Most of this newsletter is about a different type of ICE—but a quick prayer at the top for the Americans pummeled by the historic storm that swept across the country this weekend. Several deaths have already been reported, many have lost power, and the ice is expected to be slow to melt, delaying recovery efforts and prolonging the danger. Stay safe and warm out there, everybody. Happy Monday.
Honoring the Memory of Alex Pretti
by William Kristol
It’s fitting to begin with the words of Alex Pretti a little over a year ago at the deathbed of Terrance Lee Randolph, a veteran Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital in Minneapolis.
Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we give them our honor, and our gratitude.
It’s fitting, in the wake of Pretti’s killing Saturday, to remember and give thanks for his dedication and sacrifice in the cause of our freedom. And it’s proper that we resolve that he shall not have died in vain.
What would such a resolve mean? We can be guided by Michael and Susan Pretti, Alex’s parents, who said Saturday,
We are heartbroken but also very angry. . . .
Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the hero term lightly. However his last thought and act was to protect a woman.
The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. . . .
Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.
The good news is that the administration’s slander campaign against Pretti is failing, underscored by the news this morning that the president is dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis—a rebuke of those currently in charge. But there will be lasting dishonor for all those who joined in the smears, and on those who kept silent.
But the way to honor Pretti isn’t simply to insist on the truth about him. It’s to end the lawless occupation that took his life. It’s to free his fellow citizens, in Minnesota and beyond, from attacks by masked, trigger-happy government agents. It’s to begin to end the grotesque mass deportation campaign that has led to so much inhumanity, cruelty, and violence across the nation. It’s more broadly to limit the authoritarian depredations of the Trump administration over the next three years. It’s to lay the groundwork for an America in which men and women like Alex Pretti and Renee Good are once again honored rather than killed.
This is a task for all of us, and for many institutions, including the courts, state and local government, civil society, and the private sector. But it’s above all a task for Congress. The simple fact is that DHS, ICE, and CBP are creatures of Congress. They are authorized in legislation; their funds are appropriated; the behavior of their employees can be regulated by Congress as it chooses.
Democrats in Congress seem to be beginning to grasp the magnitude of this moment. But even now, two days after Pretti’s death and almost three weeks after Good’s, there is too much talk about “asking” the administration to do an investigation or “planning” some oversight or “working with” Republicans in Congress to come to agreements. Too many Democrats have internalized their powerlessness, even proclaiming it as if it’s a matter of pride. They need to read Havel on the power of the powerless. Moments of crisis are fluid and unpredictable. At such moments, it’s foolish to start by compromising with oneself.
Democrats need to filibuster the pending DHS appropriations bill. But they could also seek to cut the department’s prior multi-year appropriations. They could try to get all DHS forces out of Minnesota—at least Minnesota!—by prohibiting the expenditure of funds for such deployments. They could try to require the consent of state and local authorities to deploy such forces. There are countless other possible proposals they could advance.
Yes, many of these will not become laws. Republicans in the majority can even deny Democrats up-or-down votes. But make Republicans do that. And attack them for doing that. And make clear that every member of Congress who votes to fund DHS, and to continue funding it, and against limitations on their actions—that they are all complicit in the injustice and the brutality. Make Republicans in Congress own the status quo that took the lives of Good and Pretti.
There is no need for Democrats to strain to provide minor and temporary off-ramps for Republicans who’ve supported mass deportation. Let Republicans find those themselves.
Democrats need to think big. Out of the tragedy of this moment may come an opportunity to stop Trump’s authoritarian project in its tracks, or at least to slow it and weaken it and begin to disable it. Doing so would be the tribute Renee Good and Alex Pretti deserve.
What are the most effective restrictions that could end ICE’s reign of terror? No masks? Name tags? Stronger warrant requirements? What should be the top priorities?
