I started this page at the beginning of the Trump Administration and I need to update it now to address ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis yesterday.
Minnesota prosecutors do not need DOJ’s permission or cooperation to charge Ross with murder. The fact that DOJ and the FBI have decided not to cooperate with Minnesota’s investigation does not block Minnesota from arresting Ross. He is reportedly a Minnesota resident and assuming that ICE does not scurry him out of the state to avoid arrest — something I fully expect from ICE — the Minnesota police can arrest him.
DOJ will undoubtedly remove a criminal action against Ross to federal court, but if DOJ dismisses the case a future Department of Justice that actually believes in Justice can refile an indictment against Ross. Murder has no statute of limitations.
But I didn’t write this post to clamor for the prosecution of Ross. Lots of others are doing that and I don’t add much by piling on. What I want to write is a recommendation that prosecutors in Blue states and Blue cities, and even brave prosecutors who believe in the Rule of Law and the Constitution in Red jurisdictions, bring indictments against other ICE agents for violations of state laws.
We do not need to wait until the next time ICE murders somebody before state and local prosecutors file criminal charges against ICE agents. I wake up every morning to new videos of ICE agents pulling people from cars, tackling people on streets and sidewalks, shoving protesters who are doing nothing more than shouting at them, spraying pepper spray in protesters’ faces, and grabbing cameras from people documenting their actions. Those are all assaults punishable as crimes in all states. There are many videos of ICE agents threatening people exercising their First Amendment rights with handguns and that is a crime everywhere. We have all seen the videos of ICE agents handcuffing people and throwing them into cars and many of those people have turned out to be lawful residents and US citizens. In fact, the media have identified that more than 170 US citizens had been detained by ICE as of October, several for multiple days, and that total has certainly risen since then. fhttps://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/16/immigration-ice-arrests-propublica-white-house-deportation-immigrants-sweep/ So much for Brett Kavanaugh’s assumption in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo that for “stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U. S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.” https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf. ICE does not have authority to arrest US citizens, so when they do that, it is kidnapping — another crime in every state. In many states, it is even a criminal violation for ICE agents to be roaming the streets with their faces obscured by masks, and Blue jurisdictions need to start enforcing those laws too.
To be clear, I do not think that police in Blue jurisdictions should be pulling their guns on ICE agents and attempting to take them into custody in the cases of simple assaults or warrantless arrests. Trump would want nothing more than a shootout between ICE agents and police in a Democratic city in order to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in federal troops to occupy the city. But when police are eyewitnesses, or they have video evidence of ICE assaults, they should be swearing out warrants for the arrest of the ICE agents involved. Similarly when US citizens are eventually released from ICE custody, the response by Blue jurisdictions should be to issue warrants against the ICE agents who made the false arrests. In fact, when Blue jurisdictions learn of lawful residents in ICE custody, they should consider filing charges against the ICE agents who seized them in the first place. The Trump Administration has repeatedly shown that its response to the detention of legal aliens is to cancel their immigration status and deport them from our country, rather than admit that ICE made a mistake by detaining the legal alien. A pending criminal case in which the most critical witness is the legal alien is a good ground for not deporting the alien.
Blue jurisdictions need to look for cases with good sets of facts before initiating criminal actions against ICE or ICE agents. If ICE agents chase down and tackle a brown skinned person and it turns out he is not in the country legally, the courts will look for ways to sustain the ICE action even if ICE did not have legally sufficient grounds for the detention in the first place. Similarly, Blue jurisdictions should think twice about prosecuting ICE agents who respond to thrown objects and obvious assaults by US citizens, even though ICE does not have authority to arrest US citizens and should call in the local police to make arrests in those cases. Blue jurisdictions should be looking for cases that are going to rein in ICE and the authoritarian Trump regime, not create case law that provides a judicial imprimatur for ICE’s lawlessness.
