The People vs. Trump’s Police State

Friends,

Yesterday, Joan Sebastian Guerrero — a 26-year-old from Colombia with a wife and 3-year-old daughter — was killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number, according to the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Last Tuesday, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant who had lived in Houston for 35 years, running a small business — was killed when driving to work with three other men. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement began following him and shot him after they said he failed to stop his vehicle.

We may never know exactly what happened to Guerrero or Araujo because, as with Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, ICE’s accounts of both killings have been contradicted by eyewitnesses. ICE says the victims “weaponized” their vehicles — the same excuse they used to murder Renee Good. In none of the cases were agents using body cameras.

Trump is turning America into a police state. His forces are ICE and Border Patrol, the National Guard and the U.S. Army, and the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. Here’s a quick summary:

1. ICE and Border Patrol (Department of Homeland Security)

From early 2025 through mid-2026, federal immigration agents have fired on more than 20 people, many of whom were shot in their vehicles. At least seven of these people died. In some cases, video evidence has undermined the accounts initially provided by federal officials.

Over the same period of time, more than 50 people have died in ICE custody, often because authorities refused to treat acute medical conditions.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is bringing charges of “domestic terrorism” against Americans who have protested against ICE.

Eight people were recently convicted in Texas of “domestic terrorism” following an incident last year in which a police officer was shot during an anti-ICE protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center. A ninth defendant in that case, Ines Soto, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for “providing material support to terrorists” because he had transported political pamphlets in his car; his wife, Elizabeth Soto, was also sentenced to 50 years. Seven others convicted at trial received sentences ranging from 30 years to 100 years in prison for Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist convicted of attempted murder.

2. National Guard and federal troops (Department of Defense)

ICE isn’t the only federal police force killing Americans. Authorities in Memphis are investigating the second fatal shooting in four days of a city resident by federal agents sent there to to deal with crime and drug enforcement. Two days earlier, two National Guard members killed Tyrin Johnson, 20. At least two other people have been killed by federal agents in Memphis over the last two months.

Trump established the federal task force on crime by executive order last year, sending federal troops and law enforcement agents to Democratic-run cities that he claimed were overrun with crime. All four of the Memphis deaths have occurred in the last two months.

Federal agents and National Guard troops remain in Memphis and in Washington, D.C. On Friday, a Pentagon official said the National Guard will remain activated in Washington through Inauguration Day 2029 “until law and order are fully restored in our Nation’s Capital.”

3. The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (Department of Justice)

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said that one of the shootings in Memphis was done by an agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA, part of the Department of Justice, is targeting drug trafficking in many U.S. cities.

The FBI, also part of the Justice Department, is doing drug raids in U.S. cities. Its recent efforts include “Operation Hard Ball” this July in Los Angeles and Sacramento; “Rancho San Pedro Takedown,” also this July, involving federal agents in Los Angeles; “Operation Powder Island” this July, supposedly targeting a Georgia-based network that extends to Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Dallas, and Buffalo; and “Minneapolis Gang Takedowns” in June and July, against Minneapolis street gangs.

4. Trump’s Police State: Blurring the lines

The Trump regime has blurred the lines between federal immigration enforcement, federal crackdowns on crime, and federal enforcement of drug laws. Trump has often — baselessly — equated immigrants with violent criminals, and violent criminals with drug smuggling.

This was Trump’s message last October when he told American troops that he would send “more than the National Guard” into cities. “We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities … . We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In the same speech, Trump defended U.S. military strikes against small vessels from South America suspected of smuggling drugs. So far, U.S. military strikes on such vessels have killed more than 210 people, without evidence they’re involved in drug smuggling.

Some of these activities may be legitimate. What’s troubling is the size and scope of Trump’s federal police state — now involving ICE and Border Patrol from the Department of Homeland Security; the National Guard and the U.S. Army from the Department of Defense; and the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and federal prosecutors from the Justice Department.

We have no way of knowing what training these forces have received to deal with civilian populations inside the United States, who is deploying them and what criteria are being used to select places for their deployment, what controls and limits have been placed on them, and whether any of them will be deployed at polling places on November 3.

It is time we got some answers. The United States has never before had a federal police force.

5. The People Respond

Many communities across the nation are organizing in response. In Minneapolis: Memphis; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Portland, Maine; and elsewhere, people are mobilizing to protect one another.

They are also preparing for the midterm elections. They are determined not to be intimidated. Nor will they be goaded into violence.

Adam Serwer’s words from his Atlantic article published on January 26, just days after Alex Pretti’s murder, bear repeating. They’re relevant beyond Minneapolis.

“The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it.

Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about ‘Western civilization,’ while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors — just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.”

Share