Extraordinary Measures

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This piece did not begin as an abstract inquiry.

It began with a convergence of events—and a surge of emotion that would not settle.

ICE operations expanded across Minnesota, producing fear among non-citizens and anger when a fellow SEM student from Africa was detained and informed he was being deported. What had felt distant became personal.

Federal agents then appeared in public spaces using military-style weapons, tactics, and personnel to suppress dissent—directed not only at undocumented immigrants, but at citizens as well. The use of force by civil authorities against civilians raised immediate concern.

That concern hardened into grief and outrage on January 7, 2026, when U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent during an enforcement operation. Federal officials claimed self-defense. Eyewitness accounts and video evidence raised serious disputes. No federal civil-rights investigation followed.

Days later, a white supremacist and January 6 rioter—previously convicted of assaulting police—appeared in Minneapolis to support federal immigration enforcement and oppose Somali immigrants. Fewer than ten supporters joined him before he was driven out by counter-protesters. The anger was not about speech, but about impunity: a man who attacked police with a baseball bat in Washington now freely mobilizing under federal protection.

Soon after, the Department of Justice announced investigations into Minnesota officials—including Governor Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey, and Renee Good’s family—alleging obstruction of immigration enforcement. No parallel investigation was announced into the agent who killed Renee Good.

Then came threats of further escalation: thousands more ICE agents deployed to Minnesota, alongside warnings that military paratroopers could be mobilized to “restore order” and suppress dissent.

Anger was the dominant emotion—amplified by propaganda framing these actions as crime control, falsely asserting that “sanctuary cities” had attracted criminals and terrorists. Fear was being cultivated to justify extraordinary violence by federal civil authorities.

I initially wanted to write something scathing—drawing direct comparisons between the Trump administration and historical authoritarian regimes. But I became convinced that, for now, such comparisons obscure more than they clarify.

So I slowed down.

What follows is not hyperbole.

It is a structural argument.

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How Emergency Logic Becomes Normal Governance

ICE was created in the wake of 9/11 under a familiar rationale: extraordinary threats require extraordinary measures. The agency was justified as a narrow security reform—meant to fix immigration enforcement failures and prevent terrorism.

That justification mattered. Once a threat is framed as existential, ordinary legal limits begin to look inadequate—even irresponsible.

Over time, the mission expanded far beyond its original scope.

Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employs more than 22,000 officers and agents, making it one of the largest federal law-enforcement bodies in the country. While smaller than the nation’s combined state and local police, ICE rivals or exceeds many federal agencies and, when concentrated in a single city, can outnumber municipal forces—giving it disproportionate local power.

In practice, the agency’s work has shifted from rare counterterrorism cases to routine interior enforcement. Mass detention, deportation, and deterrence became central functions. Fear was never named as policy—but it emerged predictably from scale, visibility, and discretionary power.

What began as an emergency response hardened into a permanent domestic enforcement apparatus—illustrating how exceptional measures, once normalized, become difficult to unwind.

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When Civil Authority Uses Criminal Force

ICE, like the IRS and OSHA, is legally a civil administrative agency. Immigration violations are generally civil matters, and for most of U.S. history immigration enforcement resembled other regulatory systems—paperwork-driven, court-based, and focused on determining status and carrying out removal after civil hearings. Arrests and detention were limited, and enforcement relied primarily on notice, compliance, and judicial oversight rather than force.

For much of the 20th century, immigration enforcement under the INS focused on helping people enter and remain in the United States legally. Trying to welcome immigrants into the country – processing visas, reuniting families, and administering naturalization in a country that openly saw itself as a nation of immigrants. Enforcement existed, but it was largely administrative and court-based.

After 9/11, the mission of immigration enforcement narrowed. With the creation of ICE, immigration was reframed as a security problem, shifting the focus from legal entry and integration to detection, detention, and removal—transforming an agency once associated with welcoming newcomers into one defined by enforcement and exclusion.

What changed was not the underlying civil law, but the method of enforcement: immigration authority increasingly came to be exercised through the tools of criminal policing—armed agents, interior arrests, mass detention, and large tactical deployments—while remaining governed by civil rules that provide fewer protections.

The result is an agency that enforces civil law through police-style coercion, routinely depriving people of liberty without the safeguards that normally accompany criminal enforcement, making ICE an outlier among administrative agencies.

One of the most consequential incidents was the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, during the surge, which has prompted protests, legal action, and restrictions on how agents may interact with peaceful bystanders and observers. 

