Opinion

Cory AlpertFormer White House staffer

January 20, 2026 — 12:00pm

January 20, 2026 — 12:00pm

In what felt like a single moment, the world became witness to the shooting of Renee Good. In the depths of a Minnesota winter, she parked her car to observe ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, her right as a US citizen. Multiple videos of the incident show a verbal altercation no worse than you’d see outside any bar on a weekend night, something we’d expect a trained officer to brush off. Instead, despite facing no risk from a car moving at a crawl, a masked officer fired three shots. Good was killed just eight blocks from where George Floyd was asphyxiated by a police officer five-and-a-half years ago.

In the six minutes after the shooting, ICE agents prevented first responders from providing aid that could have saved the 37-year-old mother’s life. They drove their cars away, obscuring evidence. Instead of following protocol that required officers involved in a shooting to separate, they huddled together to, seemingly, co-ordinate their stories before facing scrutiny.

Heavily armed federal law enforcement agents during an immigration raid in south Minneapolis earlier this week.Bloomberg

Trump’s political identity is tied, as much as anything else, to a browbeaten fear of immigrants. ICE has become the muscle in a massive overcorrection from the lax immigration enforcement of the Biden era that has targeted migrant communities regardless of their legal status. We have seen a pattern emerge over the past year, in which Trump sends in ICE to conduct raids, which terrifies communities, provoking protests that Trump then uses as a prelude for further crackdowns. We saw this in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles – all led by Democratic mayors and governors.

In these raids, which began on the day Trump took office, we see masked agents deployed to the streets of American cities to round up anyone who might be a migrant and ship them off to harrowing prisons in Florida and El Salvador.

To add insult to that injury, Trump acolytes like Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, pose for photos in front of prisoners like it’s the cover of Vogue. They have deported legal US residents to countries where they knew lives would be at risk. When they get stopped by the courts, they re-assess and send their prisoners somewhere else, hoping the world will forget and move on.

There is of course value in enforcing immigration laws, but what Trump has done goes far beyond any reasonable process, making a farce of a country whose motto on the door reads, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. ICE now has a budget on par with that of the entire Australian Defence Forces. As Joe Biden once said, “don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

National Guard members gather near a large portrait of President Donald Trump on the Labor Department headquarters in Washington, in January.AP

In autocratic regimes, security forces become instruments of the leader’s political project. To defy them is not mere civil disobedience but an attack on the state itself.

The rule of law is replaced by an obsessive and relentless focus on an enemy identity** –** whatever best serves the leader. For Rodrigo Duterte, it was anyone who had a passing association with drug traffickers, emboldening Philippine police and people linked to police to kill thousands. For Vladimir Putin or the ailing Ayatollah, it’s anyone associated with the powers of the West.

Australia had its own brush in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen days in Queensland, where anyone vaguely linked to a trade union or opposition politics found themselves on the wrong end of a Queensland Police Service that had been turned into Bjelke-Petersen’s goon squad.

Whatever rules the members of ICE break no longer matter because to oppose them means to oppose Trump’s moral code. In the aftermath of the Good shooting, JD Vance and other administration mouthpieces were willing to lie about what they saw. Vance said the agent was justified in shooting her, as “she tried to run somebody over with her car”, a claim not supported by the video. Trump wants his voters to believe the world is chaotic and dangerous, presenting a mortal threat to their society, to justify handing him increased power to punish enemies.

An LAPD officer pushes an elderly man during No Kings Day protests in June that followed ICE raids.Getty Images

Is it any wonder that a member of Trump’s goon squad has shot dead a woman who clearly posed no threat? These officers are responsible not to the people they are sworn to serve but to the president whose agenda is worthy of that violence.

It is striking that many of the ICE agents – and the MAGA crowd who cheer them on – have emerged from the ranks of COVID libertarians. Masks and vaccine mandates were the hallmarks of dictatorial ambition. Now, these same libertarians say that Renee Good is to blame for her own death, that if she had just complied, she wouldn’t have been hurt.

The point was never about the power of the government. They do not oppose authority per se. Rules meant to protect the vulnerable felt like oppression while rules that target a group they’ve been encouraged to fear feels like safety.

As a result, people across America are terrified of their neighbours. This is one of Trump’s goals, to make so many interactions in society so political – everything from rants about paper straws to lies about migrants eating pets – that every conversation must revolve around him, a political leviathan chasing down our every moment.

But every regime will eventually end.

After two decades of near-total political power, Joh Bjelke-Petersen absconded to political nothingness, leaving behind a police service that had lost the trust of the people. The police and citizens learned that loyalty mattered far more than the law, damage that far outlasted one man.

Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.****

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Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served the Biden-Harris Administration for three years.

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