ICE Is Playing Soldier, But Without the Discipline
by Mark Hertling
As Bill writes above, the killing of Alex Pretti, a VA ICU nurse, during an ICE operation in Minneapolis has shocked the nation. Americans rightly expect federal authority to be exercised with restraint, legality, and respect for life. But beyond the obvious tragedy and outrage of Pretti’s death, what troubles me, as someone who commanded soldiers in combat, is what it reveals about a force operating without disciplined leadership or effective control over the perpetration of violence.
Police forces exist to protect and serve the public. They are trained to de-escalate, to read communities, and to understand that every encounter involves citizens whose fundamental rights the government exists to protect. Even when circumstances necessitate escalation by the police—hostage situations, active shooters, mass-casualty events requiring specialized units like SWAT teams—law enforcement must be governed by constitutional standards and public accountability.
The military is different by design. Soldiers are trained to attack, defeat, and destroy the enemies of the nation using lethal force. That reality requires something civilians rarely see and often misunderstand: the commander’s role in deliberately controlling violence. In combat, the challenge isn’t applying force—it’s applying the amount necessary. Rules of engagement, the law of armed conflict, and the commander’s intent exist to ensure disciplined action, prevent atrocities, and keep soldiers morally grounded when they are asked to do extraordinarily hard things.
ICE and many of the other components of DHS are neither military nor police. Their official charter is civil immigration enforcement: identifying, detaining, and removing individuals who violate immigration law. That mission is administrative and legal, not tactical. Yet we have recently seen ICE agents dressing like soldiers, maneuvering like assault teams, and engaging civilians as if they are hostile forces. While in my view they are not doing any of these things well, this is not policing and it is not military service. It is something dangerously undefined.
As a division commander in Iraq during the surge, I conducted “battlefield circulation,” visiting various units daily, seeing how these units were conducting their missions, and—just as importantly—looking into the eyes of subordinate commanders to gauge their physical, intellectual, and moral fitness. That’s what was required to oversee operational effectiveness and to ensure discipline—every day. I needed to see whether units were engaging the enemy effectively, applying the rules of engagement properly, understanding commander’s intent, and respecting the laws of war.
On the few occasions when I saw behavior that crossed the line—excessive aggression, confusion over orders, a lack of discipline or restraint—I acted immediately. On one occasion, I relieved a commander because his overly aggressive posture confused subordinates and risked unlawful engagements. In another case, I sent a battalion commander to an R&R site—not as punishment, but because I thought his judgment had degraded to the point that he posed a danger to his soldiers and Iraqis. That’s what command responsibility looks like. Leaders are accountable not only for what they order their subordinates to do, but for what they allow.
The leadership of ICE and DHS seems to be overlooking quite a lot. There is no visible effort to rein in agents, clarify mission boundaries, or enforce standards or restraint. The leaders don’t seem to be conducting the equivalent of battlefield circulation—I have yet to see senior leaders walking the ground, correcting behavior, or relieving those who have lost control. Instead, the top of the chain of command either deflects about what is obviously undisciplined behavior, ignores it, or mischaracterizes the events to make dangerous excesses seem defensible.
If this were a military operation and I were in charge, I would not hesitate to relieve senior ICE and DHS operational leaders immediately. Not for political reasons—but for failure of leadership and command. And I would direct independent investigations into whether certain operations rise to the level of criminal abuse of authority: unjustified use of lethal force, collective punishment, inappropriate behavior toward citizens, and violations of fundamental rights.
Executing any mission—law enforcement, military operations, or ICE immigration control—does not excuse abandoning values. Law enforcement and the military have learned that lesson the hard way. It’s past time the leadership of ICE did the same—before more Americans die.
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AROUND THE BULWARK
A Colleague Remembers Alex Pretti… On Bulwark+ Takes, SAM STEIN speaks with DR. AASMA SHAUKAT, Alex Pretti’s former boss, about the moment she learned he’d been killed, and what kind of coworker and caregiver he was.
Another American Has Been Murdered by Our Government… It’s worse than it looks and it looks plenty bad, writes JVL in an Emergency Triad.
