SACRAMENTO — In authoritarian Russia, critics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have an odd habit of falling out of windows. These likely acts of defenestration serve as a stark warning for other critics, although the official line is usually that they tripped or committed suicide. In the democratic United States, opponents of ICE agents in Minneapolis sometimes also meet unusual fates.
For instance, court documents show that ICE agents claimed Mexican immigrant Alberto Castañeda Mondragón experienced bone fractures and head injuries after he “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall” — an explanation that was disputed by the medical staff that attended to his injuries and a judge ordered the man released immediately.
Critics of the Trump administration have yet to fall out of windows, but after a Philadelphia man emailed a Department of Homeland Security prosecutor to support an Afghan man involved in a deportation case, he “received an email from Google notifying him that an administrative subpoena had been sent to them from the Department of Homeland Security ‘compelling the release of information related to your Google Account,’” according to The New Republic.
Donald Trump is free to express his admiration for Putin, but it would be nice if he better understood that the United States operates under the rule of law, guided by the Constitution. Instead, the president is doubling down on ICE raids that obliterate the concepts enshrined in our founding document and engaging in the kind of disinformation more closely associated with Moscow.
As others have noted, the Trump administration’s outrageous whoppers regarding myriad ICE incidents — that, say, victims of ICE violence were insurrectionists or terrorists — are a loyalty test. The more preposterous the claim, the more it separates blind MAGA followers from everyone else. The distortions echo the Kremlin’s approach: they’re a warning to its foes.
Trump is notorious for spreading easily debunked nonsense on everything from stolen elections to economic statistics to absurdly inflated numbers about drug interdictions, but his ICE claims are heading into uncharted territory.
For instance, the administration claims the feds are merely going after the worst of the worst. But as CBS News recently reported, “Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump’s first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses.”
The administration claims it stands up for the right of free speech, but we’ve seen videos of ICE agents trampling on private property to harass and arrest people who have done nothing more than video the actions of the agents from afar — something long protected by the courts under the First Amendment.
The administration claims it is following the law with its immigration enforcement show of force, but a federal court last month found the following: “Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. … This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
These are assaults on the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment. The administration’s view that protesters shouldn’t be allowed to carry firearms to a protest are an assault on the Second Amendment. Its open defiance of governors treads on the 10th Amendment. And yet self-described “constitutional conservatives” mostly seem OK with it all because, I suppose, it aligns with their end goals of tougher immigration enforcement.
The administration’s conservative (and even some libertarian) supporters argue that removing illegal immigrants is a legitimate government function, so Americans should back ICE agents even when, apparently, they engage in Constitution-bending thuggery. That is a preposterously weak argument. Just because an agency is performing its legitimate duties does not give it the greenlight to behave in illegitimate ways. The entire purpose of the Constitution is to limit how government agencies behave while they exert their powers under the law.
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Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at [email protected].
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