WE PREFER OUR ICE CRUSHED.

ICE—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—exists on paper as an institution meant to enforce immigration laws and deport those deemed threats to public safety. Under the Trump administration, its mission expanded aggressively into interior enforcement, turning up in cities far from any border and framing its work as part of a broader “law and order” agenda that justified increasing force and visibility. The justification was always the same: this is necessary work.

In reality, that justification has not accounted for what ICE actually does to a community. Enforcement does not stay within policy reports. It plays out on neighbourhood streets, outside schools, and in ordinary lives. What is framed as necessary procedure becomes an excuse for violence.

What ICE is doing does not just affect adults, but also directly reaches into the lives of young children who cannot possibly understand or consent to what is happening to them. On 20 January, Liam Ramos, a five-year-old child was detained outside his Minnesota home after returning from school. An image captured of this moment has been circulating around social media. It captures the child wearing a blue hat with bunny ears and carrying a Spider-Man backpack as he’s led through the snow toward an SUV. There is nothing threatening about him in that image. The boy’s preschool teacher, Ella Sullivan, said, “He’s a bright young student and so kind and loving. All I want is for him to be safe and back here.” The question that lingers is unavoidable: how can a five-year-old be considered a criminal worth detaining? A child that age does not understand laws, borders, or policy. He understands school, routine, and safety. To be stopped, surrounded by authority, and taken away is not “procedure” to a child.

ICE’s actions have led to unjust deaths. On January 7, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident, was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a federal operation in her neighborhood. She was driving with her wife near their home when agents confronted her vehicle. Authorities claimed the shooting was self-defense, alleging she tried to “weaponize” her car — a claim strongly disputed by local officials and video evidence. Renée was a U.S. citizen, a mother of three, and had just dropped her 6-year-old son off at school. She was not an immigrant, nor a threat. The fact that she and her wife were queer women cannot be separated from the power and prejudice at play. An ICE agent chose lethal force where none was necessary, killing her in front of her wife and leaving three children without their mother. Her mother, Donna Ganger, described her as “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known… extremely compassionate,” someone who had “taken care of people all her life.” That contrast, between who Renée was and how she was killed, exposes the moral collapse at the center of ICE’s operations.

Just weeks later, Minneapolis witnessed another killing at the hands of federal agents. On 24 January, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed during an immigration enforcement operation. Federal officials were quick to label him a “domestic terrorist,” claiming he posed an imminent threat to law enforcement. But video footage and eyewitness accounts tell a very different story. Multiple outlets, including The Guardian and The New York Times, report that Pretti never drew his gun (which he was legally permitted to carry) and was instead holding his phone when officers confronted him. Witnesses say agents escalated the encounter rapidly, tackling him to the ground before opening fire. In footage from the scene, officers were later seen clapping, a detail that has horrified the public and deepened anger across the city.

Like Renée Good, Pretti was not a statistic. He was a healthcare worker — someone whose job was to save lives — killed during an operation supposedly meant to uphold the law. The sharp contrast between official statements and what the videos show has left communities questioning how easily lethal force is justified, and how quickly human lives are erased under the language of “security.” These people were people’s friends, neighbors, and community members—individuals whose lives were cut short in public streets. They are the human cost of a system that treats enforcement as inevitable and legitimacy as separate from accountability.

These events have ignited widespread outrage. Protests across the country have called for accountability, transparency, and a fundamental reevaluation of federal immigration enforcement. Demonstrators from New York to Los Angeles have marched, mourned, and demanded justice for Good and Pretti, uniting behind the demand that federal agents be held responsible and that such operations be reined in.

It’s easy to say politics is uncomfortable. But what’s happening now goes beyond discomfort. It’s about lives being ended and childhoods disrupted under the guise of enforcement. Legal language has become a shield for violence, one that obscures the reality of people killed in their own neighborhoods and children taken without understanding why. When human lives are treated as collateral, something has already gone terribly wrong.