Sometimes you can learn a lot about someone from a single moment. Last summer, my mother and I were walking through the theater district in the afternoon and came upon a human traffic jam that was caused by many people getting into line for a show while others were trying to get past. The road was full of cars so the sidewalk was just packed. There was a frail, elderly woman standing alongside her husband, who was being pushed in a wheelchair by a theater staffer. They couldn’t move, because no one would make way for them. I stopped and tried to make a passage with my body. A number of people kept walking through. This irritated me. “Jesus Fucking Christ people, everyone stop!” I said in a commanding voice. The staffer nodded at me and the old woman touched my arm and said a very soft yet sincere “thank you.” It shouldn’t have taken all of that for them to get through.
From this, one can gleam that (a) I spend time with my mother; (b) we attend plays in Manhattan; (c) I try to be helpful to others whenever I can; and (d) I get irritated with people when they make things more difficult for others, particularly the elderly, those with disabilities or children.
One of my professional rules is that I don’t teach, speak or write about issues that I do not have an expertise in. I support immigration enforcement as a lawful function of the state. I also support police and military institutions governed by clear rules, identifiable authority and accountability. This essay explains why recent ICE practices in Minneapolis undermine those principles.
My Military and Law Enforcement Background
I joined the United State Army as a tanker in 1996. After training at Ft. Knox, I joined my unit in Port Murray, NJ that fall and was immediately placed with the S-2/S-3 of the battalion headquarters company (the S-2 is military intelligence, the S-3 is training and planning).
After 9/11, I was activated that fall to guard the Hudson River bridges and tunnels from NJ into Manhattan. Our tasks were to guard against any future attacks, but to also provide the public a sense of safety and security. We had to stop and search random cars before they crossed the George Washington Bridge or entered the Lincoln or Holland Tunnels; we were given very explicit instructions on greeting everyone, identifying ourselves, explaining the situation, not responding to irritation or anger with anything other than calmness and completing our searches efficiently so people could get on with their day.
Our M16s and 9mms were not loaded. We weren’t even given ammunition. I was 25 and thought it was stupid to have unloaded weapons. Master Sergeant Spadoni instructed me, “Look at Traffnic. Look at Mays. Do you want them walking around on US soil with a loaded weapon?”
“No.”
“Neither does the commander. Or anyone with any sense. Just our presence is a deterrence, and the police we are assisting have their weapons if need be.”
I served from 1996 to 2002. After that, I taught English in Tokyo, got a graduate degree in social work, taught English in Elizabeth, worked as a drug & alcohol counselor at a few treatment programs before landing at Rutgers and earned another graduate degree in public policy. Between those treatment programs and Rutgers, I ended up helping and treating a number of veterans. In 2014, I was directly commissioned into the Army as a Behavioral Health Officer. I rejoined because I wanted to help those that serve. I volunteered to deploy to Poland near the Russian border in 2019. I was the lone mental health provider for about 1200 NATO soldiers. I treated them mostly for family problems, substance misuse issues and PTSD from their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2016, I started work as the Consulting Therapist for the New York State Troopers Employee Assistance Program. Over the last 10 years, I’ve conducted trainings on substance misuse, relationships, grief, de-escalation, managing stress and generally surviving the job. I provide post-crisis counseling to sworn members who deal with child sex crimes, car accidents, witnessed suicides, homicides, dead babies, car fires where those inside burn to death and shootings. It’s very heavy.
The vast bulk of the people I treat are cops, military, veterans, fire fighters, teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers and therapists. I have a preference for people who try to help, who try to make things better for other people and who care for others. A majority of the cops and veterans I treat have differing domestic and/or international political views than me, but they get the same exact treatment that I give someone that shares my view on Ukraine or the importance of government lawyers.
ICE Agents in Minneapolis
If you support police and military professionalism, you should be concerned about the following:
Most ICE agents are wearing masks. Many don’t have information on them that identifies them as ICE. I have seen a lot of videos and pictures where they have POLICE written on their body armor, even though they are not trained, supervised or employed as police officers. Almost none of them have their name on their uniform. It is very easy to buy almost all of the weapons and equipment that ICE agents in Minneapolis are currently using; therefore, it is very easy for anyone to cosplay as an ICE agent. Anonymity is incompatible with law enforcement standards. In a democratic society (or a republic), it is essential that government actors are answerable for their actions. This greatly reduces misconduct and wrongdoing, encourages restraint, allows for accountability and helps with public trust. Masked and unidentifiable ICE agents violate all of that.
Military service members wear visible insignia, have rules of engagement, follow a clear command authority and have after action accountability. Domestic enforcement should not be less accountable than overseas operations.
Using kids as bait. It is a government’s duty to protect children. Using them as bait puts them in harm’s way and is a violation of that obligation.
This is a heinous, vile and appalling example of the failure of ICE in Minneapolis regarding child welfare laws. It is also a moral failure.
Removing an elderly man from his home in little clothing who had committed no crimes. ICE entered the home of a US citizen without a visible warrant and abducted him. He was not allowed to put on anything warmer despite near freezing weather. He was not allowed to verify his identity to the agents.
