We will not break - We want back the country that runs on law and justice
By W. Robert Pearson - March 9, 2026
The Wall Street Journal of March 9 in a detailed account exposes ICE’s treatment of American citizen protesters at ICE operations. ICE has spread false reports - propaganda - through DOJ, DHS and other postings on X that have reached 380 million views on X. “Most of the alleged culprits in the tweets were U.S. citizens, denounced as terrorists, rioters and agitators,” said the WSJ. This is plain and simply a propaganda campaign that looks and sounds like what the Chinese did to protestors before and during their illegal takeover of Hong Kong.
In the face of solemn promises by Attorney General Pam Bondi to enforce the law, this administration is doing the opposite - copying to the letter the tactics used throughout history by authoritarian regimes to discredit anyone who stands for and demonstrates the truth. The administration has from its beginning propagandized a message to weaken the freedom of press, and the right to free speech and peaceful assembly that seeks to counter a campaign that embraces violence and illegal conduct.
This determined and sustained effort to destroy all opposition to the administration’s programs and policies has extended even to seeking petty revenge on people like James Comey, Letitia James, and Jack Smith. Trump’s strange but savage desire to punish law firms who took cases against him or his administration and to have the American taxpayers pay for his expenses as he defended his meritless cases rounds out the scene. All opposition, however true and however protected by the Constitution, is still a target of threat and attack. We all know that for ICE’s part, it took its brutality to the point of killing two American citizens in Minneapolis at point blank range.
Kristi Noem refused any open investigation of those two deaths, quite possibly murders. She never gave any update on the investigations, never apologized for her lies after the killings, and also corruptly claimed that her $220 million dollar self-promotion campaign at taxpayer expense was authorized by Trump himself.
In a report entitled “The Most Important Immigration Stories of 2025”, David Bier of the CATO Institute presents a superb account of 2025 administration actions that cover a range of topics: banning legal immigrants, cancellation of legal statuses, deprioritization of criminals, SCOTUS approving racial profiling for ICE operations leading to thousands of street arrests of people with no criminal charges or removal orders, and as mentioned various unprecedented attacks on Constitutional order to include labeling ICE-observing citizens as “domestic terrorists”. This widespread effort has launched the current campaign of threats, arrests, and violence. That inexcusable assault has allowed DHS to lead the charge for the most extreme attack on the First Amendment this century, trespassing on private property to make immigration arrests, continuing to abuse “expedited removal” to arrest and deport people without a hearing, leading to tens of thousands of additional deportations every month. The Administration has even taken broad but less widely reported measures to limit legal immigration to the United States.
The administration goes far beyond the standards our laws allow and intend. A CATO Institution report in November 2025 revealed that “nearly 3 in 4 people booked into ICE custody in the 2025 fiscal year had no criminal conviction - contradicting the Trump administration’s claims about deporting ‘millions and millions of criminal aliens.’” Only 5 percent of the arrested individuals had a violent criminal conviction. America has never seen in peacetime such a blatant and intentional use of force and violence against immigrants and American citizens and backed it with a parade of propaganda releases on social media to keep Americans from ever learning the truth.
There is a obvious racist undercurrent to all these illegal measures, intended to appeal to a certain minority category of white supremacists who maintain that white people have a right to run America. Truth never dies, however, and justice is never undeserved. In light of this reality of illegal practice and deliberate misrepresentation, there must be a clear reckoning of ICE’s role.
In the next days or weeks, Congress will face this existential challenge to American democracy. The savagery of ICE must be contained. The job of ICE is to serve American law and justice through due process. If ICE is not serving justice, it is not serving American law. This is not a budget crisis; it is a truth and justice crisis.
Every country must protect its borders and its society. But when a country turns its own law enforcement organizations onto its own citizens en masse, it goes too far. ICE today is deliberately blaming citizens and local police for the chaos. Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance urge local authorities and police to also violate the Constitution by abetting the ICE onslaught on people who have committed no crime. ICE today is not so much an instrument of law as one of force. Its very image today creates suspicion, fear, and the threat and presence of violence to conduct its operations.
On the ICE budget, the Democrats have 10 demands - not to destroy ICE - but to save it. Here are the desired standards for ICE behavior:
1. require judicial warrants before going onto private property or arresting someone there.
2. verify non-citizenship before detaining someone
3. ban racial or demographic profiling
4. require visible identification for agents by name or badge number
5. ban masks or face coverings during enforcement operations
6. every ICE officer must use body cameras during enforcement operations
7. prohibit arrests at schools, hospitals, daycare centers, churches, polling places and courthouses
8. end or limit broad street sweeps by “roving patrols”
9. establish a federal code of conduct and rules for use of force
10. increase transparency and oversight of ICE operations - establish clearer rules, tighten reporting requirements, and obey local law in coordinating with state and local authorities
Kristi Noem created and nurtured this image of violence. The violence and murders in Minneapolis, and her own outrageous defense of the violence and refusal to allow an open and cooperative investigation of the killings undermined any trust in her judgment or management. She wasted $220 million in taxpayer money for an ad campaign glorifying herself, money that could have paid for many a child’s needed health care or proper education or a parent’s need for food for the family.
Firing her was too little too late - the ugly repulsive face of ICE is her creation, and Trump and Stephen Miller inspired the brutality and then watched it happen. Firing Noem just highlighted the need for genuine reform; it does not compensate for what has happened or excuse the deep flaws in ICE’s operations. Noem’s departure spurs the process of reform; it does not substitute for it. She created the problem in public view, and it is the problem that must be solved in open view.
Yet Trump thus far has no plan to modify his immigration crusade. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” said on February 12 that “for those who say we are backing down from . . . the promise of mass deportations, you are simply wrong.” It is self-evident that enforcement in the interior of the U.S. has to be different from the methods used at the border. Running the internal ICE operation over the entire United States as if it were a border “expedited removal” operation is spreading dread and anger across the country.
To settle for a partial improvement that does not guarantee the open, transparent operation of ICE before the American people will be unacceptable. This is not the time to sort out this determined attack on American law and justice by leaving open the continuation of a scheme that allows a secret, unaccountable domestic highly armed quasi-military government force to wreak havoc. Anything less than full accountability and transparency will be a failure. Do the Democrats have the backbone to do what is needed? They’d better or our county will be pushed yet one step farther towards democracy’s demise.