Maya Mazor-Hoofien/The Mossy Log
Last October, amidst the political aftershocks of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the occupations by the National Guard, escalating deportations and the right’s new obsession with leftist violence, I published an opinion article addressing our dire straits and warning that political repression may only escalate from here.
“The day an ICE agent or a member of the federalized National Guard applies lethal force on someone and gets away with it, things will get even worse. We need to be prepared for that possibility,” I wrote.
That day has arrived. On Jan. 7, American citizen Renee Nicole Good was shot 3 times by ICE agent Jonathan Ross while attempting to slowly turn her vehicle away from the scene. Only two weeks later, on Jan. 24, ICU nurse Alex Pretti was pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by federal agents who took his lawful, holstered weapon and proceeded to shoot the unarmed man in the back 10 times.
The deaths of Good and Pretti rang as a clarion call for resistance, leading to an unprecedented level of community organization in Minneapolis and a nationwide general strike on Jan. 30. However, I am not certain President Donald Trump will give in to the increasing pressure to scale back ICE operations easily. Instead, I am worried that the White House’s reaction to the shootings foreshadows a greater battle in the months before the midterm elections.
This is not the first time ICE has shot and killed civilians since Trump took power — Keith Porter, Silverio Villegas González and Isaias Sanchez Barboza were all killed before Good and Pretti. But Good and Pretti are unique in the character of the political rhetoric surrounding their deaths. Both Good and Pretti are reported to have been acting as “ICE watch” before their deaths, and following statements from the administration have made it clear — they were killed under the context of being political actors.
The same day of Good’s death, before any investigation was conducted, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her a domestic terrorist. Trump stated in a Truth Social post that Good’s death was a result of the “Radical Left…threatening, assaulting, and targeting” ICE agents. Similarly, less than 30 minutes after Pretti was shot, the official DHS X account posted a statement claiming that Pretti approached officers with a handgun, concluding “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Again, at a press conference held the same day of that shooting, Noem told reporters that Pretti “committed an act of domestic terrorism.”
In both cases, footage of the murders contradicts official accounts from the White House. Video evidence shows Good reversing her vehicle, then turning away from the officer at no more than 3 mph. Pretti was clearly unarmed, then disarmed, while he was held to the ground by several agents and shot in the back. In any normal circumstances, both incidents would be considered an act of needless brutality subject to external investigation. But, to point out the obvious, the truth is of least concern to Trump and his administration.
Indeed, the government is lying about the circumstances of their deaths with intention. By describing Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists, it seeks to redefine nonviolent acts of political opposition as actions punishable by force. As former United States Public Delegate to the United Nations Andrew Weinstein put it in an article for Time Magazine: “Authoritarian systems rarely begin with mass repression. They begin by redefining who counts as a threat.”
Trump is employing the authoritarian “big lie” tactic: promoting a demonstrably false narrative and repeating it so relentlessly that it begins to be accepted as truth. The purpose of this strategy is to suppress dissent by reshaping public perceptions of acceptable government behavior, ultimately consolidating the regime’s power. To the minds of a significant amount of the American population, nonviolent protestors of ICE are now violent insurrectionists bent on the destruction of the nation — imminent threats to be eliminated.
As I addressed in my prior article, in National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), Trump laid out in plain ink his plan to target any “anti-fascist” opposition as domestic terrorists. To justify political persecution, the memo posits a grand conspiracy. Referencing Kirk’s assassination, “riots in Los Angeles and Portland” opposing ICE operations, as well as the two assassination attempts against him, Trump writes:
“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.”
This is a conscious lie. The staffers and federal agents in the White House do not truly believe that Kirk’s assassin is connected to Pretti through a terrorist conspiracy network. To Trump officials, all that matters is that the free political exercise of these individuals interferes with the total militarized control they seek over the United States.
The gears of Trump’s machine of political suppression are already turning. According to an investigation by The Guardian, under Trump’s new policy under NPSM-7, the FBI has launched investigations into anti-ICE activity across 23 of its field offices. The article notes that in official documents, 27 locations are labeled as having “ongoing domestic terrorism investigations that fall under NSPM-7.”
Given this, there is good news and bad news. On one hand, we have not yet reached the point of mass repression. The bad news is we are at its precipice.
Do not let Trump’s reluctant, potentially temporary withdrawal of the National Guard fool you into thinking he makes concessions. In the last year, Trump has intentionally worked to build up ICE as a militarized police force subject only to his own bidding. He has gained power, not lost it.
Right after the internationally publicized killings of two of his own citizens, Trump is planning to send ICE officers to the Winter Olympics in Italy. It is a calculated, remorseless demonstration of his power on the world stage. The resistance is strong, but not strong enough to stop him yet. This will not end until Trump faces real consequences. In the coming months, as the November midterm vote draws nearer and ICE’s Operation Metro Surge continues to terrorize American cities, we should prepare ourselves for worsening political persecution.
That does not mean we are doomed to kiss democracy goodbye. If Minneapolis is any indication, Americans have a remarkably resilient culture of civic organizing. Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens with little to no experience in activism have worked to create a decentralized volunteer network protecting their community from ICE. Two weeks after Good’s death, citizens organized a general strike on Jan. 23 that saw an estimated 50,000 march through downtown Minneapolis, with hundreds of businesses closing in solidarity. If that is the power of one city, imagine the potential of a nationwide organized opposition.
For now, our nation still suffers from the inertia caused by a slow boil. We will likely only react sufficiently to the encroaching erosion of our rights when it reaches our doorsteps. But when the time comes, I have no reason to believe that we in Portland will not also rise to the challenge.
That day might be coming soon. In an interview with NBC News, a former White House official admitted that “Oregon was next” for a large-scale immigration enforcement operation after Minnesota. The quote was in the past tense, and NBC notes it is unclear if those plans have since changed. Still, I have learned from experience that each time the words “Oregon” and “Donald Trump” appear in a headline together, I am likely to see his words manifest around Macadam Avenue.
Obviously, I am no prophet; it would be foolish to claim I can predict the future with certainty. But the aspiration of countless political scientists is that we may recognize the patterns of governments and figure out when to intervene in declining democracies before they are too far gone. The pattern here is louder than zebra stripes. We are about to enter a turbulent year in history, and we will have to resist, lest we be deprived of the liberty for which we pledged allegiance.
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