This Is America: ICE, Erasure, and the Project of Control

Nicole B.
Jan 28
4 min read

Protesters gather in Minneapolis on Jan. 23, 2026. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

“This isn’t who we are.” “This is absolutely counter to everything our country stands for.” “We are better than this.”

These words are being echoed by elected officials and protesters alike in response to recent killings by ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis. Renée Nicole Good, a 37‑year‑old mother of three, was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in early January. Weeks later, Alex Pretti, a 37‑year‑old ICU nurse, was fatally shot while helping another protester. Bystander video contradicts DHS claims that Pretti approached agents with a handgun; he was holding only a cell phone. These actions expose the deadly consequences of unchecked federal power paired with manufactured narratives.

For Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other marginalized communities, this is not new. State violence and the distortion of truth have shaped daily life since this country was founded. From early slave patrols to modern policing, so-called “enforcement” has long functioned as a tool of control, with unequal justice baked into the system.

These deaths are infuriating and devastating, but they are also part of a pattern that has shaped American life for centuries.

NPR's Throughline podcast takes a deep look at the history of policing in America.

The myth of enforcement

CNN’s Sara Sidner put it plainly: “If these videos are all the evidence investigators have, then DHS is lying.”

The handling of Renée Nicole Good’s death reveals how far federal authorities are willing to go to muddy the facts and protect themselves. Rather than pursue a civil rights investigation into the officer who killed her, officials shifted scrutiny toward Good herself. Resignations followed, as did public outrage. What emerged was not accountability, but a familiar tactic: blame the dead, protect the institution.

Alex Pretti’s killing mirrors that pattern. The Justice Department has declined to open an independent civil rights investigation, allowing the DHS to oversee the response to its own officers. This is what control looks like in practice – not only the use of lethal force, but the power to rewrite reality afterward.

Former NYPD Lt. Darrin Porcher says in “no way, shape, or form,” does Pretti approach officers with any threat.

A History of Power and Violence

Professor Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, notes that outrage over slave patrols in Northern cities was never primarily about slavery itself. It was about neighbors being ripped from their communities and terror brought to people’s doorsteps. Individuals held a wide range of views, Cobb says, but they were united in rejecting the idea that someone they knew could be violently removed and disappeared.

That instinct remains today. Americans may disagree about immigration policy, but most recoil when they see their neighbors hunted, detained, or killed under the banner of “law and order.”

These systems share a lineage. They are instruments of state power designed to intimidate, remove, and fracture communities – especially those rendered vulnerable by race, class, or immigration status.

The killings in Minnesota are not anomalies. They are part of a continuum.

Erasing the past and controlling the present

Control does not end with physical violence. It extends into education and memory. Historical erasure mirrors the manipulation of current events. Recently, the National Park Service removed a slavery exhibit at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, erasing stories of the nine people enslaved by George and Martha Washington. Empty walls and a handwritten sign reading “Slavery was real” remain.

Members of the National Park Service removed signage around the President’s House historic site on Independence Mall on Jan. 22, 2026.

Both acts – lying about present-day violence and erasing historical truth – serve the same purpose: preserving authoritarian power and shielding institutions from scrutiny.

Control over bodies and control over memory have long been inseparable tools in the American project.

Is this an inflection point?

Though Minnesota has largely been the focus in recent weeks, these violent federal operations are taking place across the country – from California to my home state of Texas. The fatal shooting of Keith Porter Jr. in Los Angeles and the terrifying ICE raid on Arnulfo Bazán‑Carrillo and his son in Houston have sparked vigils, protests, and mounting demands for transparency and justice.

Jsane Tyler, the cousin of Keith Porter killed by an off duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve, spoke at a local vigil. Photo credit: Minerva Garcia/San Fernando Valley Sun

And public pressure has already shown cracks in the proverbial armor. Following weeks of public outcry, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino is leaving Minneapolis, and federal officials have signaled plans to reduce the number of agents in the city. This doesn’t undo the harm, but it does confirm something crucial: mounting pressure still works. And letting up has consequences.

At the same time, the ICE detention system is expanding at an unprecedented scale. The number of people held in custody has climbed by more than 75% in the past year, sweeping up thousands of people with no criminal record and locking them into a system that is increasingly opaque, overcrowded, and deadly. This is precisely why public attention cannot waver.

Can this moment become a larger movement for justice? That depends on what we do next.

What can we do?

In a recent social media message, actress and activist Kerry Washington underscored what many advocates across the country are feeling: Silence is complicity.

Here are ways to take sustainable action now: