When the Executive Turns ICE Inward Like a Sword

As Charged to the Republic by the Federalist Spirit

This republic stands at a crossroads. Not on a battlefield, not in some distant foreign land, but on the streets of our own cities, American citizens have been shot and killed by federal agents deployed under the banner of “immigration enforcement” by an executive branch now wielding DHS like a sword against its own citizens. What began as one tragic killing has now become multiple fatal confrontations—each one eroding public trust, each one testing whether constitutional limits still bind those who wield power.

On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident, ICU nurse, and licensed gun owner, was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent during a federal operation amid protests over aggressive ICE tactics. Witness video and credible reporting show Pretti being sprayed, tackled, and shot multiple times. I personally watch the video recorded of the entire incident that was recorded no more than 10 feet away: for me whether lethal force was proportionate, justified, or constitutionally restrained was obviously unjustifiable.

This was not an isolated incident. It marked the third federal agent-involved shooting in Minneapolis in the same month, including the killing of Renée Good, an unarmed U.S. citizen and mother whose death has been ruled a homicide by a medical examiner. These are not statistical anomalies. They were casualties of the actions of a demagogue—of a political project that thrives on fear, rewards escalation, and teaches armed agents that restraint is weakness.

This is not merely a clash of narratives between agencies and witnesses. It is a full-blown constitutional crisis. The Executive was entrusted with enforcing federal law—but not with unleashing unrestrained force against the populace, not with transforming domestic law enforcement into a quasi-military presence absent clear statutory authority, local consent, or transparent accountability. A republic governed by law cannot survive when force replaces restraint and secrecy replaces oversight.

This was meant to be a government of laws, not of men. Yet we now see federal agents obstructing state investigators, resisting cooperative inquiry, and insisting the public accept their version of events without scrutiny. That is not how lawful authority behaves. That is how power behaves when it believes it will not be checked.

Congress holds the power of the purse and the duty of oversight. Yet through expansive appropriations and silence in the face of abuse, it has empowered enforcement agencies without sufficient guardrails or accountability. The judiciary—particularly the Supreme Court—has remained conspicuously quiet, offering no firm reinforcement of constitutional limits on domestic executive force. When the branches designed to restrain one another instead look away, the separation of powers that preserves liberty no longer exists—and when these things happen, we live in tyranny; we are under authoritarian rule.

The Framers feared this outcome with almost prophetic clarity. They warned against standing forces turned inward, against executives emboldened by fear, against citizens conditioned to accept violence as governance. The Constitution was never meant to be a parchment shield invoked only when convenient; it is a living restraint on power, demanding justification, transparency, and respect for individual rights—even when the state claims urgency.

History, however, warns us that erosion rarely announces itself as tyranny. It advances incrementally, teaching people whom to ignore first.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

— Martin Niemöller

When agents of the federal executive may spray a citizen for filming, pile upon him, discover a lawfully carried firearm, and then summarily execute him in the street, the question before us is no longer one of policy or party. It is whether constitutional restraint still binds the hand that holds the gun. Here the Founders speak—not in whispers, but in thunder.

Thomas Paine, writing in A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, warned:

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Paine was not speaking in abstractions. He was stating a rule as hard as iron: the moment a people tolerate oppression of others, it trains its government to oppress without limit. Liberty does not survive by selective application. Rights denied to the unpopular become precedents against everyone. Paine sharpened the warning further:

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

A government that cannot tolerate dissent, observation, or lawful possession of arms by the people is no longer merely failing—it is transforming into authoritarianism. And transformations of this kind do not end peacefully.

The Executive today advances with alarming confidence, expanding domestic enforcement power, blurring the line between civilian policing and military force, and daring the other branches to intervene.

Congress looks away.

The Supreme Court hopes no one notices their silence.

But in a constitutional system, silence is not neutrality. It is permission.

The Framers did not divide power for efficiency. They divided it to prevent bloodshed.

James Madison warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

That tyranny does not arrive in a single blow. It arrives incrementally—badge by badge, exception by exception, corpse by corpse. And now we arrive at the oldest question of republican government:

If Congress will not restrain the Executive, and the Court will not defend the Constitution, who, then, stands between the people and the gun?

The answer must never be no one.

By any reasoned account, in this moment it appears as if our executive branch teaches its agents that fear justifies killing, and warns its citizens that obedience is their only safety. That is not law. That is the very same creed of every despot the Founders rebelled against.

Let the record show: Some of us will not pretend this is normal. Some of us will not kneel to power masquerading as order. Some of us remember that the Constitution was written to restrain the state, not excuse it.

This is the line. And history is watching who steps forward—and who looks away.

— In The Federalist Spirit