On the ground, these practices include:

• Tactical presence — agents deploying in coordinated units with gear that resembles police uniforms and equipment
• Interior arrests — at homes, streets, and workplaces, often early in the day
• Administrative warrants — used in immigration contexts rather than traditional judicial warrants
• Detention as leverage — prolonged or distant custody that disrupts legal counsel and family life
• Collaboration with local law enforcement — creating pathways from routine encounters to immigration enforcement
• Broad surveillance and engagement practices — including stops and interaction with observers or bystanders

The result is a civil agency whose methods resemble criminal enforcement, yet under a different legal framework that provides fewer procedural protections and judicial oversight. Fear is not named as policy, but uncertainty, visibility, and detention often function as enforcement tools in these operations.

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Comparison to Traditional Criminal Law Enforcement

ICE’s actions are officially described as administrative, not punitive. Immigration violations are civil matters, and the agency does not prosecute criminal guilt. Yet for those subjected to ICE enforcement, the lived experience—arrest, detention, confinement, and separation—is often punitive in effect, even if not labeled as such.

The key issue is not simply that force is used, but where that force sits within the legal framework. Traditional criminal policing is constrained by design: warrants issued by independent judges, higher evidentiary standards, a guaranteed right to counsel, time-limited detention, continuous judicial oversight, and prosecution as the stated goal. These safeguards exist to slow the exercise of state power and protect individual rights.

ICE operates largely outside this structure. It remains a civil agency, but now enforces civil law through criminal-style policing tools—armed agents, arrests, detention, and large-scale operations—without equivalent procedural protections. The result is lower friction: fewer checks, broader discretion, and a greater capacity for routine coercion. Over time, what begins as exceptional enforcement becomes normalized.

This distinction matters not because immigration enforcement is illegitimate, but because civil authority combined with criminal-style force tends to expand, especially when it is not bounded by the safeguards that normally accompany the deprivation of liberty.

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What This Structure Produces — and Why It Reaches Citizens

When emergency authority becomes normalized, its consequences are predictable—and they do not remain confined to their original targets.

First, extraordinary power becomes ordinary use. Tools justified for crisis conditions become standard practice. What was once exceptional no longer requires explanation.

Second, legal safeguards weaken by design. Civil process quietly replaces criminal process, and protections that normally restrain state power over bodies, homes, and movement fall away—not through repeal, but through bypass.

Third, fear becomes systemic. Uncertainty, visibility, and disruption operate as enforcement tools, producing community-wide deterrence even in the absence of explicit intent.

Over time, this erodes civic trust. When courts, workplaces, and public spaces become enforcement sites, people withdraw from public institutions essential to safety, cooperation, and democratic life.

These effects increasingly reach citizens themselves.

Though officially a civil immigration agency, ICE’s recent operations have moved into public-order and crowd-control spaces, involving peaceful observers and bystanders. In Minneapolis, a federal judge barred immigration agents from detaining or using force against peaceful protesters without reasonable suspicion—underscoring First and Fourth Amendment concerns.

On January 7, 2026, U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good was killed during one such operation. Federal officials claimed self-defense; eyewitness accounts and video evidence dispute that account. The Department of Justice declined to open a civil-rights investigation.

Regardless of final legal findings, the pattern is clear: when civil enforcement agencies wield criminal-style force under reduced oversight, constitutional protections erode not through explicit policy, but through routine practice.

Finally, emergency logic sustains itself. Once power depends on crisis, the crisis must be continually reaffirmed. Enforcement spreads, oversight weakens, and the boundary between exceptional authority and normal governance dissolves.

What begins as immigration enforcement becomes a broader test of constitutional restraint—one that citizens eventually encounter directly.

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Extraordinary Measures in Historical Context

ICE fits a documented historical pattern: security forces created in response to extraordinary threats tend to outlive the emergencies that justified them—and expand beyond their original purpose.

Emergency logic follows a recurring sequence:

1. A grave threat is declared
   
2. Ordinary law is deemed insufficient
   
3. Extraordinary authority is granted
   
4. Oversight weakens
   
5. Emergency power becomes permanent
   

ICE was created at step three, in response to 9/11. Two decades later, the original threat has receded, but the powers remain—expanded, institutionalized, and increasingly directed inward.

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Historical Parallels

Authoritarian regimes institutionalized this same logic through internal security forces that abandoned legal constraint. ICE is not equivalent in ideology, intent, or scale.

The comparison matters for one reason only: the mechanism is familiar.

Democracies rarely lose liberty all at once. Instead:

• Extraordinary measures become normalized
  
• Oversight weakens under urgency
  
• Enforcement spreads into ordinary life
  
• Citizens—not only targeted groups—begin to feel the effects
  

A democracy can retain formal legality while operating under permanent emergency rules.

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Rhetoric Weaponized — Condensed Claims

Over history, a familiar sequence recurs (some claims paraphrased for structure) – fueled by rhetoric: The comparison here is about institutional mechanics, not ideology, intent, or outcome.

• “The nation faces an existential danger.”
  
• “Ordinary law is inadequate to meet this threat.”
  
• “Those outside the law cannot be defeated by legal means.”
  
• “Exceptional measures are therefore necessary.”
  
• “Extraordinary authority preserves the nation.”
  

These claims are not inherently false.

They become dangerous when they are detached from time limits, proportionality, and oversight—when emergency framing hardens into permanent governance.

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Entrance Into Contemporary American Politics

This emergency logic entered contemporary American politics explicitly at the start of Donald Trump’s rise. In his June 2015 announcement speech, immigration was framed not as a policy challenge, but as a threat to national survival.

Trump opened by declaring crisis and institutional failure: “Our country is in serious trouble… We have no protection, and we have no competence.” Immigration was then described in collective, criminal terms: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” The issue was tied directly to national existence itself: “We don’t have a country if we don’t have borders.”

Having established danger and systemic collapse, Trump presented extraordinary action as the only remedy: “I would build a great wall… We need somebody that will take this country back.”

The importance of the speech lies less in any single line than in its structure. Immigration was recast as an existential threat, ordinary governance was declared inadequate, and extraordinary enforcement was positioned not as a policy choice, but as a necessity. This is how crises are rhetorically made—not through a single decree, but through a narrative in which law appears insufficient and emergency power begins to feel permanent long before it is formally declared.

This is how an existential crisis is made—not through a single decree, but through a narrative in which law becomes inadequate, power must expand, and emergency measures begin to feel permanent long before they are formally declared.

The Empirical Reality Behind the Rhetoric

At the time of Donald Trump’s 2015 announcement speech, the empirical reality of immigration in the United States bore little resemblance to the existential crisis he described.

Immigrants made up about 13.5 percent of the U.S. population—a meaningful share, but not historically unprecedented. Most had lived in the country for years, many for decades, and were embedded in American families, workplaces, and communities.

Crime data contradicted the threat narrative. The best available research consistently showed that immigrants—documented and undocumented—were less likely to commit violent crime than native-born Americans. Communities with higher immigrant populations often experienced lower rates of violent crime. There was no evidence of an immigration-driven crime wave.

Economically, immigrants were working and contributing. They filled essential roles in construction, food production, caregiving, hospitality, manufacturing, and high-skill sectors like engineering, medicine, and technology. Millions paid taxes, supported local economies, and helped sustain labor-force growth in an aging country.

Entrepreneurship tells the same story. Immigrants were at least as likely as native-born Americans to start businesses and were overrepresented among founders of high-growth companies. The archetype of the American entrepreneur—risk-taking, adaptive, starting from nothing—has long been an immigrant profile.

None of this suggests immigration posed no challenges.

But it exposes the gap between measured reality and existential rhetoric.

The danger was not immigration itself.

It was the framing.

By casting immigration as a collective criminal threat and a crisis of national survival—despite evidence of lower crime, economic contribution, and entrepreneurial vitality—emergency logic was activated. Once a phenomenon is defined as existential, ordinary law appears inadequate, and extraordinary measures begin to feel necessary.

A final caveat: presenting truth against fear-based rhetoric rarely changes minds. Fear does not arise from data, and it is seldom undone by it. But naming the gap still matters—not because facts alone persuade, but because unchecked narratives are how emergencies are manufactured, normalized, and sustained.

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Bottom Line

The phrase “extraordinary threats require extraordinary measures” is not wrong.

It is incomplete.

History shows that extraordinary measures rarely remain temporary. They become institutions, acquire momentum, and quietly reshape the boundary between state power and individual liberty.

ICE is not an aberration.

It is a case study in how emergency logic hardens into normal governance.

The danger is not that leaders name threats—but that once threats are declared existential, law becomes conditional and extraordinary power becomes routine.