Fascism in the US, as the Trump Administration Defends Death Squad Executions of US Citizens

28.1.26

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Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both photographed moments before they were executed on the streets of Minneapolis by immigration enforcement agents.

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In the space of 17 days, US immigration enforcement agents — members of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Border Patrol — executed two US citizens, in broad daylight, on the streets of Minneapolis, who posed no threat to them.

We know that Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old mother, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, were executed, and posed no threat to the agents, because of multiple videos recorded on smartphones at both locations.

Renee Nicole Good, who had just driven her six-year old son to school, was smiling at, and speaking to Jonathan Ross, the agent who executed her, as she began maneuvering her car past him, less than 30 seconds before he shot her, once through her windshield, and twice through the side window, and then called her a “f*cking bitch.”

Alex Pretti, who was monitoring immigration enforcement agents’ actions, as was his right, was filming on his phone, and trying to protect a woman from assault, when he was pepper-sprayed and set upon by officials who, after finding that he was legally carrying a concealed weapon, removed it from him and then, as he was kneeling on the ground, executed him with gunshots to the back of his head. In the space of 30 seconds, he was shot ten times.

In both cases, the agents then prevented medical personnel from assisting either victim, and made no effort to keep the crime scene intact, but what was most astonishing, and unprecedented, was the manner in which senior officials in the administration, including Donald Trump himself, Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Kristi Noem, the Director of Homeland Security, immediately rushed to present a version of events, contradicted by the videos, that sought to exonerate the killers, and to blame the victims.

In a deranged rant on social media, Trump claimed that Renee Nicole Good “violently, wilfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer”, which was patently untrue, adding that he “seems to have shot her in self defense.” He also wrote, ““It is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in a hospital”, even though video footage showed him walking away from the murder scene completely unscathed.

Kristi Noem, meanwhile, called her a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”, while both Noem and Stephen Miller called her a “domestic terrorist.”

After the murder of Alex Pretti, in response to critical posts on X by the Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and on the Democratic Party’s account, Stephen Miller went on the offensive in unhinged posts on X, claiming that “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,” and also calling Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”

At a press conference, meanwhile, Kristi Noem falsely claimed that, while “DHS law enforcement was conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault”, Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots.” She added, gratuitously,  “This violence is directly fueled by hateful rhetoric from Minnesota’s sanctuary politicians. It must end now.”

At another press conference, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, leading the actions in Minneapolis, told reporters that the incident “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” even though, as Politico noted, “he didn’t provide any evidence for his claim.”

“Your eyes don’t lie”

To some extent, of course, all of this aggressive posturing in the face of the evidence  has backfired. When people are told that they didn’t see what they saw, we’re in 1984-territory, and George Orwell’s establishment of a totalitarian, reality-denying reality, in which, as he described it, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

As Susan Page wrote for USA Today, in a column entitled, “’Your eyes don’t lie.’ Trump, ICE, a death and a turning point”, “In an era of smartphones … people don’t have to believe federal officials or journalists or anyone else. They can watch what happened themselves.” The phrase, “Your eyes don’t lie,” came from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In contrast, however, Trump and his senior officials evidently believe that reality is what they say it is. Through TV appearances, but, in particular, though the immediacy of social media, and the large reach of their accounts — which is, in part, facilitated by the algorithmic manipulations of their Trump-aligned owners — they have completely changed the way the US government operates.

Where once senior officials would generally have been wary of leaping to judgment, aware of the importance of not prejudicing any possible criminal investigations that might have been expected, now the government — very deliberately seeking to sideline both Congress and the courts — rules by social media and, very evidently, has no intention of allowing there to be any kind of investigations at all. Where ICE and the Border Control is concerned, any notion of not rushing to judgment has been erased, because the administration clearly believes that there should be no accountability for their actions under any circumstances.

As JD Vance proclaimed after Renee Nicole Good’s murder, “a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action … is protected by absolute immunity.” That was a complete lie, of course, because immunity only applies when federal officials are “reasonably acting within the bounds of lawful federal duties.”

After uproar from legal experts, Vance has since walked back from his claim, going so far as to suggest that he never said it, but in practice the government has been persistently behaving as though it was true.

