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The killing of Renee Good during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minneapolis last week should shake every American who believes the Constitution is more than a museum artifact. Good — an unarmed civilian killed by a masked ICE agent — was not an isolated tragedy. Her death reflects a deeply troubling pattern of federal enforcement operating with excessive force, fear, and unchecked power.

In 2025, a series of fatal incidents linked to aggressive ICE operations dominated the news. In suburban Chicago, ICE agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas González, 38, during a traffic stop after dropping his child at daycare. Josué Castro Rivera, 25, was killed on a Virginia highway while agents attempted to detain him and his passengers en route to a gardening job. Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, 52, died after being chased onto a California freeway and struck by a car. Jaime Alanís García, 56, fell 30 feet to his death from a greenhouse roof during a workplace raid. In 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody — the deadliest year since 2004. This year, Keith Porter Jr. was killed in Northridge on New Year’s Eve by an off-duty ICE agent.

These are not accidents. They are the predictable outcomes of an enforcement apparatus built on escalation and minimal oversight — one that increasingly resembles domestic counter-insurgency, not public safety: masked agents, militarized tactics, collective punishment, and the assumption that civilian observers are hostile actors instead of people exercising constitutional rights.

The 10th Amendment makes clear that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. That safeguard exists to prevent centralized force from overriding local governance. Yet ICE and the Department of Homeland Security increasingly behave as though constitutional limits do not apply, conducting militarized raids and operating with defiance toward oversight.

Plainly said: ICE’s power is not constitutionally delegated. The federal government does not hold general police power; the states do. ICE was created in 2003 by statute, not constitutional mandate. Its agents enforce civil immigration law and do not possess open-ended authority to arrest, detain, or use lethal force against the public for dissenting from or documenting enforcement. The public retains the right to demand transparency, withdraw state and local cooperation, and ultimately defund or dismantle statutory agencies that violate constitutional liberties or public safety.

States are not required to assist federal operations that bring violence and instability into their communities, and people are not obligated to remain silent while fear is inflicted in their streets. Congress controls the budget and the scope of statutory agencies, and ICE continues to expand largely because Congress has failed to exercise any meaningful restraint.

What we are witnessing is the domestic blowback of war-on-terror logic: militarization normalized, fear and suspicion driving government decisions, and force substituted for legitimacy. Civilians are increasingly documenting operations themselves — creating a mutual surveillance state born of institutional failure and distrust. Communities are treated as hostile territory to be controlled, not people with the right to self-govern.

This political theater is draining local capacity. Cities locked into constant crisis response cannot focus on repairing infrastructure, strengthening schools, caring for the vulnerable, or building resilient local economies. None of the architects of this federal violence live here. We do and we see the direct impact.

That is why people are taking to the streets again. January 20, communities nationwide will join walkouts and local actions starting at 2:00 PM. In Tucson, members of Defend Tucson ¡Tucson Se Defiende! will gather at the Federal Building at 4:15 PM for a noise-making cacerolazo and march. Sign up: .

The Constitution gives us tools for resistance: non-cooperation, oversight, transparency demands, civil disobedience, and sustained civic pressure. These are not fringe ideas. They are constitutional ones.

If the deaths of Renee Good, Keith Porter Jr., and so many others move you, don’t stop at mourning. Learn the state’s authority. Demand that elected officials assert it. Support organizations building community defense and accountability. Show up. Document. Organize.

The Constitution is only as strong as the people who insist it be honored.

Be not afraid.