I recognize that many ICE agents are masked and the police may not know the identity of ICE agents committing crimes. Crowdsourcing the identification of ICE agents and the use of AI for that task is happening now, and police can use crowd-sourced IDs as the starting point for their investigations. But even if police cannot identify masked ICE agents committing certain crimes, the most important goal of filing charges against ICE agents is to create case law reining in ICE, rather than putting individual agents behind bars. Fictitious name indictments can serve that purpose. They can also serve as the predicate for seeking injunctive relief in state and federal court against ICE.
I also recognize that DOJ is going to move to have any cases filed in state courts against ICE or ICE agents removed to federal court. Most state judges are going to grant these motions but some judges may have the backbone to deny motions for removal when DOJ is clearly seeking removal solely for the purpose of quashing meritorious actions. And we should not discount the sheer incompetence of DOJ under the Trump Administration. Trump has chased off many of the competent attorneys in Main Justice, as well as in some of the US Attorneys Offices. Blue jurisdictions can overwhelm the understaffed offices in DOJ with a barrage of actions in state courts, and the overworked and incompetent attorneys left in DOJ will screw up some of these cases. And you never know when judges will find creative ways to render justice in the face of a DOJ using normal practices and precedents to seek unjust results.
Finally, this strategy is going to tie up DOJ defending the unlawful and unconstitutional actions of ICE, DHS and other federal agencies. That will make it harder for DOJ to pursue the agenda that Trump and Pam Bondi want DOJ to focus on — vindictive prosecutions of Trump’s political enemies and people who protest Trump’s illegal and authoritarian actions.
************************************************
Trump has made it clear that he will not allow federal government officials to enforce the Constitution and the multitude of federal laws that Elon Musk and his DOGE boys are violating in their ongoing takeover of federal agencies. So state and local governments need to step in to fill the void to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and our Constitutional Rights. A good way to start would be for the State of Maryland and Arlington and Fairfax Counties and the City of Alexandria in Virginia to issue warrants for the arrest of Elon Musk, Edward Coristine, Akash Bobba, Ethan Shaotran, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian and Gavin Klige for theft from federal agency files of the personal information of each jurisdiction’s citizens in violation of state law. If any of these criminals ever step foot out of the District of Columbia, they need to be thrown in jail.
It will be tricky for the DC police to arrest Musk and the DOGE boys and put them in the DC jail. The Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia is part of the Musk coup and he has already threatened to arrest anyone who stands in Musk’s way. And unfortunately this acting US Attorney is the head of Law Enforcement in the District and could immediately order the release of Musk and his fellow DOGE conspirators from jail. But the DC police, FBI, DEA and all the other law enforcement agencies in the District of Columbia are also sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.
So I call on courageous DC Police officers, FBI agents and other law enforcement personnel in the District of Columbia to uphold their oaths and help block this coup. They should arrest Musk and his crew and bring them across the border to the Arlington County jail. And then we should hold them here for violations of state and federal laws and the Constitution and deny bail while the coup is ongoing.
No doubt Trump’s US Attorneys will seek to remove prosecutions to federal court and then dismiss them. Or file writs of habeas corpus to have the DOGE plotters released. And the Republican Governor and Attorney General of Virginia will no doubt direct Arlington or Alexandria or Fairfax to stand down. But local police and prosecutors and judges in our Blue jurisdictions should ignore orders from Trump and his minions. Our loyalty must be to the Constitution and not to a President/wannabe King and prosecutors and judges who will trample the Constitution in subservience to the wishes of the wannabe King.
I recognize that the preceding sentence reads like a prescription for a constitutional crisis. But it is written in recognition that we are in a constitutional crisis now. And our local Blue jurisdictions should start acting like they know it.
Hopefully before anyone reads this blog and has any thought to follow my advice, federal judges will have enjoined Musk and his employees from entering any federal properties or accessing any federal records. And hopefully Trump will order his minions to obey court orders. I think the first is likely but I am not optimistic about the latter.
On This Day In The Revolution 