Efforts to investigate the circumstances surrounding Good’s death have been repeatedly and deliberately blocked. Federal authorities refused to co-operate with the local authorities, leading the the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) to announce that the agency had “reluctantly withdrawn” from the investigation.

In addition, although the FBI “opened an initial probe into the shooting, and an agent in Minnesota found that ‘sufficient grounds’ existed to open a civil rights probe into Ross, DOJ officials chose not to pursue it”, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claiming, “We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger. We never do.”

Within the DOJ, four senior officials in the civil division, which investigates police killings, responded to the cover-up by resigning, as did six federal prosecutors in Minnesota, and on January 24 it was reported that Tracee Mergen, the supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office who had attempted to launch an investigation, had resigned, following pressure from FBI headquarters, run by another obedient and inadequate Trump stooge, Kash Patel.

Similar obstruction is also taking place in connection with Alex Pretti’s murder. DHS officials prevented local police from visiting the scene, even though the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had secured a warrant signed by a judge ordering them to be allowed access. The judge, Eric Tostrud, also granted a temporary restraining order intended to prevent the DHS from “destroying or altering evidence”, which was an unprecedented move, although, as with Renee Nicole Good’s crime scene, it seems to have come too late to prevent agents from covering their tracks.

How did we get here?

The reason ICE and Border Patrol agents are executing US citizens in broad daylight is because the Trump administration wants to sow terror on the streets of the US mainland, and particularly in locations under Democratic control, both to stifle all dissent, as their Gestapo thugs go about their business, but also because their target is not just immigrants.

Just as Trump targeted DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs when he took office, and initiated anti-“woke” initiatives, the animus of the Trump administration is to silence or erase all opposition to what is, fundamentally, its authoritarian white supremacism; hence, their relentless attacks on “activist judges” in the courts, and their efforts to shut down or take over critical mainstream media — both hallmarks of fascism — and even an effort to portray the entire Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization”, as Stephen Miller claimed in August.

Stephen Miller, speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News on August 25, 2025, when he claimed that the Democrats were “a domestic extremist organization.”

Speaking to Sean Hannity on Fox News, Miller said, “The Democrat Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

By doing so, Miller spelled out, pretty explicitly, that everyone on the left, everyone who doesn’t agree with the administration, or refuses to conform to the executive branch’s unconstitutional usurping of all power, is an enemy and will be dealt with accordingly.

Ostensibly, the Trump administration’s fascistic opposition to anyone perceived as an enemy began with immigration, but as Martin Niemöller, the German theologian who opposed the Nazis, may well have said, had he been writing in 2026, “First they came for the undocumented migrants.”

It’s certainly true that Trump’s promise to unleash the largest deportation program in US history, which he sold on the campaign trial, and unleashed on Day One of his presidency, consumed his first weeks in office, and made it appear that it was his primary aim.

It began with a tsunami of executive orders and presidential proclamations, seeking to create the illusion that the US was facing an “invasion”, and declaring a “national emergency” on its southern border; in other words, the illusion that the US was at war, both on its southern border, and internally.

The language used was abominably racist, hysterical and fundamentally untrue. In “Protecting The American People Against Invasion”, Trump claimed that the Biden administration had “invited, administered, and oversaw an unprecedented flood of illegal immigration into the United States”, consisting of “millions of illegal aliens”, many of whom, he alleged, “present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans”, while others “are engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities.”

In “Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border of the United States”, he claimed that “America’s sovereignty is under attack”, that the southern border “is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans”, and alleged that “Foreign criminal gangs and cartels have begun seizing control of parts of cities, attacking our most vulnerable citizens, and terrorizing Americans beyond the control of local law enforcement.”

However, the hysteria with which Trump and his pliant dimwit harpies — especially Kristi Noem, her sidekick Tricia McLaughlin, and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary — smeared everyone as “terrorists”, as ICE and Border Patrol agents began randomly kidnapping and “disappearing” migrants across the country, soon began to unnerve all but his most fanatical base.

What happened, essentially, was that people began noticing that their neighbors, who they knew to be hard-working and law-abiding, were being assaulted and abducted, which seemed rather more significant than whether or not they were strictly undocumented, or were caught up in a maze of byzantine immigration procedures that can last for years, or had been granted opportunities to stay and work in the US under Joe Biden, who had created specific programs in an attempt to practically address a refugee and migrant crisis that was, realistically, impossible to stop.

