2026 has begun with the Trump administration escalating their brutality against the population and increasing their threats to the world. They are drawing a line in the sand: it is the tiny class of billionaires and those who protect them on one side, and the rest of us on the other. Which direction things continue to go depends on us.
The administration has sent some 3,000 masked and heavily armed federal agents to Minnesota, mainly to terrorize the people of Minneapolis. They are grabbing people off the streets with no warrants, taking them to unknown locations. People, including pregnant women, have had their car windows smashed, been pulled from their vehicles, slammed to the ground and arrested as ICE agents kneeled on their necks. ICE has battered down doors in the middle of the night and taken people away. ICE has brutally kidnapped people, including children, in schools, workplaces, and restaurants. They have attacked documented and undocumented immigrants and citizens.
On January 7, responding to an ICE presence in their neighborhood, people came outside, blowing whistles. Renee Good, a 37 year-old woman and U.S. citizen, and her wife were in their vehicle as federal agents surrounded them. When Good tried to drive away, an agent shot her three times at pointblank range in the head. Good, a mother of three, was left in her car bleeding out. This was a clear murder, and the officer, known to have far-right views, can be heard saying “F-ing bitch” after he kills her.
Since the killing, Vice President J.D. Vance and the entire Trump administration have defended the officer’s blatant murder of Good. They are sending a very clear message that no one is safe, and that federal agents have a clear license to brutalize and even kill those who protest. They want to call ICE protestors “domestic terrorists” for refusing to accept this state-imposed terror. The only terrorists here are the federal agents terrorizing the population and the government that backs them.
Already, on January 14, ICE shot another person in Minneapolis in the leg while trying to arrest him. Once kidnapped by ICE, people are taken to horrific detention camps, crowded into cages, often with no food or water or access to medical care. Officially, there have already been dozens of people who have died in ICE custody in the last year. But the real number of deaths is likely much higher.
These raids have nothing to do with going after criminals or violent people. This is a blatant show of force in order to intimidate people into silence. They are going after immigrants to try and divide the population and target anyone who resists. The Trump administration is even threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and send military troops to Minneapolis. This is clearly part of their strategy. They want to attack the population, provoke a response, and then use that to send in the military to frighten everyone into submission.
Their show of force here in the U.S. parallels their escalation of violence and threats around the world too. They showed us this when they sent Special Forces into Venezuela to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January. They pretend they were doing this to fight drug dealers, but really they just want to open up Venezuela to U.S. oil companies, which they have already begun to do. They are now threatening to take over Greenland too. And they are again threatening to bomb Iran to weaken the regime and get it to bend to U.S. interests since Iran has been a longtime thorn in the side of U.S. imperialism in the region. The U.S. has claimed to be on the side of Iranian protestors, saying they will come to their aid if the regime continues to respond with violence. What hypocrisy! How can this administration pretend to care about protestors in Iran as it brutalizes and even murders protestors against ICE in this country?! And it has been U.S. sanctions on Iran that has helped push their economy into crisis.
We are the only ones who can stop this. There is no one else — not the courts, not the mayors, and certainly not the Democrats, most of whom have voted to expand the budget of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over the years as they gutted funding for social services.
We cannot be intimidated into silence. Our protests must continue. We need to grow our numbers, bringing more and more people into the streets. And ultimately, we will have to go even further. The power we have is that it is our labor that makes their system run. And as long as their system is able to function, as long as it is business as usual, they will continue their attacks. But if we are organized and determined enough, we can bring their system to a halt. They’ve made the stakes very clear in 2026: it’s all of us versus them!
