional code of ethics to explicitly state this by barring its members from designing execution chambers.
Into the Abyss by Andrea Pitzer. The logistics and processes of establishing a culture that tolerates concentration camps, how deep the U.S. is in this process, and the necessity to dismantle it.
“You can’t reform a concentration camp regime. You have to dismantle it and replace it. We have a thousand ways to do it. And most U.S. citizens—particularly white ones—have the freedom to act, for now, with far less risk than the many people currently targeted.”
Welcome to the American Winter by Robert Worth, an expository article on what is happening in Minneapolis.
Knutson mentioned in passing that his neighbor had “an adopted brown kid down there; they hid her in the basement yesterday.” This kind of thing no longer sounds weird in Minneapolis. Many people are hiding indoors—so many that, in a city with a substantial minority population, I hardly saw any Black or Latino faces on the street. All this sheltering has created an economic crisis that has grown worse by the day. Many immigrant-owned businesses have seen their sales drop by as much as 80 percent, said Allison Sharkey, of the Lake Street Council. Large numbers have shut their doors entirely, fearing for themselves or their employees. Sharkey called it “an assault on our entire Main Street.
Trump’s week of stinging defeats has a big lesson for the Supreme Court. The Slate’s justice correspondents Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss a string of political losses for Trump last week and the lessons we can draw from that.
“Trump gave up [invading Greenland], just as he did with [former U.S. Lindsey] Halligan. The truth is that he’s weak. He is not the muscular president he pretends to be on television. When someone says no, and uses tools at their disposal to enforce that boundary, he stands down, because he is terrified of being defeated in a way that he can’t spin as a secret victory.
Immigrant Children Lead Uprising at Texas Detention Center by Chris Walker. The kids are not alright.
An uprising broke out at an immigrant jail in southern Texas on Saturday, with around 1,000 immigrants detained in the facility — many of them children — chanting “Libertad” and “Let us go,” according to an attorney who witnessed the event.