The gulf between hysteria and reality

Early examples of the gulf between hysteria and reality were the 178 Venezuelans that Trump sent to Guantánamo in February 2025, after he — or his advisors — cynically thought that drawing analogies between the “war on terror” and his own “war on migrants” would reinforce their hysterical allegations about “heinous criminal illegal aliens.”

The plan backfired, however, when the DHS posted photos of the first arrivals, describing them all as “terrorists” and members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and family members, recognizing them, were able to confirm to US journalists that the administration was lying, and that all its claims were, fundamentally, based on randomly rounding up Venezuelans with tattoos, which were foolishly put forward as somehow “proving” gang membership. Within two weeks, all but one of the men were repatriated — although Trump has continued to use Guantánamo to hold migrants from a variety of countries ever since.

A composite image of the first Venezuelans sent to Guantánamo in February 2025.

Undeterred, Trump then sent more hapless Venezuelans to an extraordinarily brutal mega-Guantánamo in another country, the CECOT prison in El Salvador, but again ran into humiliation when, once more, it was revealed that all their claims about gang membership were largely if not entirely unfounded.

In July, all 252 of the Venezuelans who were “extraordinarily rendered” to CECOT were returned to their home country, as part of a prisoner exchange that involved the release of ten US nationals and permanent residents from Venezuelan prisons, along with around 80 Salvadorian political prisoners.

Perhaps this had been the plan all along, but it seems likely that Bukele had actually been appalled by all the negative publicity that he had become embroiled in because the Trump administration was so fundamentally unconcerned about whether or not the men sent there were gang members or nothing more than hapless refugees or economic migrants who had done nothing more than enter the US illegally in search of work.

When the administration eventually discovered that they were humiliatingly and relentlessly being exposed as liars, they briefly changed tack, focusing on highlighting migrants who, they claimed, had been convicted of crimes — “heinous” crimes, obviously — and working assiduously to send them to third countries, regardless of whether or not their homes countries would have accepted them back.

Initially, this involved arrangements for men to be dumped in South Sudan and Eswatini, although, in July, 36 named men with alleged criminal convictions were sent to Guantánamo, although they were all subsequently removed, mostly, it seems, to their home countries, although the full details are profoundly elusive, because the Trump administration seems to have little or no interest in either transparency or record-keeping.

Stephen Miller’s obsession with target-driven ethnic cleansing

Crucially, however, the malevolent fascistic driver of the deportation program — not Trump himself, but Stephen Miller — has only ever intended the “heinous criminal illegal aliens” rhetoric to provide cover for his real aim, which has always been to ethnically cleanse the US of everyone he regards as subhuman. This means not only every undocumented immigrant, but also any immigrants currently involved in legitimate immigration proceedings, and the 1.3 million immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (primarily from Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine and Honduras), many of whom have had those protections abolished since Trump returned to the White House a year ago.

In turn, it’s reasonable to expect that Miller, if unchecked, will also seek to deport anyone else he regards similarly — no doubt, naturalized citizens, and even those born in the US.

According to a Washington Post article in April 2025, the “private goal” in high-level discussions in the White House, driven by Miller, and with Trump’s co-operation, was how to deport “one million immigrants a year”, a seemingly unachievable number, far in excess of the record 400,000 that President Obama oversaw.

Miller, however, is obsessed, and in summer, in what was farcically described by Trump as his “big, beautiful bill”, he secured a huge budget increase for immigration enforcement — roughly $170 billion, including, as Joshua Zeitz explained for Politico, “$45 billion for new detention centers and $30 billion to hire 10,000 new ICE officers.” As a result, he noted, “ICE will now become the largest law enforcement agency in the country.”

Zeitz warned, however, that, “as ICE transforms into a massive, un-uniformed, masked domestic army — one that critics fear will have carte blanche to arrest, detain and deport persons without cause or due process, whether they enjoy legal status or not — there’s reason to believe it could backfire.” He added that there was “little denying that mass deportations on the scale that Trump and Miller envision will necessarily require brute displays of force that may shock the public conscience, even among people who theoretically support the broader goals.”

