Since our last report documenting ICE’s wave of criminal brutality, the agency’s lawless warpath has only worsened.
A year under siege. Last January, 2025, The Free Thought Project documented the ways in which the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants was designed to empower and enrich the police state. Illustrating the ways in which the tactics being employed mounted a direct assault against the rule of law and the constitution not only by attacking American citizens and immigrants who were in the country legally, but also by establishing a police state presence foundational for ushering in the agendas of technocracy.
In October of last year we followed up that article with a report illustrating several instances of brutality and rights violations committed by ICE officials amid this blatantly xenophobic and unconstitutional operation, including raids on civilian apartment blocks in Chicago utilizing Black Hawk helicopters, and the deployment of chemical agents on nonviolent civilian observers.
Our article concluded with this ominous warning —
Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles are only the beginning. While not as numerous as in these aforementioned cities, acts of violence such as these documented here are already steadily on the rise in neighborhoods across the United States. As these operations expand further throughout the country the threat of violence against American citizens only increases in light of this administration’s blatant disregard for due process of law.
Here at The Free Thought Project we have long warned against the militarization of police on both the state and federal level building the standing army that our founding fathers warned of. The time for warnings is beyond us. The standing army is here.
In the months since, sadly that warning has come to pass. Instances of ICE assaults against American citizens has only increased with alarming regularity in both frequency and brutality.
Arguably the most shocking of these violent escalations occurred on January 7th, 2026, when in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, masked ICE officers aggressed towards the vehicle of Renee Nicole Good. Despite having already driven around Good’s vehicle and being fully capable of avoiding confrontation altogether, and despite Good being unarmed and peaceful, the agents would break protocol by continuing to escalate the situation leading Good to panic. As she attempted to flee from her assailants one of the masked officers, Jonathan Ross, would fire 3 rounds hitting Good in the head, killing her.
The killing lead to a firestorm of debate online, with Trump administration officials and the Department of Homeland Security attempting to justify the shooting, falsely slandering Good as a “domestic terrorist”, while others rightly decried the killing as a summary execution.
Meanwhile, an independent video analysis by the New York Times scrutinizing multiple angles of the incident definitively demonstrate agent Ross was not run over by Mrs. Good.
These facts are further corroborated by Dr. Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada whose research focuses on studying extremism and terrorist innovation. On January 8th, Dr. Lepage would post his professional analysis on Blue Sky, stating —
So when authorities say “she tried to run over an officer,” that is not a neutral description. It is a claim of intent that can be used to justify lethal force after the fact. When the state kills first and invents the threat afterward, it is not policing, it is death squad behavior.
In my expert opinion as a researcher of vehicle ramming attacks, what has been publicly described in the video evidence does not support the claim that Renee Nicole Good was attempting a deliberate ramming attack when she was shot in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026.
I have written on this tactic for over a decade. I hold a research grant on vehicle ramming attacks, and I curate what I believe is the largest database of these incidents, over 500 cases worldwide since 1987.
That work involves systematic review of footage and case files, coding what is observable, and separating intent from ambiguity, panic, and poor decision making. As a result, I have watched more video footage of vehicle ramming attacks than most people ever will.
What I see and what is being described in reporting based on video review is not a consistent with a vehicle ramming attack. Reports also indicate the agent was not in the vehicle’s direct path when shots were fired and that at least some shots were fired from the side as the vehicle moved away.
Across hundreds of cases, intentional VRAs have a “signature.” A purposeful approach line toward a person. Commitment to that line. Steering corrections that track a target. Acceleration and follow through. All of these are absent in the videos of the incident I have seen thus far.
Those indicators are the difference between “the vehicle moved” and “the vehicle was used as the weapon.” If they are not present, certainty about intent is not analysis, it is narrative management.
Furthermore it should be highlighted reports indicate that ICE and CBP have a documented history going back at least a decade of deliberately escalating situations, including stepping in front of vehicles, to create justification for the use of excessive and even lethal force. It is this author’s opinion that this tactic was employed against Renee Nicole Good.
In the days following the killing, several ICE agents were caught on camera invoking the killing as an intimidation tactic threatening protesters. “Have y’all not learned your lesson from the last couple days?” A clear veiled threat intended to imply “Do as you’re told or we’ll kill you”.
Of course, while the murder of Good is perhaps the most prominent story, it is certainly not the only one. According to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit nonpartisan news organization covering the US justice system, ICE engaged in the use of deadly force several times before the killing of Renee Good.
Furthermore, as The Free Thought Project documented, only hours after the murder of Good a separate group of ICE agents besieged Minneapolis’s Roosevelt high school as they let out for the afternoon just a few miles away. The aim of the assault was unclear, but without warning the group of masked men descended upon the students and faculty, and as the attack escalated deployed chemical weapons against them.
Much like Chicago before it, Minneapolis has become a battleground as ICE employs its Gestapo-like tactics with a complete disregard for the safety of American citizens or human dignity more broadly.
As operations have increased across the area reports have now shown agents conducting show-me-your-papers stops throughout Minnesota neighborhoods in total violation of the 4th amendment of the Constitution which guarantees protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
One woman, a US citizen named Nimco Omar, posted her experience on social media following harassment by ICE agents who stopped her without cause.
Another video shows agents accosting a 17 year old US citizen named Jonathan Aguilar Garcia in the entryway of the Target where he worked. Despite constantly asserting that he was a US citizen, the agents swiftly abducted the child in the back of their vehicle. Sometime later, seemingly after confirming his citizenship, Garcia was found battered in the parking lot of a local Walmart where the agents had left him.
