Excerpt: My goal today is to warn you that the U.S. has already been seized by the same camp dynamic. It’s not that I’m trying to tell you that bad things are coming, and you have to look out for them. What I’m saying is that the camps have already taken root and are on a fast-track to get exponentially worse. We’re already deep inside the process.

… As far as we know at present, seven people have died in immigration detention this year. Two died by suicide (despite facility responsibility to prevent self-harm). Two died of heart issues. One is said to have died from fentanyl withdrawal, and one was reportedly choked to death by guards. One more was found unconscious and unresponsive, with details of his death yet to come.

A recent report from the American Immigration Council counts some 66,000 people in immigration detention at the end of 2025. That’s an increase of almost 75% since Trump returned to office. But it falls far short of the goal the government had hoped to reach, having planned to expand capacity to more than 100,000 beds and fill them.

So you should remember that the administration is just getting started on its broader detention plan. And also keep in mind that the U.S. is currently holding three times as many people as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939—six years into the Third Reich and just before the start of World War II. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security, in its language and images in press releases and on social media, is directly aping Nazi propaganda.

Excerpt: As a longtime foreign correspondent, I have covered civil wars in countries across the globe. Not so long ago, I would have rolled my eyes at the notion that one could erupt anywhere in America, much less in my once placid home state of Minnesota. And yet there I was, eyes stinging and throat burning as tear gas wafted over me, watching heavily armed agents of the federal government invade a quiet residential neighborhood five miles as the crow flies from the suburb where I went to middle school.

Like many Americans, I had watched the video of the killing of Good by an ICE officer on a residential street in Minneapolis with horror and sorrow. From afar, this tragic and possibly criminal act of violence could plausibly be seen as incidental to President Trump’s mission to deport undocumented people from the country. But when I landed in Minneapolis on Monday and saw the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught unfolding here, I understood that Good’s killing was emblematic of its true mission: to stage a spectacle of cruelty upon a city that stands in stark defiance against Trump’s dark vision of America.

Thousands of masked, heavily armed agents, some with minimal training, have been unleashed on the streets of an American state. They have been promised near-total legal immunity by the president, effectively unshackled from any constitutional constraints.

They have been given limitless license to abduct anyone, not just the undocumented immigrants but American citizens who happen to look foreign, whatever that might mean. Even Native Americans, whose ancestors lived here long before anyone else, have been detained on the absurd suspicion that they are undocumented immigrants. They have roughed up local lawmakers, detained and jailed legal observers without charges, tear-gassed high school students, smashed in car windows of bewildered drivers unlucky enough to cross their path. Anyone who gets in their way — by protesting, filming their actions or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time — is presumed to be a domestic terrorist.

Excerpt: The presence of ICE is not an abstraction to the people who live here. It’s a constant threat requiring constant vigilance. Our public schools were closed because the state government could not guarantee students would be safe. Many stores and restaurants, including 80 percent of immigrant-owned businesses, are not open, protecting both staff and patrons from the threat of an ICE raid. Many nonwhite Minnesotans — regardless of whether they are citizens or not — are essentially sheltering in place, skipping grocery runs and doctors’ appointments to stay at home, where ICE (theoretically) needs a judicial warrant to harass them.

Excerpt: A couple days after Good was killed, footage that appears to be from Ross’s cellphone leaked to conservative Minnesota outlet Alpha News. It shows the moments before the shooting. Good is behind the wheel, and calmly tells the person filming, “I’m not mad at you.” Her partner, Becca, is outside the car, confronting Ross. Becca appears to be defiant and unafraid, telling the person behind the camera, “Go get yourself some lunch, big boy.” As Good tries to drive away, Ross fires several shots. Then, just before Good’s car crashes, a voice is heard saying: “Fucking bitch.”

Whoever leaked that video could have edited the slur out. They didn’t. And judging by reactions from right-wing influencers, they didn’t need to.

“There’s a real sense of disgust with women in the way that conservative media is talking about these kinds of protests,” says Courtney Hagle, research director at Media Matters for America, who has tracked the right-wing response to Good’s death. “They’re clearly very angry at the presence of women, and especially white women, liberal women.” The video, as Hagle puts it, “confirmed for them that this is not a human being that they should care about.”

Some of the commentary, including references to Becca as Good’s “so-called wife” also felt like an insidious way to delegitimize the Goods’ relationship.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, President Trump repeatedly referred to Becca Good as Renée’s “friend.” “The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement,” he said. Leigh Finke, a Minnesota state legislator and the state’s first openly trans elected official, says this kind of erasure sends a message. “All that they will portray it as is disrespectful lesbian women who are not obeying men in power.”

Excerpt: In the middle of all that chaos, Alex grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go.” We slowly walked out and got into a rental car we had hired and made a beeline for the border. We’d been in all the local papers at that point so we tried to look as indistinct as possible: I took out my nose ring and Alex took out his earring. At the border crossing, an agent stopped us to ask our business. We said we’d just been shopping for the day. The agent then joked, “You don’t have any dead bodies in the trunk, do you?”