Trump and Miller’s “war” on US cities

At the time, Zeitz was responding to immigration enforcement agents’ violent invasion of Los Angeles, where Trump portrayed resistance as an “existential threat to the country”, and claimed that he needed to “liberate Los Angeles” from a “migrant invasion.”

This was just the first of a number of unprecedented attacks on US cities that, in September, Trump claimed, at a gathering of military leaders in Quantico, Va., constituted “a war”, “a war from within.”

“America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within,” he added, calling the “enemies” he identified as being “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

He also said that “defending the homeland” was the military’s “most important priority”, and urged the military leaders to regard US cities as “training grounds.” “They’re very unsafe places”, he added, “and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.”

After San Francisco, invasions were initiated in Washington, D.C., in Memphis, Portland, Or., Chicago and New Orleans, before arriving in Minneapolis in December. Reinforcing the notion that the US was at “war”, the operations were given military names — “Operation Midway Blitz” for Chicago, for example — and, for Portland, Trump sent troops to counter what he called “domestic terrorists” in a “war-ravaged” city, even though this was an entirely fictitious scenario.

A scandal that won’t go away, in large part because of profoundly disturbing conditions in ICE detention facilities

Although other people have been killed in immigration enforcement operations, it’s only in Minneapolis that the outrage has stepped up to become a national and an international scandal.

In part, sadly, this is because both of the victims are white, but it’s also because of cumulative awareness of how fundamentally brutal and inhuman the entire enforcement and deportation process is, not just on the streets of US cities under siege by masked, unaccountable thugs, empowered to execute whoever they want, whenever they want, but also in the violent and fundamentally unaccountable ICE detention facilities across the country — existing facilities that are becoming desperately overcrowded, and new facilities being established via ICE’s unprecedented budget hike.

Credible reports by NGOs, journalists, lawyers and victims of ICE’s increasingly savage and ever-expanding prison system confirm it as a gulag of horrific violence and intimidation, cruel and arbitrary punishment, horrendous overcrowding and the systematic deprivation of basic necessities, including adequate and edible food, water and medical treatment.

Across the entire system, what is also apparent is a very deliberate lack of transparency and accountability, with those held routinely deprived of contact with attorneys, and elected representatives also routinely excluded from making visits.

To cite just a few examples, in December Amnesty International published a devastating report about conditions in two facilities in Florida — Krome (the Krome North Service Processing Center), an existing facility, and “Alligator Alcatraz” (the Everglades Detention Facility), which opened in July last year, particularly condemning the systematic use of “torture and enforced disappearances” at both locations. One Cuban man held at Alligator Alcatraz called it a “copy of Guantánamo”, which appears to be no exaggeration, as these facilities represent the violent and lawless injustices of “war on terror” brought to the US mainland.

Donald Trump visiting “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida on July 1, 2025, just before it opened, accompanied by Kristi Noem and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok).

Also in December, the ACLU and other NGOs highlighted horrendous conditions at Camp East Montana, on the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, a new $1.2 billion facility intended to hold up to 5,000 “detainees”, which is located on the site of a former WWII Japanese-American internment camp. As with the facilities in Florida, food is inadequate (or worse), outbreaks of raw sewage are widespread, conditions are cramped, with, often, no opportunities for outside recreation, the provision of medical care is alarmingly poor, and arbitrary and often severe violence is widespread.

As in Florida, too, those held are regularly pressurized into accepting deportation without being allowed to exercise any of their rights. Although many are resisting the pressure, it is unknown how many of those held have already “disappeared”, as is the case with “Alligator Alcatraz”, where, in September, the Miami Herald reported that it had been unable to locate “the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained” there in July. In some cases, this may have been because, as a state-run facility, the prison’s authorities are not obliged to use ICE’s database, but it’s impossible to know, because Florida doesn’t have a system for finding out who is in custody, meaning that they may well have been “disappeared’ without trace.

