In my meandering imagination, I was a liberal, yearning to join the anti-ICE peaceful protest in Minneapolis…
February 6, 2026
Image via Public Domain Pictures. Licensed by CC0 Public Domain. Kennet Kjell Johansson Hultman has released this “Daydream Art Deco Girl 1910” image with permission in the public domain.
In my meandering imagination, I was a liberal, yearning to join the anti-ICE peaceful protest in Minneapolis and trying to figure out how I would let our government know how strenuously I object to their policy of deporting illegal aliens.
I summoned up an article I had read by the esteemed Daniel Greenfield in which he spelled out in vivid detail the exact kinds of people I would be supporting, defending, and advocating for, all who had been charged with or convicted of the following crimes:
- rapists;
- a “child fondler”;
- sex predators;
- child-molesters;
- pedophiles;
- the sodomizer of a young girl;
- another charged with “strongarm sodomy of a girl”;
- criminal sexual conduct, fourth degree, of a victim 13 to 15 years old;
- murderers;
- muggers;
- “lewd or lascivious acts with a minor”;
- “sexual exploitation of a minor — prostitution”;
- “enticement of a minor for indecent purposes”;
- “sexual exploitation of a minor — material — film”;
- “strongarm sodomy of a boy”;
- “sodomy-girl-strongarm.”
“This is what Renée Good died for,” Greenfield wrote.
“Yes,” I responded to Greenfield, in my fantasy as a liberal. “Keep them all here. They are human beings. They are victims of poverty, of deprived upbringings, of mean people who want to deport them. That’s not who we are!”
How I Joined the Ranks
In my fantasy, I didn’t quite know how I would make my appearance at the anti-ICE protest. I thought about digging out my “make peace, not war” t-shirt, but I couldn’t find it. Then I looked for some fairly recent placards I carried quoting phrases from Antifa and BLM, but the only ones I found in my garage were yellow with age and damaged by humidity.
And then it hit me. What better thing could I do to demonstrate my strong but peaceful intentions than to emulate Alex Pretti and bring my nine-millimeter semi-automatic Sig Sauer handgun with me, complete with two high-capacity magazines, and tuck it into my waistband?
But uh-oh. As writer and editor Olivia Murray points out, the P320 Sig Sauer Mr. Pretti was wielding is notorious — and has generated numerous lawsuits — for going off spontaneously, even when in a holster!
Then I asked a liberal friend and avid supporter of the anti-ICE protestors what he would do if his daughter were raped, and he knew who the rapist was.
“I’d kill him…with my bare hands!” he said with conviction.
“That’s different,” he said.
Then I asked an even more left-wing neighbor what she would do if she looked out her second-floor window and saw a guy trying to break into her house.
“I’d call the Sixth Precinct,” she said, referring to our local police department.
“So you believe criminals should be arrested…and tried and convicted?” I asked her. “Like the criminals they’re deporting in Minnesota?”
“That’s different,” she said.
Maybe it was the sheer hypocrisy, or was it the stupidity, or was it just simple boilerplate leftism? Whatever it was, it snapped me out of my liberal, leftist, progressive fantasy with a start. It was the instant that my background as a N.Y. State–certified psychotherapist, who had practiced for over 20 years, recognized the stunning irrationality — or was it the clinical insanity? — of those who have joined this protest, including the elected officials who are fomenting all the chaos and violence.
There’s Good, and There’s Stupid
Less than a month ago, when Renée Good, at a similar demonstration, decided to obstruct traffic and then drove her 4,000-pound SUV into an officer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who was rounding up illegal alien career criminals. She was shot and killed for her attack.
The craven media tried to soften her image by calling her a poet, just as they wanted the public to know that Alex Pretti was an oh, so caring intensive-care nurse.
But why was Mr. Oh, So Caring wearing a tactical vest or failing to have a carry ID for his loaded gun, which is mandated by Minnesota law? Didn’t he learn his lesson the week before, when he sustained a broken rib after he scuffled with federal agents at another anti-ICE protest? Here is the video that shows a man identified as Alex Pretti attacking ICE agents and kicking out their tail lights before he is tackled.
In addition, writer Tyler Durden reports that “according to Jeanne Massey, a neighbor, Pretti was part of a ‘Signal ICE’ group chat of volunteers who organized a sophisticated operation to track ICE activity in real time and alert each other when agents were in the area.”
Tip of the Iceberg
According to writer and publisher Terry A. Hurlbut, “the State of Minnesota, alone (so far) among the fifty States, is making insurrection and rebellion against the United States.” He suggests that the reason may be because the Trump administration discovered such massive fraud — the president now estimates it at $100 billion — from Minnesota alone, and that is why Governor Tim Walz; Mayor Jacob Frey; and “government employees, in key positions, are actively supporting criminal behavior,” including
- obstruction of justice,
- stalking and attempted murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and even
- stalking and attempted murder of journalists sympathetic to the rule of law.
