ICE’s lethal conduct in Minnesota forces a reckoning with cruel and unusual punishment carried out by the federal government.
Barely two weeks apart, two American citizens have been slain in Minnesota by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the Twin Cities. Their deaths raise important questions—not just about the violation of First Amendment freedoms, but also the trampling of Eighth Amendment protections that bar the government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Indeed, the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti are so horrendous and brazen—not hidden, but flaunted in front of cameras—that they evoke historical parallels to lynching and vigilante public execution. Yet, unlike America’s lynchings of the past with Black bodies, tortured, bullet-ridden, torn apart, set aflame and hanging by nooses from trees and bridges while onlookers strangely gawked with satisfaction—here the bystanders and protesters are traumatized.
As if torn from the pages of a family violence casebook, ICE’s recent conduct in Minnesota displays the hallmarks of domestic abuse. The United Nations defines such conduct as “behavior in any relationship … used to gain or maintain power and control,” often paired with physical and emotional threats. This includes actions that “frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone.” The U.N. says these patterns “can occur within a range of relationships,” and warns that incidents “are rarely isolated, and usually escalate in frequency and severity … culminating in serious physical injury or death.”
This framework tragically mirrors what has unfolded in Minnesota, with heightened enforcement sparking widespread outrage and protests.
From both legal and ethical perspectives, it’s time to break up with ICE.
Minnesotans now fear ICE agents unlawfully raiding their homes. Many have been threatened while standing on their front lawns. They have been terrorized, threatened and pulled out of their cars while doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional rights and protecting their neighbors.
This is modern-day domestic violence—not between partners, but wielded by the federal government through unlawful and unconstitutional force against its citizens.
Both Good and Pretti were 37 years old. Good, a mother of three, “suffered three clear gunshot wounds, including one to her head,” according to her family’s lawyers. Their findings were based on an autopsy commissioned by her family in the wake of unsubstantiated claims that she was attempting to run over an ICE agent. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared Good “a domestic terrorist.”
Then, over the weekend, the world watched in horror as federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs medical center. By the accounts of patients, friends and family, he dedicated his life to caring for others. According to reporting from The New York Times, photos and videos taken from multiple angles, analyzed by news organizations and posted online, ICE agents “appear to fire at least 10 shots in a span of five seconds,” rattling Pretti’s body with bullets, including in the back. This all after being tackled by a group of ICE agents.
ICE activities in Minnesota are the type of conduct that the constitutional framers sought to guard against.
As she did after Good’s killing, Noem excoriated Pretti and offered an account at odds with widely viewed video evidence, going so far as to claim, “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”
Bystanders and witnesses to these killings report lasting trauma and fear. Many now worry they could be next, after seeing people physically targeted and psychologically harmed—again in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s explicit prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by the government.
In 1791, 235 years ago, the Bill of Rights was ratified and adopted as part of the U.S. Constitution—specifically aimed at the federal government, and later applied to the states. The text of this packet of 10 amendments was largely inspired and derived from the Magna Carta five centuries before (1215) and the English Bill of Rights (1689). These 10 amendments start boldly, addressing basic, fundamental freedoms now challenged by the federal government: the freedom to speak, assemble and even petition the government to “redress grievances.” Each year, when I teach constitutional law and the First Amendment, I remind my students that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect Americans against the potential tyranny of the state.
Throughout the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution makes clear that Americans shall be shielded from abuse and retribution by the state regarding speech, religion, privacy, their homes and criminal prosecution. Surprisingly overlooked in recent months are the important protections against cruelty and unusual conduct by the government. ICE activities in Minnesota are the type of conduct that the constitutional framers sought to guard against.
In a recent judicial order, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from retaliating against people engaged in peaceful, unobtrusive protest activity, including observing federal enforcement actions, and from arresting or detaining individuals participating in such nonviolent protests. The order was issued in response to extraordinary harms alleged by six Minnesota residents: Susan Tincher, John Biestman, Janet Lee, Lucia Webb, Abdikadir Noor and Alan Crenshaw. These plaintiffs sought court protection after reporting constitutional violations by ICE agents during “Operation Metro Surge.”
One of the examples noted in judge Menendez’s order:
Tincher was acting as a legal observer when masked federal agents approached her on a public sidewalk and, without warning, tackled her to the ground and handcuffed her. Officers then transported her to the federal Whipple Building in Fort Snelling, Minn., where parts of her clothing and her wedding ring were removed during her detention. She was held in shackles for hours before being released without charges.
Her co-petitioners allege they endured similar treatment at the hands of ICE agents—actions they contend far exceeded any lawful authority and violated their constitutional rights.
Minnesotans have been terrorized on their streets and in their neighborhoods—not by Laotian or Somali immigrants or Native Americans, but by ICE agents. Perhaps that is the point.
The tragic deaths of Good and Pretti cast a dark shadow on the United States, its immigration policies and enforcement tactics under the Trump administration. As Judge Menendez’s order implies, the problem is not conducting “routine operations” in Minneapolis, but rather the extraordinary and chilling behavior that compelled the court to intervene.
Their deaths raise serious questions about the federal government’s respect for American citizens, the rule of law, and the judiciary. Clearly implicated and dramatized in recent weeks in Minnesota is ICE’s diminishing respect for civil liberties and civil rights of ordinary citizens in the United States.
Given all of this, it’s time for a divorce. Congress can go back to the drawing board on immigration, shaping ethical policy that respects life and human dignity, and avoids cruelty.