As well as exposing horrendous conditions in these and other facilities, and the alarming prevalence of extra-legal “disappearances”, reporters have also been uncovering a shocking death toll in ICE’s prisons — 32 known deaths in 2025, the highest rate since 2004, shortly after the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were established in the wave of paranoia and authoritarianism that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Profiles of these 32 victims of ICE’s homicidal brutality were included in a comprehensive report published by the Guardian on January 4, which stated, “They died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died at ICE detention centers and field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals, but were still under ICE custody. In some cases, their families and lawyers have alleged, they died of neglect, after repeatedly trying and failing to get medical care.” In some cases too, it should be noted, those who died may well have been murdered.

The Guardian also explained how those who died rarely fitted the government’s hysterical rhetoric about “heinous criminal illegal aliens.” As the article stated, “Some of those who died in detention had arrived in the US recently, seeking asylum. Others had arrived years ago, some as young children. Some had been apprehended on criminal charges or had served time for convictions; others had been picked up in the administration’s indiscriminate ICE raids.”

ICE’s facilities are clearly out of control. As Mike Ludwig reported for Truthout on January 17, “The number of people imprisoned by ICE increased by 75 percent to nearly 66,000 in 2025, and despite repeated claims by administration officials about targeting ‘the worst of the worst’, nearly 74 percent have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse immigration database. ICE’s ‘roving patrols’ and ‘indiscriminate raids’ have contributed to a 2,450 percent increase in the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day, according to the American Immigration Council.”

Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the Detention Watch Network, told Truthout that “ICE is now operating nearly 200 jails nationwide after opening or reopening more than 130 facilities in 2025”, and, in its Fort Worth report, the ACLU noted that new detention sites were opening every few weeks, and anticipated that Fort Dix in New Jersey would be “the next military site the Trump administration will use for mass immigration detention”, also noting “reports of ICE scouting a Coast Guard base in New York.”

This needs to end

Clearly, what needs to happen now is for the entire mass deportation program to be abandoned, but that seems unlikely given Donald Trump’s deep-seated and fundamentally implacable racism. However, Trump is also a survivor, and has already begun to distance himself from the outrageous lies about ICE’s open-air executions that he himself played a major part in promoting.

It seems that Gregory Bovino has been chosen as a sacrifice, banished from Minneapolis as Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, takes his place. Calls are also mounting for Kristi Noem to be sacked, although, at present, Trump is defending her.

In truth, however, no significant change to the deportation program can happen unless Stephen Miller is removed from his job. As Greg Sargent explained in a forensic condemnation of Miller’s ugly philosophy for the New Republic last month, while MIller regards immigrants as a threat to white “civilization” — “If you import the Third World, you become the Third World” being a key quote of his as Trump’s presidential campaign got underway in 2024 — his mass deportation plans ignore the overwhelming extent to which immigrants assimilate, and they are also economically insane, because an aging population needs more, not less immigration, and the economy will tank otherwise.

As Sargent stated, however, “Miller’s alternative is a horror. He has set in motion a vicious math problem: His deportation machinery is arresting people faster than they are being removed. To hold them, he’s now looking to build out a network of vast warehouses. We’re going to end up with a massively expanded immigrant carceral state at an enormous cost to all of us, both in taxpayer dollars and in the searing social conflict that Miller’s masked storm troopers have unleashed on the streets of US cities.”

Greg Sargent wrote these words before the executions of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, which have only emphasized how disturbing the descent into fascism, led by Trump and Miller, is in reality — death squads on the streets, and proliferating torture prisons from which there is no way out for increasing numbers of immigrants who have never committed a crime.

Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans, while welcoming efforts to remove violent criminals, have no interest in targeting hard-working, law-abiding immigrants for whom, instead, paths should be sought to establish their legal status. In polling unveiled on Friday by the New York Times and Siena University, “61 percent of respondents said ICE’s tactics had gone too far, compared with 26 percent who said they were ‘about right’ and 11 percent who believed they did not go far enough.”

Meanwhile, a new YouGov poll found that “46 percent of Americans somewhat or strongly support abolishing ICE, more than the 41 percent who somewhat or strongly oppose getting rid of the agency.”

Will it be enough for the tide to turn?

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation via PayPal or via Stripe.


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23 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:

    My reflections on the execution, by immigration enforcement officials, of two US citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — on the streets of Minneapolis, both captured in videos recorded on cellphones, and the extraordinary and unforgivable decision by senior Trump administration officials to deny the evidence, blaming the victims, and seeking to exonerate their killers, made by Trump himself, Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security director Kristi Noem.

