America stared into the void this week, but pulled back. Federal action in the streets of Minneapolis goes well beyond immigration. It is a test of the government’s power to use violence against its own citizens — a dividing-line between liberty and tyranny. And it will not be the last.

After immigration agents killed Alex Pretti on January 24th, and the Trump administration slandered a good Samaritan as a would-be mass murderer, America was spiraling towards civil unrest. Happily, protesters showed restraint. Public opinion has turned against ICE, the catch-all brand for America’s deportation machine. Even some conservatives have doubts. And Donald Trump grasped that immigration, once one of his strongest issues, has become a liability. On Jan.  26, the president sought to ease tensions, including by putting the operation in Minneapolis under new management.

And yet the stand-off between ICE and local people continues. Mr. Trump has not renounced his power to impose a paramilitary force on unwilling states. Americans should be on their guard.

ICE has a reason to be in America’s cities. Mr. Trump has a mandate to deport illegal immigrants. Having dramatically curbed illicit flows across the southern border, he claims to be seeking “the worst of the worst.” But that is not what his enforcers are doing. Recently, only 5% of those detained have been people convicted of violent crimes. Instead ICE’s brutal means indicate ends that are darker than immigration-control, for several reasons.

One is that the administration appears to believe ICE should be a law unto itself. In their zeal to fill quotas and live out their macho “destroy the flood” culture, ICE agents have reveled in the wanton use of force. Administration officials have nonetheless told agents that they enjoy “absolute immunity” as they go about their duties and, a judge complains, have defied court orders. They rushed to brand Mr. Pretti, and Renee Good, a woman shot earlier, as terrorists. They have strained to ensure that investigations into those killings are safely under their own control. Impunity is a formula for more violence.

ICE Tramples the Constitution

Another reason to worry is that ICE and its leaders are trampling the constitution. By insisting that witnesses and protesters are criminals, they are denying people their First Amendment rights to free speech and association. In a state like Minnesota, when the head of the FBI says people cannot bring a gun to a protest he is denying their Second Amendment rights. And when ICE agents stop or arrest people without cause and search their houses without a court warrant, they are denying their Fourth Amendment rights.

Last, deploying ICE to Minneapolis, a city with relatively few illegal immigrants, seems to serve a disturbingly broad agenda: to draw attention to ethnic Somalis caught up in a benefits scandal there; to punish “sanctuary cities” that limit the help they extend to ICE; or perhaps as theatre to scare people and deter all kinds of migration to America. Mr. Trump could also be trying to boost support for Republicans by portraying Democrat-run cities as disaster zones where lawless immigrants are protected by violent radical-left extremists.

The most disturbing possibility is that the president is creating a militia which answers only to himself. From the Texas Rangers to Grover Cleveland’s use of the army and marshals in the 1890s, Americans have periodically worried about the unaccountable use of state violence. Abroad, from El Salvador to the Philippines, would-be despots often turn the army and the police against their people in the name of keeping order.

Supporters of Mr. Trump will treat this argument as wildly overblown. Early in its history America set up mechanisms to curb the president’s power. Citizens have the right to bear arms. The states have national guards to counterbalance the army. The Insurrection Act sets out rare circumstances when the president may legally use the army to control the mob. The courts and Congress can step in.

ICE Is the Perfect Political Tool for Trump

Yet ICE is ideally placed to sidestep protections. Illegal migrants are spread across America and Mr. Trump asserts that Democrats deploy them as voters. Agents can therefore stage provocations pretty much anywhere with impunity, including during elections. When a protest eventually turns violent, it is politically useful and a justification for further deployments. And when politicians complain about ICE, as have the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis, the Justice Department can investigate them for obstructing federal officers.

A theme of Mr. Trump’s second term has been the accumulation of presidential power. Even if the 47th president does not use federal agents as an all-purpose coercive tool, the 48th or the 49th might — and, Republicans should remember, they may be Democrats. If Mr. Trump has no anti-democratic designs on ICE, he should be eager to limit its actions.

That would not be hard. The president should honor his pledge that the investigation into the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti will be “honorable and honest.” As a first step on the long road to winning back public trust, ICE agents should be better trained, stop wearing masks, and start wearing body cameras and identification numbers. Deportation quotas lead to brutal tactics and must end. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has blatantly lied. She should be fired.

After this week, even that would not remove the specter of a presidential militia. Hence the courts need to make clear that states can in fact prosecute federal agents who commit crimes; that ICE’s view of the Constitution is wrong; and that the federal government cannot ride roughshod over the states. And Congress needs to hold the administration to account. An early test, due as this was published, was withholding funds from Homeland Security unless Mr. Trump agrees to reform ICE.

Americans woke up to a grave threat this week. But you cannot defend a republic with opinion polls alone. The guardians of America’s institutions should see Mr. Trump’s change in tone not as a signal to relax, but an opening to force change.

By The Economist/Victor J. Blue

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited, 2026