Washington Times columnist Don Feder reminds his readers that “every totalitarian dictatorship started with violence in the streets. The French Revolution started with the storming the Bastille and ended in the Reign of Terror. The Russian Revolution began by Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace and ended in firing squads and gulags. National Socialism started with Brownshirts brawling in the streets of Weimar Germany and ended in World War II and the Holocaust.”
Feder adds,
Don’t be fooled by the carefully planned chaos unfolding in Minneapolis. Today’s street theater isn’t just about immigration enforcement any more than the 2025 “No Kings” protests were just about challenging President Trump’s authority, or the 2020 George Floyd riots were just about so-called police brutality.
All are part of a revolution in the making that could spell the end of democracy in America. Left-wing agitators plan to destroy constitutional government. The battle to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting murderers and rapists is the latest front in a wide-ranging war.
Businessman and author Kenin M. Spivak believes that “the heated campaign against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is really an effort to open the borders and keep them open.”
Most of the recent vitriolic opposition to ICE is a feint by unrepentant open-borders progressives. They won the first round when Joe Biden was elected president, lost the second when Donald Trump returned to office, and are back for a rematch. For most, the venom has little to do with how ICE performs its mission and everything to do with preventing the Trump administration from undoing Biden’s brazen deluge of illegal migrants.
Grown-Up Time
After witnessing this wildly out-of-control situation, the adults in the White House, led by President Trump, sent ICE acting director Tom Homan to Minnesota to take direct command of immigration enforcement, to speak directly to Gov. Walz (who my late always-diplomatic mother would call “not overburdened by brains”), and to Mayor Frey (didn’t we all know this kind of irritating rabble-rouser in school?).
As reported by Pamela Geller, the president confirmed that he and Walz spoke by phone in a “very good” conversation.” Although the governor bashed Pres. Trump ahead of his meeting with Mr. Homan, apparently he changed his tune after they met.
But Jack Davis reported that “they met, they talked, and they did not agree.”
“President Trump has been clear,” Homan said. “He wants American cities to be safe and secure for law-abiding residents — and they will be.”
Frey, on the other hand, said that “all he wants is for the federal government to leave his city,” adding defiantly that “Minneapolis Does Not and Will Not Enforce Federal Immigration Laws.”
Always, Always, Always Follow the Money
It costs millions upon millions of dollars to wage a revolution, an insurgency, a massive movement to undermine a government, especially the all-powerful American government.
And you can bet that most of the people participating in this anti-government, anti-law-and-order action are not millionaires or billionaires, but rather regular working-class or middle-class people who are being handsomely paid to act out their benefactors’ fury.
Who is paying for all this? According to reporting by Cristina Laila for GatewayPundit.com, super-sleuth James O’Keefe “went undercover inside the Minnesota Mob” and learned that “an entire network of NGOs, unions, and activist groups including ‘SEIU’ [Service Employees International Union], ‘Make the Road New York’, and the ‘Independent Socialist Group’ are all behind this chaos.”
Newsman Bill O’Reilly was also curious and learned that a man named Neville Roy Singham, a Chinese billionaire, has been funneling “tens of millions” of dollars into America to “radical organizations to foster rebellion and destroy the government.”
“This isn’t some organic thing,” O’Reilly adds. “This is a foreign power!”
Moreover, writer and economist Antonio Graceffo details how the Minneapolis-based activist group Defend 612 “has mobilized tens of thousands of supporters through encrypted communication networks to disrupt federal operations” through a complex funding structure linked to “liberal foundations, shell entities, politicians, and third-party organizations, some of which ultimately trace back to billionaire George Soros.”
Defend 612, Graceffo adds, “provides anti-ICE ‘know your rights’ training, organizes and supports protests, and maintains a decentralized rapid-response network designed to interfere with ICE enforcement in real time.”
And looky here! Craigslist now advertises for protesters in California, offering $6,500–12,500 a week, depending on one’s level of chaos.
What Now?
If history is any measure, the left-wing anarchists and hired patsies aren’t going anywhere. But neither are President Trump and his team of law-and-order advocates.
On the law-and-order side, an appeals court just sided with the Trump administration to lift Minnesota protest curbs on ICE agents. Now it remains to be seen if the Congress will pass the legislation the president has just proposed to end sanctuary cities across the country.
But even more recently, the president has decided on a strategic pullback and has issued this statement:
I have instructed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, that under no circumstances are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help. We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.
Gotta love it…let them devolve and self-destruct on their own!
Journalist Don Feder sums the whole mess up neatly: “The battle of Minneapolis will decide whether America is governed democratically or ruled by self-appointed elites backed by goon squads.”
As for me, I can only hope that the god of mercy spares me another liberal fantasy!
Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author. Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.
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