    Faced with unprecedented condemnation of its actions, and of the violent impunity of ICE and Border Patrol agents, Trump has finally started to recognize that the tide is turning against him, but because his brutal, arbitrary mass deportation program is at the heart of his second presidency, it seem unlikely that he will do what is required, and shut the entire malignant operation down.

    I trace the history of the deportation program over the last year, including the “invasions” of major US cities, an extraordinary increase in funding for ICE’s operations, and the proliferation of new prison facilities, where torture, abuse and “disappearances” are rampant, and where, last year, 32 “detainees” were killed.

    At the heart of this nationwide malevolence is Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, who is so obsessed with stopping and reversing immigration to the US that it is reasonable to assume that, for him, the claimed focus on deporting undocumented migrants with criminal records was only ever useful to provide cover for his real aim.

    This has always been to ethnically cleanse the US of as many immigrants as possible while similarly destroying all opposition to his plans; hence, his description, in August, of the entire Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization”, and the demonization and disposability of, essentially, anyone who opposes him; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, for example, both of whom he described as “domestic terrorists.”

    In pursuing his malignant vision, Miller is clearly implementing fascism in the US. Of course, he works for Trump, who is evidently supportive of his vile racism, which reflects his own dark hatreds, but, as opposition grows, will Trump support a vision of a “racially pure” America that not only requires terror on the streets and an expanding network of torture prisons, but also the ruthless and continuing suppression — up to and including executions on the streets of US cities — of everyone who dares to dissent, or will he step back from the abyss? The very future of the United States depends on his decision.

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    Vincent L. Guarisco wrote:

    Great essay! Thanks for sharing. We have much to do and it shall be done.

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks so much for the supportive words, Vincent. Very much appreciated. And I share your positive message about the need for everyone to come together to oppose this. After Trump’s first year, it’s apparent that describing the establishment of fascism in the US isn’t an overstatement.

    One key question right now is whether the Democrats will recognize that they have massive opportunity to reset the dial before the midterms, or if they will continue to be as useless (or even complicit) as usual, but, even if they fail, the uprising and solidarity of the people is absolutely essential.

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    Jeanine Molloff wrote:

    Thanks Andy.

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    You’re welcome, Jeanine. Thanks for your interest. The pressing horrors of the world right now are so many that it’s hard to keep up, let alone to find the time to try and spell out in detail what’s been happening in the US over the last year in Trump’s manufactured “war” on everyone who won’t capitulate to his – and Stephen Miller’s – fascistic demands.

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    Jeanine Molloff wrote:

    Here is my latest piece on Democratic collaboration – “Senator Cory Booker is wrong—ICE doesn’t need ‘better training,’ ICE needs to be abolished”: https://www.nationofchange.org/2026/01/28/senator-cory-booker-is-wrong-ice-doesnt-need-better-training-ice-needs-to-be-abolished/

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for that, Jeanine. Hugely important to challenge the Democrats claiming that ICE just needs “reforming”, rather than abolished completely.

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    John Graversgaard wrote:

    Thanks. See also the Monthly Review for good analysis of neofascism: https://monthlyreview.org/

  9. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for the link, John. It’s so important that we all try to pay attention to critical, intelligent voices as those who control the mainstream media and social media work so assiduously to keep us ignorant and fatally diverted

  10. Andy Worthington says...

    Dan Shea wrote:

    Andy, as you know this has been my similar analysis, and we got here because of policies that began with Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” economics, or Reaganomics, a 1980s policy framework aimed at promoting growth through supply-side economics. It centered on reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, deregulation, and lowering social spending to boost investment, which supporters argued would create jobs and prosperity that “trickled down” to all income levels. He was fan of Ayn Rand’s free market economics (the Cult Queen of Selfishness), though they held to different tactics.

    Bill Clinton (D): Often described as accelerating the “Reagan Revolution” through “Third Way” politics, Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform act (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act), which dismantled the federal guarantee of assistance to the poor. He also oversaw the deregulation of Wall Street, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

    George W. Bush (R): Continued the deregulation trend, focusing on “tax relief” and cutting “burdensome” regulations. His administration furthered the shift towards privatization and reduced the federal government’s role in economic oversight.