MAGA’s ‘Omelet’ Excuse for DHS Thuggishness… They admit that mass deportation is impossible without egregious abuses—but want it to go ahead anyway, observes CATHY YOUNG.
NATO’s Been Talking About Greenland for Years… The island matters a lot—not as territory to acquire but as a linchpin of deterrence, argues MARK HERTLING.
🧑💻 Substack TV is here. Do you have questions about getting it set up? 🧑💻
TODAY, January 26, at 3:30 pm EST, Senior Editor Jim Swift will hold “Office Hours” in the Bulwark Members Chat. He’ll be there to take Substack/Bulwark tech–related questions for an hour or so.
Quick Hits
CRACKING UNDER THE STRAIN: Minneapolis has been at an unbearable level of tension for days now, and there are worrying signs people are starting to crack under the strain. Last night, a group of protesters gathered at a Home2 Suites hotel where, rumor had it, ICE agents were staying. Some blew whistles, banged trash cans, and shone lights into the hotel windows. Others broke glass, sprayed graffiti, and even tried to force their way into the lobby, while men inside, who used vending machines to block the door, shouted, “We’re all locals!”
Elsewhere in Minneapolis this weekend, the right-wing content creator Hailey West posted a video of her car being followed by protesters for a long time—in her telling, for over an hour. When she stops to ask why, the protesters say her car is “confirmed ICE.” As more protesters gather to see what’s going on, word that West is “confirmed ICE” sweeps through the group, which begins telling her to “get the fuck out.”
It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of the counterproductivity of violent protest than attacking a hotel because you have an issue with some of the people inside. And “we heard you’re with ICE” paranoia eerily echoes the sort of thing you’d hear at MAGA Stop the Steal protests after the 2020 election, where protesters were liable to accuse each other of being antifa infiltrators at a moment’s notice.
Protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere have remained overwhelmingly peaceful, but these are warning signs. When people start to believe en masse that the authorities can no longer be trusted, they can become susceptible to the spirit of the mob, which has its own dangerous logic.
And the federal authorities that are the cause of the chaos in Minneapolis in the first place have no intention of restoring order. In the wake of the hotel incident, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said its officers had arrived on the scene and worked to encircle and arrest the agitators—only for federal agents to pull up in an armored vehicle and go in hot with tear gas and flash bangs, dispersing them rather than allowing state police to bring them in. “Federal agents arrived without communication and deployed chemical irritants, clearing the group,” the Department of Public Safety said in a statement, adding that state authorities “are no longer on the scene.”
THE WORLD’S TINIEST VIOLIN: Minneapolis residents aren’t the only ones feeling the strain. Fox News reports that many in the White House are growing “increasingly uneasy and frustrated” with the Department of Homeland Security’s posture toward Minneapolis, which they say has been “catastrophic from a PR and morale perspective.”
“Specifically,” Fox’s Bill Melugin, one of the administration’s favorite reporters, wrote, “I’m told there is extreme frustration with DHS officials going on TV and putting out statements claiming that Alex Pretti was intending to conduct a ‘massacre’ of federal agents or wanted to carry out ‘maximum damage,’ even after numerous videos appeared to show those claims were inaccurate.” Further, “Many of the sources have expressed frustration that ICE is routinely blamed for the actions of Border Patrol, a completely separate agency.”
It would perhaps be too much to expect these ghouls to be upset that their agents gunned down a man in the street this weekend. But at least we can be comforted that they’re upset at how badly the people they’ve assigned to spin these stories are handling it.
Cheap Shots
Back in 2020 I thought “Defund the Police” was going too far and was a loser politically. But ICE has radicalized me. “Abolish ICE” is the moderate position. Stringing up ICE officers like Mussolini at the end is the radical position. Every Democrat who moves to fund DHS in the minibus should be primaried. There is no reforming this. It needs to be razed entirely and salt the earth on which it stood.
"...the president is dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis..."
Would this be the same Tom Homan caught accepting a $50,000 bribe last year? That one? I'm so relieved! We can certainly count on his scrupulous honesty, can't we?