Chemically spraying a person who was already restrained. Once a person is restrained and no longer a threat, additional force must be strictly justified. Multiple lawyers have told me that the ICE agents in the below photo almost certainly violated use of force laws and that they would use Graham v Connor (1989) and the 4th Amendment to both criminally try and civilly sue those agents. To be clear, in these type of cases, courts often ask:
- Was the person already secured?
- Was there an active threat?
- Was the restraint preventive or punitive?
- Was there a less invasive alternative?
There have been many recorded incidents where ICE agents are escalating situations using an aggressive tone, loud voice and threatening language. There is not a law that requires government agents to use a calm tone or respectful language, but how they speak can be legally consequential. Shouting, demeaning language and threats may be viewed as provoking or escalating a situation. In fact, DHS has explicit policies on the importance of use of force and de-escalation. One could make a strong argument that several of the ICE agents in Minneapolis have violated their agency’s official policies.
If a state trooper, military police or corrections officer engaged in any of these behaviors, it would trigger an investigation. ICE should not be exempt from standards other agencies already meet.
Policy, Training and Character
Clearly, the United States needs to re-examine DHS and ICE policies. And to see if commanders are enforcing or ignoring those policies.
There has been speculation that a number of the new ICE agents that have been hired are military or law enforcement washouts, meaning that they wanted to join but were denied or didn’t make it through basic training/the academy or left under dubious circumstances. We do know that training for ICE agents in 2025 dropped from 16 weeks to about six to eight weeks. That’s a pretty short time to give someone a weapon and send them to deal with the American public. My training as an Army tanker lasted 16 weeks and then I was sent to my unit for further training. The New York State Police academy takes 26 weeks and then new officers are sent to work with a Field Training Officer for two months before they are allowed to operate on their own. To me, that is an incredibly stark and alarming contrast between the training of an ICE agent and a US Soldier or NY State Trooper.
Besides policies and trainings, I believe there is something else that is being overlooked. Character.
In 2018, I ran a group for the mothers of State Troopers who had died in the line of duty. I was deeply struck when one grieving mother uttered “We all had the same son.” Their boys were sarcastic and joked a lot. They could be difficult about getting their way. But they always showed up and tried to be helpful. They wanted to protect the weak. Whether they were on or off-duty, they shoveled peoples’ driveways and changed strangers’ tires. In short, they were good.
It is fair to ask what kind of background checks, screenings and interviews ICE is conducting. Because, I would argue, the kind of individual who would use a child as bait, invade the home of a mostly unclothed old man and take him out into the cold and chemically spray an already restrained individual is not good. As I stated at the start of this essay, you can sometimes learn a lot about a person from a single moment.
I believe it is a reasonable expectation that Americans know the name and organization of a government agent and can see their face. If we need to put it to a county, state or national vote, put it to a vote.
A quality government agent speaks calmy and respectfully. They are good at de-escalating. They help those that are weaker, particularly the elderly, kids, people with a disability and anyone in crisis. An ideal agent might have the added traits of being warm, kind and funny.
To make someone else angry is the lowest of all social skills. That’s why I have problems with so many people who make their living on the internet. Outrage engages. Outrage sells. But it is absolutely terrible for individual mental health and society as a whole.
In contrast, the ability to make someone feel safe, calm someone down and/or to laugh are among the very highest of social skills. Those are the kind of people we want in positions of authority.
Many of the ICE agents that are currently operating in Minneapolis appear to me to be weak, scared, callous and amoral. This looks less like modern U.S. law enforcement and more like practices we explicitly trained against. It is disheartening. It doesn’t have to be that way.
If you are a concerned citizen and are wondering what you can do in regards to how ICE is behaving in Minneapolis (or other places), here are a few things you can do:
- film them
- photograph them
- document what you saw, where you saw it and when you saw it
Don’t engage them in violence. It just escalates things. That written, if you are concerned about where things are heading and want to be completely prepared for the worst of scenarios, consider legally purchasing a fire arm and getting training with it. To be clear, if you purchase a fire arm, you should also purchase a safe. And I have a strong belief that if you own a fire arm, you might also want to purchase some body armor.
During these ICE rampages, I have often wondered where are the NRA folks who were worried about ” federal agents wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms attacking law-abiding citizens.” Where are the people who bought guns because they were concerned about tyranny and masked government agents asking for their papers?
It’s important that reasonable Americans with strong, universal moral values own guns. Sigh. What a world we live in now.
I’ll close with how an Army Veteran who served for 35 years described the ICE agents in Minneapolis:
“weak, cowardly pussies”
This piece from the New York Times was published this morning as I was working on this. It has a number of videos and goes into further detail about some of the incidents I cited.
I recommend checking out the work of Steve Vladeck. He is a lawyer who explains Supreme Court rulings.
I also recommend the work of Leighton Woodhouse, who has written about the erosion of Christian values in Trump’s America and the attack on uniform Civil Rights.
As I was working on this, another US Citizen (a legal gun owner exercising his 2nd Amendment rights) was murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis this morning. He was an ICU nurse with no history of any legal issues. He provided services for veterans.
Disclosure: During research and drafting, I used an AI system to review relevant case law and legal standards, including use-of-force doctrine, for framing purposes. All interpretations, applications and conclusions in this article are my own.