    Barack Obama (D): While in office, the administration often followed the neoliberal “Third Way” playbook regarding economic regulation, despite an initially Keynesian response to the 2008 financial crisis. His immigration policies, while different in tone, were marked by high deportation numbers, and his administration worked to maintain the prevailing neoliberal international order.

    Donald Trump (R): While breaking with the neoliberal consensus on trade protectionism, Trump’s administration continued the economic trend of tax cuts for corporations and deregulation. Trump’s rise is often analyzed as a culmination of the “dog-whistle politics” that began in the post-Reagan era, weaponized through explicitly xenophobic and nativist rhetoric against immigrants and minorities.

    Use of Scapegoating and Social Policies

    The political strategy of blaming minorities and marginalized groups for economic decline was not exclusive to one party:

    “Welfare Queens”: Reagan’s narrative of “welfare queens” popularised the idea that public assistance was abused by (often African-American) women, a trope that informed the 1996 welfare cuts.

    Immigration and Crime: Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill is often cited for contributing to the mass incarceration of minority populations, while both Democratic and Republican administrations have used immigrants as scapegoats during economic downturns.

    The Shift to Trumpism: The political rhetoric of demonizing immigrants, Muslims, and Mexicans, which reached a peak in the Trump presidency, is seen as a maturation of the demagogic strategies previously employed by Nixon and Reagan, and continued through dog-whistle appeals by intervening presidents.
    This bipartisan, decades-long shift away from the New Deal framework created economic insecurity and political alienation, which contributed to the rise of the right-wing.

    The bipartisan creep came in little steps, with a plan with a long term view taking its time, delivering its poison to the public in small sips so the body could absorb these dangerous hiccups without realizing they had been poisoned and their democracy – the little that remained – was dying.

    I can only hope the medicine is for “the people” to see and hear the diagnosis, and resist further to accept that which is killing them and heal themselves with the remedy of Organizing Solidarity, of the People United Will Never Be Defeated, throw all the Fascist Gangsters Out of Office, Abolish the ICE Gestapo, and hold all those responsible for their treason and crimes against humanity.

  11. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for that summary, Dan. Dehumanizing neoliberalism has so much to do with the ills not only in the US but elsewhere in the west – the UK, for example. Unable to see the truth, because of decades of de-programming from any vestiges of socialist solidarity, people are susceptible, sadly, to the vile messages of the far-right, who scapegoat immigrants as the solution to all their problems.

    If Trump doesn’t fail, btw, we may well get a version of his horror show in the UK, under the reptilian Nigel Farage and his “Reform” Party.

  12. Andy Worthington says...

    If you haven’t yet seen it, do watch Anderson Cooper’s interview on CNN with Stella Carlson, the “pink jacket lady” who captured crucial film of Alex Pretti’s execution in Minneapolis. “I watched him die”, she said, “then I watched them maneuver his body like a rag doll — only to discover it was because they wanted to count the bullet wounds and see how many they ‘got’, like he was a deer.”

    This whole monstrous terror regime must be dismantled.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/27/us/video/ac360stellacarlson

  13. Andy Worthington says...

    For another insight into the brutality of ICE and Border Patrol’s operations in Minneapolis, read this account by Patty O’Keefe, a resident seized and detained after showing up with a friend to show solidarity in the face of the violence, how she was abused, and how she is haunted by the experiences of those detained alongside her, “who appeared to be of Latino and East African descent”, and whose ordeal continues, long after she was released.
    “ICE arrested me without cause. What I saw will haunt me forever”:
    https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2026/01/26/ice-detained-us-citizens-minnesota-arrests/88304880007/

  14. Andy Worthington says...

    Al Glatkowski wrote:

    Andy, DunOld can never back down, it not in his nature. He probably sees his father laughing at him and that is insufferable to his psyche. But, like a cornered rat or wild pig, he will stand his ground. Again, it’s his nature. Minnesota has become DunOld’s Boston’s Commons of the 2026 similar to what happened in the 1770’s.

    “America” is and has awakened. The spark has occurred and his cronies will once again try to stomp it out. Average Minnesotans have shown what all Americans need, a backbone. Something that neither democrats nor republicans have.

