The country has now seen the image: a man pinned to the pavement, face down, limbs immobilized, presenting absolutely no threat to anyone, while an ICE agent leans in and pepper‑sprays him directly in the face from inches away. A chemical blast delivered with the casual cruelty of someone flicking lint off a shirt. This is not policing. This is not order. This is not safety. This is a federal agency performing violence because it can, because it has been told it is untouchable, because the people in charge have decided that the Constitution is more of a suggestion than a constraint. And the moment the public reacts with horror, the government’s response is to insist that your eyes are lying to you.
And here’s the part that makes this even more unfathomable:
A federal judge — U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez — issued an injunction explicitly barring ICE and all federal agents participating in Operation Metro Surge from using pepper spray, chemical irritants, or any non‑lethal munitions against peaceful or non‑threatening individuals. The order states that federal agents are prohibited from deploying pepper spray or “similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools” against anyone engaged in peaceful or unobstructive activity. NBC News +1
So what we’re seeing in that image is not just brutality — it is a direct violation of a federal court order. ICE didn’t just cross a line; it stepped over it, spit on it, and kept walking.
Meanwhile, Minnesota has become the staging ground for the largest immigration operation in modern U.S. history, with nearly 3,000 federal agents flooding the Twin Cities—more than double the number of local police. Residents describe masked officers swarming neighborhoods, detaining people at random, and escalating encounters with the kind of swagger that only comes from knowing no one will stop you. A woman detained for simply following ICE agents described “desperate crying” inside the facility where she was held, a sound she said she will never forget. CBS News
Just one block away from where ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37‑year‑old Renee Nicole Good in her SUV, federal officers detained another man in broad daylight as demonstrators filled the streets. The message was unmistakable: the violence is not a bug, it’s the feature. CBS News
And then came the incident that should have ended careers by sundown: the detention of 5‑year‑old Liam Conejo Ramos, used as bait in his own driveway. According to Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik, masked ICE agents approached Liam and his father as they returned home from preschool. When another adult begged to take care of the child, ICE refused. Instead, agents took the boy out of the still‑running car and directed him to knock on the front door “to see if anyone else was home—essentially using a 5‑year‑old as bait.” USA TODAY
The boy and his father were then transported to a detention facility in Texas, despite having active asylum cases and no deportation orders. School board chair Mary Granlund, who witnessed the detention, said she heard an adult inside the home begging agents to leave the child alone. NBC News
And how did the Department of Homeland Security respond to the national outrage? With a statement so brazenly dishonest it should be preserved in a museum of authoritarian gaslighting. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin declared: “ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED.” NBC News
A 5‑year‑old, in a running car, with adults begging to care for him—“abandoned.” This is not spin. This is psychological warfare.
Into this flaming wreckage strolls Hillbilly Vanilli Vance, who arrived in Minneapolis to perform his signature routine: denying he ever said the thing he very much said. This is the same man who publicly argued that federal agents should have absolute immunity—an authoritarian fantasy so extreme it made even some conservatives blink. Now, confronted with the consequences of his own words, he insists he never said it, as though transcripts, recordings, and the entire internet do not exist. When asked about ICE detaining a 5‑year‑old, Vance’s response was a masterpiece of moral rot: “Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5‑year‑old child freeze to death?” NBC News
No, J.D. They’re supposed to not use him as a human lure. But nuance has never been his strong suit.
Meanwhile, the structural rot is even worse than the street‑level violence. Multiple outlets have confirmed the existence of an internal ICE memo instructing agents that an administrative warrant—a document ICE signs for itself—is all they need to forcibly enter private homes. This directly contradicts decades of constitutional precedent requiring a judicial warrant signed by a judge. Federal immigration officers are now asserting “sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant,” according to MPR News. MPR News
Imagine writing yourself a note that says, “I hereby authorize myself to break into my neighbor’s house.” That is the legal standard ICE is now using.
And the violence keeps stacking. Two teenagers were handcuffed and detained in south Minneapolis by Customs and Border Protection officers in the middle of the afternoon. CBS News +2
This is not a series of isolated incidents. This is a federal agency operating with the confidence of an occupying force, backed by political leaders who deny their own words, rewrite their own history, and insist that the public ignore what is happening right in front of them.
The man pinned to the pavement and pepper‑sprayed in the face is not an anomaly. He is the logical endpoint of a system that has been told it is above the law. The 5‑year‑old used as bait is not a mistake. He is the collateral damage of an agency that has replaced constitutional limits with internal memos. The teenagers detained, the woman held for following officers, the mother shot in her SUV—these are not accidents. They are the predictable consequences of a federal apparatus that has been given permission to do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, to whomever it wants.
And the country needs to stop pretending this is “immigration enforcement.” It’s not. It’s state violence, wrapped in bureaucracy, justified with lies, and executed with the swagger of people who believe no one can stop them.
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TONIGHT’S UNFUGGINBELIEVABLE TEASER
Tonight, Unfugginbelievable returns with a special late‑edition dispatch:
a real‑time chronicle of whatever fresh atrocities the ICEstapo commits today as Operation Metro Surge grinds forward — plus full coverage of the nationwide economic walkout, the first coordinated mass refusal to participate in an economy that treats human beings as disposable.
If ICE thinks today will be quiet, they’re about to learn what happens when the country they terrorize decides to stop working and start watching.
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