I’m not sure why Denver Mayor Mike Johnston chose this time to, uh, poke the bear — has anyone, by the way, ever seen an orange bear before? — and his masked, jackbooted ICE thugs.
But I like it. I like it very much.
I like it when public officials lay it on the line about how the modern version of ICE is little more than an undertrained, overpaid paramilitary outfit of Trump loyalists who terrorize — and that’s the apt word — communities. We all watched, in some horror, Donald Trump’s bloody siege of Minneapolis, which is still ongoing, if on a slightly smaller scale.
Johnston watched, too. And, as much as anything, this is his response to the siege — with a pledge to Denverites that the city will do everything it possibly can to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening here. And that there’s a plan if ICE does come in force.
“Our goal is not to provoke, but to protect,” is how Johnston puts it.
The goal, he added, is to enter Denver in a coalition of cities across the country whose residents share the same concerns and who are developing similar plans.
And so Johnston told the obvious truth — that many Denverites live in fear about what ICE agents might do if they come en masse to the city. We know Trump has threatened Colorado, and particularly Denver’s neighbor Aurora with a “bloody story” before. We know he’s engaged in a blood feud with the state because Gov. Jared Polis — whose approach toward Trump is far from confrontational — hasn’t pardoned Tina Peters.
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SUBSCRIBEIf Trump is so petty — and who can doubt this? — that he would use Johnston’s word as a pretext to assault Denver, it’s important to show Trump, in clear language, that Denver and cities across the country are not only watching, but are also not intimidated.
The mayor’s executive orders have become national news, which is obviously the way Johnston designed it. He gave the story first to the New York Times. He has been on national news shows. He wanted the word out. Sometimes he has gone too far — as he did when he called for, and then quickly retracted the call to place city police at the border if Trump’s troops were to attack.
This time, I think, he’s gotten it right.
And over the past weeks, Johnston has been in close touch with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as well as with mayors across the country who are readying their own responses.
“We have been putting a plan in place,” Johnston told me Friday. “But we were hearing so much fear in all the questions we were getting from our immigrant communities and from so many others who are concerned about their neighbors, we decided it was our responsibility to share the plan with our residents.”
At an announcement on the steps of the City and County Building, Johnston stood with the president of the city council, police chief, city attorney, superintendent of schools, immigrant associations, nonprofits working to protect immigrants rights and others involved.
In the order, Johnston calls for police to protect protesters if they are being attacked by federal agents and to even detain the agents if necessary. He said if someone is injured, as in Minneapolis, that city officials would move to treat any victim — even if federal agents tried to intervene. He said the city would criminally investigate any agent accused of a crime, even if the federal government is also investigating. He said federal agents cannot use city property as a staging ground for raids and other operations.
If federal agents commit felonies, the cases would be handed over to the DA or to the state attorney general’s office. Just as any other felony cases would be.
It’s not clear how much actually changes with the order — a lot of this is already in line with city protocols — but it sets a marker, not only for our residents but one for the many cities who face the same possibility and who are looking for similar answers.
On Monday, the city council is expected to pass a law banning all law enforcement from covering their faces and from going unbadged. And Johnston says he will sign it immediately.
The time is right. The story is happening today, as well as yesterday, and almost certainly in days to come. This is not the time to let up. Not when so many nonviolent migrants are being grabbed from their homes and sent, in many cases, to places unknown. This happens every hour of every day, and Trump officials say they want more.
As the mayor’s executive order noted, ICE agents “don’t just target individuals — they spread fear, tear families apart, and erode the trust that holds our community together.”
Those who protested in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities are seen as heroes. Those who died — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — are martyrs to the cause. Our reaction to the horror — to the photo of a bewildered 5-year-old, to the video of people being dragged in the street, to the fact that Minneapolis had become an occupied city, to the further fact that no one is being held responsible for the deaths — is still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Maybe even in the minds of Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller and JD Vance and Greg Bovino and, of course, Trump himself — who all lied about the deaths of Good and Pretti, while victimizing not only the victims but those who were part of the resistance. Not that we should expect any Trump administration minds to have changed.
We like to think that the protesters won in the end in Minneapolis — and they did, with Trump eventually backing down, at least publicly — but at what cost?
”It was such a heavy cost,” Johnston said. “The heartbreak, the people who are afraid to go to work, the kids who are afraid to go to schools, the norms that were broken, the lives that were lost.”
Many are now wondering if Johnston’s moves make it more likely that Trump, forever set on vengeance against any and all on his long list of enemies, would now unleash a show of force on Denver, if only to show that Trump is the only one who gets to set the agenda.
”People can’t unsee what they saw in Minneapolis,” Johnston said. “You would never expect a police officer to shoot an unarmed resident or citizen — and Good and Pretti were citizens — and not expect them to be investigated. You look at the murder of George Floyd. The officers were investigated, charged and convicted. There was accountability.
“And then you look at the deaths of Pretti and Good — no accountability, no investigation, no charges brought against masked and unbadged agents who killed peaceful protesters.”
It can happen here. Like it happened in Chicago, in L.A., in Portland, in the cities that didn’t make the national news.
Johnston is the chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ big-cities alliance — composed of the country’s 75 largest cities — and also of its immigration task force.
For him, the issue of federal overreach is, as it should be, top of mind.
”As mayor,” he says, “it’s my job to run the city.”
But it’s also his job not to run from danger — and the great danger, as Johnston made clear, is that Trump brings his war on the rule of law and against law-abiding migrants to our city streets.
Yes, it can happen here. And, no, we can’t back down.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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