Alan Zendell, January 25, 2026

I doubt that there are many Americans who would disagree that domestic terrorism represents an existential threat to our country. What they may disagree about is identifying who those terrorists are. They are clearly not people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It’s more than ironic that everything we learn about the two people who were killed by out-of-control ICE agents, tells us they were typical, average Americans who cared very much about their communities and families.

Pretti, apparently, was exceptional, a research biologist and VA ICU nurse with a reputation for caring for people. As we saw in the many videos that I believe prove that Pretti was murdered by ICE agents, his last willful act before he was shot was protecting a woman who had been thrown to the frozen pavement by one of the ICE thugs.

The actions of the Trump administration for a full year tell us that the real domestic terrorists are Deputy White House Chief of Staff, White Nationalist Stephen Miller, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel. The only way to regain the confidence of the American public is for the president to fire all four them immediately. They have all disgraced their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

Former Directors of ICE and the Border Patrol, Law Enforcement professionals, and opinion writers from all over the political spectrum are condemning the actions of ICE agents, who we see with our own eyes and ears, behave like thugs. I made two interesting observations, lately about this. One is that more and more people are using the word Gestapo to describe ICE agents. The other is that at first, many people were offended by that. One of my own relatives accused me of being un-American and even anti-Semitic of all things (he and I are both Jewish) for saying it.

But not so much anymore. For eighty years, Americans have watched re-enactments of how the Nazi Gestapo behaved in movies and documentaries. It almost seems as if the ICE agents running loose in American cities practiced imitating them. The same arrogant, sadistic cruelty we saw in the Gestapo and the Nazi regime’s genocide is on display right in front of us every day. But although they seem like vicious thugs, I can’t lay all the blame on the agents themselves. They’re commanded by people who deserve most of the blame for throwing thousands of agents onto our street without proper training.

As one law enforcement officer put it, today, either the behavior of ICE agents reflects incompetent management and training, or they’re doing exactly what they were intended to do, and either of those scenarios is catastrophic. I believe the latter. The thuggery they display is exactly what Stephen Miller and Donald trump envisioned in their quest to undo the protections and separation of powers in our Constitution.

I believe this because I remember January 6, 2021. On that day, as federal prosecutor Jack Smith told the Congress, last week, Donald Trump instigated an attack on the Capitol, encouraged rioters to murder Vice President Pence, who refused to break the law in service of Trump, and watched the insurrection on television for hours, making no attempt to stop the mayhem. We all saw and heard that, and many of us were surprised only by the audacity of the man. His actions were perfectly in keeping with the sociopath we knew he was.

It’s impossible not to compare Trump’s attitude toward ICE in Minneapolis with his intentions on January 6. Part of Trump’s obvious mental illness is an inability to feel empathy or care about people in the way most of us do. Trump obviously had no regard for the dozens of police who were killed or injured on January 6th. He only acted when his supporters in Congress and Fox News told him he had to stop the riot, in other words, when his own power was threatened. Even when he makes noises that sound sympathetic, he’s purely transactional – if he can’t profit from an action he won’t take it.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Minnesota, and what we saw in Los Angeles and Portland. If Trump wanted ICE to behave like a professional law enforcement agency all he needed to do was direct Kristi Noem to make it happen, but no matter how egregious ICE’s actions were, Trump defended them and the false narratives his lackeys have been circulating. Trump also sanctioned sidelining local and state police, and last night, after Pretti was killed and Noem and Patel lied through their teeth on international television, Trump posted a rant about how the 2020 election was stolen from him.

An attorney I know commented today that so many Congresional Republicans are appalled by Trump’s behavior, there’s a real chance he could be impeached and convicted by his own party for clearly ordering his people to ignore the First and Fourth Amendments, which is the only reason he’s backing down. Apparently, he doesn’t think much of the Second Amendment either, and his gun-loving base isn’t likely to forget that.