    It is, once again, a John Brown moment. Old Osawatomie has risen once again. Let’s not fail that spirit.

    Oh, and thanks for tagging me. ✊🏼

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    Good to hear from you, Al, and thanks for appreciating me tagging you. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to even find any kind of aopreciative audience for my writing in the increasingly shuttered world of social media, where huge algorithmic efforts are increasingly dedicated to making any kind of critical presence invisible.

    You’re right about “DunOld”, of course – great name! He only backs down if it’s part of a business strategy, implementing idiotic policies with some notion of leverage. What’s closest to his bitter old heart he clings to – and racism is very much part of his character.

    As you note, however, ordinary Americans – those in communities of inter-dependent people from a variety of backgrounds, not those cut off and able to exercise visions of a “pure” white America – are awakening, and in significant numbers, and must prevail.

    We don’t have the guns in the UK, for which I am eternally grateful, but the same existential battle is also taking place here, between those with tolerance, and those trapped in hateful, closed mindsets who are fixated on scapegoating minorities, and becoming increasingly hysterical about the threat “they” pose to their absurd notions of racial and cultural purity.

    What really needs to happen is for Stephen Miller to be gone. Donald may be the animus, but Miller is the lone, single-minded driver of all this Nazism.

  16. Andy Worthington says...

    Meagan Murphy wrote:

    Thanks Andy. ICE was always an awful idea. All of that money could have been used for education and to restore the environment.

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    I agree, Meagan. ICE was formed when the DHS was created, via the Homeland Security Act, passed in November 2002, still in the crucible of post-9/11 paranoia. The US has never recovered from the fearful overkill of those times, sadly.

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    Meagan Murphy wrote:

    Thank you, Andy — you’ve consistently named names and followed the truth through the crucible when others looked away.

  19. Andy Worthington says...

    🙏✊ Meagan!

  20. Andy Worthington says...

    Michael Leonardi wrote:

    Great read, Andy, very comprehensive. I doubt that they will abandon their fascist agenda, but Trump will look to re-market and re-brand it somehow. One thing that the domestic DHS debacle makes more likely is a diversionary attack on Iran.

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Michael. I’m so glad you found the article comprehensive. I have no doubt that Trump isn’t interested in abandoning his fascist agenda – or Stephen Miller – which is why it’s so disappointing, although entirely predictable, shamefully, that the Democrats won’t capitalize on it, even as polls show that the majority of Americans aren’t happy with seeing their hard-working, law-abiding neighbors rounded up and disappeared, when they were told that the administration was only targeting those with criminal records.

    Perhaps we’ll see less conspicuous ICE activity as a result of the widespread revulsion at its actions in Minneapolis, but it won’t mean much if no action is taken to prevent its ever-expanding gulag of increasingly brutal and lawless prisons.

    As for Iran, I’m hoping that Trump is listening closely to the many countries in Guly and the Middle east who are warning him that doing what Israel wants in Iran risks destabilizing the entire region to an unprecedented extent.

    We’ll have to wait and see. Life under Trump is so horribly unpredictable.

  22. Andy Worthington says...

    Michael Leonardi wrote:

    Andy, this morning i argued with someone who claims that our referring to these Gestapo tactics as fascist is purely ideological and that this is “just bad policing”, which seems to fully dismiss the ideology of Miller et al. This person, who is an American living in Italy, also claimed that Meloni is not a fascist and is “not racist”. Lots of confusion being woven out there.

  23. Andy Worthington says...

    And the disturbing resurgence of notions of racial and cultural purity often underpins these attitudes, Michael. There is no “good policing” when people, who are almost all not white, are abducted and disappeared, however orderly the manner of doing so.

    Those of us who are open-minded know that immigration enriches our societies, and also that immigrants tend to assimilate, whereas the far-right is obsessed with maintaining a fictional “purity” – and they also seem, in significant numbers, to be obsessed with the dismal fears entrenched in embracing the “Great Replacement Theory.”

    Hopefully their efforts will eventually fail. In the UK, for example, I couldn’t even begin to count the number of mixed-race relationships I know of, and the mixed-race children born as a result, which really ought to make all of these farcical notions of “racial purity” redundant.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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