Tag: ICE

“Guardrails”

The New Dishonest Word of the Moment

BILL ASTORE

FEB 09, 2026

I’ve been noticing a new word of the moment: “guardrails.” President Trump is smashing the guardrails of democracy. At the same time, new guardrails are the answer to ICE murders in Minneapolis, at least according to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

New guardrails will stop ICE!

If guardrails are so easy for Trump to smash, how are new ones going to restrain the power of ICE and prevent abuses?

Remember when we used to talk about laws? That you had to obey the law of the land else be prosecuted for violating it? We need clear and enforceable laws and a system that upholds them, not more “guardrails.”

I suppose “guardrail” is a metaphor that’s easily understood—they help keep us on the road, right? Yet cars and trucks do smash through them, so are they really the answer to restraining Trump and ICE?

As Stephen Semler notes here, Schumer and Jeffries promote “guardrails” for ICE even as they propose to fully fund the agency, making it easy for ICE to say, sure, we’ll respect your guardrails even as they drive their SUVs and surplus military equipment through them.

America is supposed to be a nation of laws, not guardrails. If ICE and Trump are like out-of-control trucks, no metaphorical guardrail is going to restrain them. A strong Constitutional system upheld and enforced by officials of integrity and courage, however, could and should.

And Justice for All?

James Baldwin on “Respect for Law”

BILL ASTORE

FEB 07, 2026

I was reading an article by James Baldwin today from July 11, 1966 about the “Harlem Six” and his thoughts on policing. His words resonated as I thought of recent events in Minneapolis and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

James Baldwin

Here’s what Baldwin had to say in 1966:

This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, indeed all Americans expect the law to be our servant. We don’t expect the law to be our murderer.

President Trump is now saying Good and Pretti’s deaths shouldn’t have happened even as he’s also said they were no angels (hinting that maybe their murders were justified, or that they somehow were responsible for their own executions).

Of course, Trump and members of his administration have said far worse, reflexively denouncing Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” while suggesting the people who’ve suffered the most have been the ICE agents who shot and killed them!

Claims such as these are an insidious form of authoritarian madness.

ICE agents, like all elements of law enforcement, are supposed to be public servants, upholders of the law, not a law unto themselves. When the law becomes a torturer and a murderer, it becomes a moral obscenity, as Baldwin noted.

If we are to make any progress in America, we need equal justice for all; we need to stop blaming the victims; and we must stop kowtowing to murderous authority.

Of Lies and Surges

There’s Blood in the Streets

BILL ASTORE

JAN 26, 2026

Two headlines caught my eye this AM in my email media stream.

From the New York Times: “How the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting”

There was no “judgment” displayed in the execution of Alex Pretti. The Trump administration blatantly, maliciously, and viciously lied about what happened. Video evidence incontrovertibly shows that the Trump administration lied. Period.

Trump officials simply didn’t and don’t care about the truth. About justice. About the life of a U.S. citizen. They only care about their own petty lives and violent narratives. Anyone who gets in their way is a potential “domestic terrorist.” They’re sending a loud message clearly: resist us and you’ll end up bloodied in the streets—and maybe dead. 

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone famously reminded us. But rarely can I remember lies of such obvious viciousness about regular people whose only real crime is exercising their right to dissent in democracy.

The other headline was this one from the Boston Globe: “Maine and Minnesota: A tricky tale of ICE surges in two states.”

Maine and Minnesota: a tricky tale of ICE surges in two states

What had been a careful, rhetorical balancing act has begun turning to increasing anger after the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis

*****

There’s that word again: Surge. Remember the U.S. military “surges” in Iraq and Afghanistan? Remember how those “surges” in troops and violence were supposed to win those wars for America? How did that work out for us?

We know how. Both surges failed, but they did succeed in producing a lot of dead Iraqis and Afghans (“foreign terrorists”) along with U.S. troops killed and wounded in action.

“Surges” are not how you win wars, whether overseas or here at home. In fact, surges in Iraq and Afghanistan were admissions of a sort that the wars were already lost; their main purpose was to show resolve and to provide political cover for dishonest leaders like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama.

But government officials have an amazing capacity not to learn. Their “solution” is always to show resolve through military and/or police action. Nothing is “won,” nothing is achieved, and the main product is more blood in the streets.

Isn’t it nice to know that your government reflexively views you as a “domestic terrorist” if you exercise your right to assemble and protest? Especially if you inconveniently get shot and killed by an ICE agent?

“Domestic terrorist”: Seriously? (Adam Gray/AP)