Throughout south Minneapolis, which has a large indigenous population, Native Americans as well are facing mistreatment and harassment as ICE agents racially profile members of the Lakota. Among the several native peoples targeted by the federal agents, four men of the Oglala Sioux tribe were detained and held at Fort Snelling, a site historically used as a concentration camp for Native people during the Dakota removal period, amid operations targeting residents of the Little Earth Housing Project and the surrounding indigenous community. The stark irony of Native Americans being detained by immigration officials is hard to overlook.
Elsewhere, independent reporters have documented arrests of legal observers and mace being used against journalists.
Reason Magazine recently reported of an incident in which a video published by the Associated Press shows ICE agents using a battering ram to breakdown the door of a home without a valid warrant and abducting one of the residents inside. Such blatant violations of constitutional protections are becoming common practice.
Recently the AP reported leaked internal memos provided by a Department of Homeland security whistleblower showing that ICE agents are being privately authorized to enter homes without a warrant.
A similar incident occurred in Saint Paul, Minnesota as video shows a group of heavily armed men busting down the door and invading the home of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 57, without a warrant. Thao, who is a US citizen, was dragged outside in the sub freezing temperatures with barely any clothes on in front of his friends and neighbors. According to reports Thao was driven around by the agents for several hours until subsequently being dumped in the middle of nowhere.
These are only but a few of the brutal incidences that have occurred as the administration encourages these agents to act with vicious impunity. Free Thought Project writer and colleague John Vibes recently documented several more videos demonstrating ICE agents acting with callous disregard for both common decency as well as legal restraints.
Rather than attempting to rein in the lawlessness, the Trump administration has done the opposite. Several administration officials including DHS secretary Kristi Noem have asserted the patently false notion that it is illegal to film ICE agents in the midst of their operations. While others such as Vice President JD Vance and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have attempted to assert that ICE agents have federal immunity in the conduct of their duties, a claim that is not only false but incredibly dangerous.
ProPublica has documented that amid the surge of ICE operations the agents have routinely employed the use of dangerous and illegal maneuvers including the use of banned chokeholds and other tactics which restrict breathing but face absolutely no consequences, despite the fact that in late November an internal memo was circulated emphasizing the need to prioritize de-escalation. This indicates that DHS is aware of the aggressive tactics of its officers but is choosing not to take any substantial disciplinary action.
As ICE’s draconian rampage increases, so too do the protests against them increase in volatility potentially setting the stage for a calamitous confrontation. During a protest in Los Angeles one 21 year old man was permanently blinded after being shot in the face at close range by a DHS officer with a “non-lethal” round which caused a near fatal skull fracture.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, amid growing speculation that it will be the next city targeted by the rogue agency, the local chapter of the Black Panthers have warned of potential armed confrontation should ICE bring its lawlessness to the city.
Back in Minneapolis, agents recently hospitalized a six month old infant as an innocent family driving home, apparently too close to a protest despite not being involved in it, became the target of ICE officers who deployed flash bangs and tear gas inside of their vehicle, injuring both parents and six children inside, and sending the six month old to the hospital.
That same night federal forces were seen deploying carcinogenic chemical weapons on residential streets. Videos have captured agents deploying hexachloroethane smoke, HC smoke for short, a green military grade smoke agent frequently used against protesters domestically in recent years despite its known health hazards of causing vomiting, respiratory distress and even death. ScienceDirect highlights that the agent can cause organ damage, and central nervous system depression, and is regarded as possibly carcinogenic.
Despite the narrative being asserted by the department of homeland security that ICE operations are simply targeting the “worst of the worst”, the data proves that this is simply not true. According to a recent report from Reason, the majority of ICE arrestees are nonviolent or have no criminal convictions at all.
The DHS’ own data now confirm that the majority of individuals being targeted in the Trump administration’s immigration raids are simply not the “worst of the worst criminal aliens.”
Of the roughly 281,000 people arrested by ICE from January 20 through December 9, fewer than 10,000 individuals are classified as “the worst of the worst” by the DHS, according to analysis done by the Cato Institute’s Director of Immigration Studies, David Bier. Of those classified, “a majority (56 percent) of the list has not been charged or convicted of a violent crime,” according to Bier, “and nearly a quarter…had nothing but a vice, immigration (e.g., illegal entry), or non-DUI traffic charge.” Thousands of faces and names have been placed on the DHS’ list for minor offenses, like drug possession charges.
The DHS database tracks closely with previous findings by Bier. After analyzing data on immigration arrests between October 1, 2024, and June 14, 2025, Bier found that 65 percent of people arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions, and 93 percent had no violent convictions. Even more recently, data on individuals booked into ICE custody since October 1 showed an increase in the number of detainees with no criminal convictions—73 percent—and even fewer people with violent convictions—only 5 percent. (Note that Bier’s analysis estimated an even higher percentage of violent criminals in ICE custody than the new DHS database.)
The independent news outlet Mondoweiss has pointed out, as many others have, that what we are witnessing is tantamount to an imperial boomerang effect. The kind of brutality we are witnessing now on American streets is the result of decades of war mongering abroad, the face of an empire whose brutality has slowly turned inward. The culmination of the militarization of American law enforcement amid vicious occupations overseas, and those same law enforcement agencies routinely receiving training from Israeli security forces, employing the same brutal tactics of neocolonialism and apartheid on American streets.
It is no longer hyperbolic to say that we are a nation under occupation, the regime has torn the mask off to reveal the hideous monster beneath. A Frankenstein creation built by decades of collusion by the two party oligarchy. As this series of violations continues the American people must find it in themselves to stand up and resist while we still can.
