F.B.I. whistleblower Coleen Rowley and attorney Marjorie Cohn discuss the legal and political fallout of the ongoing ICE crisis in Minnesota and across the U.S.
The crisis of ICE has exploded in the U.S. state of Minnesota after a masked agent of Immigration & Customs Enforcement killed an unarmed U.S. citizen, Renee Nicole Good, in her car on Jan. 7.
Instead of investigating the killer, Agent Jonathan Ross, Trump administration officials have opened investigations into the victim’s partner and into the governor of the state and the mayor of Minneapolis, where the killing occurred. Tensions are high on the streets of the city as they have been around the country as citizens stand up to this new, repressive police force.
The Trump regime’s reaction to the shooting has exposed its danger to U.S. democracy for all to see: an out of control, unaccountable, militarized and personal police force for a thuggish president who intimidates his citizens and scoffs at the law. We discuss the Meltdown in Minnesota tonight on CN Live!
Our guests are Coleen Rowley, a Minneapolis-based F.B.I. whistleblower who tried to alert F.B.I. headquarters ahead of the 9/11 attacks about suspicious flight lessons being given to one of the eventual hijackers who also had ties to radical groups — intelligence that was either ignored or blocked in Washington.
Rowley testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2002 about systemic problems in the F.B.I.’s handling of pre-9/11 intelligence, which contributed to probes into the bureau’s failures. Time magazine named her (along with two other whistleblowers) as one of its 2002 Persons of the Year for her courage in exposing these lapses. She won the first Sam Adams Award in 2003.
Marjorie Cohn is a criminal defense attorney and former president of the U.S. National Lawyers Guild who has written extensively about the legal issues surrounding Trump administration behavior. She has recently written an article on the ICE crisis in Minnesota for Consortium News.
Hosts: Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria Producer: Cathy Vogan
ICE agents at the scene of the fatal shooting of Renee Good in South Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026. (Chad Davis/Flickr/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
“You’re either with us, or against us”.
The charismatic, yet fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was the last one to use this exact rallying call, before G. W. Bush’s handlers (presumedly knowingly and intentionally) took it as their own to again ‘rally the masses’ towards acceptance of atrocities for yet another fictional ‘greater good’. Oh what a familiar dirt track that led us all down!
Mussolini lasted just over 20 years before being overthrown, just so you know what to expect in this new incarnation.
Fascism hasn’t just appeared in America suddenly. It’s been intentionally nurtured and grown over time and, now ripe, Trump is merely the ‘right man’ for the job of being the public face of American Neo-fascism. Look at him go – like a eager dog just been let off its leash.
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt”
The key to understanding ICE is that it has been moving closer and closer to the Israeli IDF. Here are just two articles detailing the steady transformation of ICE into an adjunct of the Israeli military.
“How ICE Is Bringing Israeli Occupation Forces’ Tactics to US Streets – Analysis”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-ice-is-bringing-israeli-occupation-forces-tactics-to-us-streets-analysis/
“ICE and the IDF: The Transnational Nexus of State Control”
https://scalawagmagazine.org/2025/08/ice-and-the-idf-the-transnational-nexus-of-state-control/
This is not just Trump. The IDF-ization of ICE has been going on since the creation of the DHS under GW Bush.
The important thing is to understand what the IDF is. It is a colonial occupation military charged with suppressing and destroying the indigenous people of Palestine. They are trained to see the Palestinian people as sub-humans. They brutalize and humiliate them. They kill and torture children and women. They are driven by hate.
ICE actually has a legitimate function. The US like all nations has laws governing immigration. People who violate those laws should be deported. There are opportunities for legal immigration and they should be used — but it has to be understood that Obama’s director of USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service), Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed the effectiveness of legal immigration, leaving only illegal immigration. So ICE should deal with illegal immigrants in a helpful and kind way. They may have to leave the US, but most of them are decent people and should be treated respectfully.
The only hope for the US is to sever its relations with the Israeli government and its war machines.
The photo says it all.
No consistent uniform, no sign of military discipline, faces hidden behind masks.
This is not a military force or a police unit these proud boys are just a bunch of poorly disciplined thugs.
If these thugs ever came up against a proper military unit rather than innocent civilians they would be destroyed.
I think Coleen Rowley is right on the money when she highlights the parallel between what the U.S. is doing overseas with the military and the CIA and what’s happening domestically. What just happened in Iran – the use of vicious thugs to instigate serious violence, and then accusing the Iranian government for the violence when they fight back – is a method. It seems to me that the gangsters who have been running our country for many, many years now are using ICE to commit such outrageous abuses of American citizens that the people will finally fight back, which will give the gangsters the premise they need to apply the Insurrection Act. It didn’t work in Iran but I think the jury is out, as it were, on whether or not this strategy to essentially implement martial law will work here at home. Joe Lauria is right, too, in calling out ICE as Trump’s private army. Our country and its constitution is truly in dire peril today.
“the gangsters who have been running our country for many, many years now are using ICE to commit such outrageous abuses of American citizens that the people will finally fight back”
I wonder if Americans will ever finally fight back. Americans are very apathetic and poorly informed. I hope you are right. But I’m just skeptical. The days of the civil rights movement and the anti-war protests are long over. People and the country have changed, and changed for the worse. There aren’t many more Coleen Rowleys or people of her integrity.
“Joe Lauria is right, too, in calling out ICE as Trump’s private army.”
I always appreciate Joe Lauria’s work, but on this point he is just too limited. From the very creation of DHS in 2003 ICE has been associated with the Israeli IDF. Even Newsweek knows this —
“The Blueprint for ICE’s Future Is Being Drawn in the West Bank”
“If these tactics [IDF in West Bank] seem familiar to the recent ICE raids where legal permanent residents and students writing opinion pieces in newspapers were wrongfully detained, it is because it is not a coincidence. For over a decade, Israeli security forces have provided guidance and training to ICE. Such programs date back to at least 2003, when the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security established a liaison office in Israel to regularize engagement with Israeli security forces. ”
Truthout has covered this subject very well, most recently in
“ICE and the Israeli Military Are 2 Sides of the Same Coin — We Must Resist Both
Opposing ICE in the US while backing genocide in Gaza is senseless. These struggles are intertwined.”
It is not just Trump. ICE and IDF tactics have been central to the Homeland Security doctrine from the very start. Recent immigrants are “our Palestinians.” They have no rights here.
Early 80’s ? start of the drug war .
Multi Jurisdictional Enforcement , grouped from several counties .
They seem alike , they wore black masks then .
More than likely they are your neighbors or someone who knows you .
A friendly bar owner doing coke , a narc ,what in exchange of them they took .
Then when the new era comes , they end up the prison gaurds inside the prison built .
When your gov employee needs a job for insurace to support the family business or farm, a marriage of convienience , left to fend for yourself , you work for someone else .