Over the weekend, tens of thousands marched through
Minneapolis to protest the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer. The protest was not an
isolated outburst. It was part of more than 1,000 coordinated rallies
nationwide against what the federal government calls a “deportation drive,” but
what many Americans now see as state violence carried out under the cover of
immigration enforcement.
Demonstrators chanted “Abolish ICE” and “No justice, no
peace — get ICE off our streets,” slogans born not of ideology alone but of
lived experience. Bystander video, cited by Minnesota officials, reportedly
shows Good’s car turning away as the agent fired. The Department of Homeland
Security insists the agent acted in self-defense, claiming the vehicle was
“weaponized.” This language has become routine — and troublingly convenient.
Within days, a similar incident occurred in Portland,
Oregon, where a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded two people during a
vehicle stop, again citing an alleged attempt to run over agents. Two
shootings, two cities, identical justifications. The pattern is hard to ignore.
What makes this moment particularly jarring is timing. These
shootings followed the deployment of nearly 2,000 federal officers to the
Minneapolis–St. Paul area in what DHS described as its largest operation ever.
When a heavily armed state expands its enforcement footprint and civilians end
up dead, the moral high ground becomes difficult to claim — especially while
lecturing other nations on restraint.
Trump’s threats against Iran are framed as a defense of
human rights. Yet at home, protestors braving freezing winds speak of
heartbreak, anger, and devastation after witnessing a fellow citizen killed by
a federal agent. The administration dismisses outrage as political noise while
portraying force as necessity.
This is the duality of Trump’s America - intolerance for
repression abroad, justification for it at home; outrage over demonstrators
elsewhere, suspicion of demonstrators on its own streets. Until Washington
reconciles this contradiction, its warnings to Tehran will sound less like
principled diplomacy and more like selective morality wrapped in power.
