"Show Me Your Papers" Is Not America

Have you found yourself wondering lately whether "up" now means "down," whether "black" is suddenly "white," or whether words still mean anything at all — whether raw power now gets to rewrite reality in real time? If so, you're not alone.

In Minnesota, and spreading across America, citizens are being forced to confront a question Americans should never have to ask: What happens when American cities face violent, unconstitutional federal incursion — when our own government behaves as if the Constitution no longer applies, especially to the citizens it exists to protect?

We have all seen what happened to Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, who was shot and killed by an ICE officer after refusing to open her car door and be dragged from her vehicle.

The Trump administration and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wasted no time labeling Ms. Good a "domestic terrorist" and claiming the shooting was self-defense, asserting she had "weaponized" her vehicle. That claim quickly unraveled. Video footage showed she had not, and the label rang grotesquely hollow: a "domestic terrorist" who had just dropped her six-year-old son off at school.

Instead of restraint, what followed was escalation.

Many others have now been shot during federal immigration enforcement operations, and in response, White House adviser Stephen Miller publicly encouraged Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers by saying they have "federal immunity in the conduct of your duties" and that "no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties." This declaration was widely circulated by the Department of Homeland Security after an ICE agent fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renée Good — part of a string of shootings linked to the administration's aggressive immigration strategy — and has been criticized by legal experts as overstating the actual protections available to federal officers while signaling that accountability is not a priority.

Trump ordered an additional thousand ICE agents into Minneapolis, bringing the total to roughly three thousand, five times the number of sworn Minneapolis police officers. Reports and video show people being dragged from cars, beaten, homes forcibly entered, and fear deliberately sown in communities that deserve far better than to be treated as enemy territory.

This is not a policy disagreement. These are not "tough choices." This is the use of force, detention, and fear as governance. When that becomes routine, it poisons a free society from the inside.

That poison — not immigrants who have lived, worked, and raised families in their communities for decades — is what is corroding our democracy.

And the irony deepens. These abuses are being carried out under the authority of a 34-count convicted felon who incited a failed coup on January 6, 2021 — an attack that resulted in the beating and deaths of police officers charged with protecting the Capitol and safeguarding the constitutionally mandated work of the American people. It is a history Donald Trump would very much like us to forget.

So let us take him at his word. Donald Trump once told his followers, "We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." Those words deserve to be turned back on him — but with clarity. When I use the word fight, I do not mean violence. Violence is precisely what Trump invites, cultivates, and then exploits, because chaos gives him justification to seize more power.

That is not speculation. It is a pattern.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump openly mused, "When you think about it, we really don't need the next election." His press secretary rushed to say he was "kidding." We have heard that defense before — when he said he would be a dictator "on day one," when he encouraged supporters to march on the Capitol, and when he pressured officials to overturn a lawful election.

He was "kidding" then, too. Until he wasn't.

This is how democratic erosion is normalized: extreme statements are floated, dismissed as jokes, then repeated until the public is exhausted and the ground has shifted. Republicans wave away concern as "Democratic hysteria" or "hoo-hah," but the American people are not that foolish. They remember January 6. They understand the difference between gallows humor and a man who has already tried to nullify an election and now questions whether we need another one.

And none of this would be possible without enablers. The same Congressional Republicans who expressed outrage after January 6 — calling Trump's actions "dangerous" and "unacceptable" — quickly fell silent. Or worse, fell in line. Their courage lasted exactly as long as it took to calculate political risk. What followed was not reconciliation, but surrender.

History has a word for this behavior. It is not leadership. It is complicity.

Democracy does not fail only because of strongmen. It fails when those entrusted with power decide that preserving their careers matters more than preserving the Constitution — and when citizens are told to calm down, move on, and accept the unacceptable.

So what is required of us now? Not violence. Not chaos. Not despair. What is required is participation.

Call and write your representatives and demand public accountability. Write to local and regional newspapers, because community journalism remains one of the last defenses against normalized abuse. Show up at town halls, city councils, school boards, and legislative forums, and insist — calmly, persistently, relentlessly — that human dignity and constitutional limits matter.

And if your voice shakes, use it anyway — because silence feeds power. ■