ICE, the Rule of Law, and Totalitarianism

America on a precipice

Pope Leo XIV reminded the world recently that “the rule of law is the foundation of all peaceful coexistence.” He was speaking on January 9th, in the wake of the US’s take over of Venezuela, and President Trump’s threats against Greenland, Cuba, Columbia, Mexico, Panama, Iran, Syria and Canada. As the Pope warned: “war is back in vogue.”

But as far the rule of law is concerned, the Pope may well have been speaking about US domestic politics, which, like the international system, is now sliding into a lawless state of nature where might makes right, and life, to quote Thomas Hobbes, “is nasty, brutish, and short."

Canadians are looking on aghast at the events unfolding in Minneapolis, Minnesota—a northern city of bridges and rivers, that loves hockey, values higher education, upholds diversity, and as home to the Mayo Clinic, is globally recognized for its excellence in health care research. It’s a place not unlike Edmonton or Winnipeg, which isn’t much more than a five hour drive away.

But unlike Edmonton or Winnipeg, Minneapolis is under siege. Under the guise of what the Trump Administration is calling “law enforcement,” a radical movement towards totalitarianism in America is playing out before our eyes.

It is important in this context to clarify a few basic things about what law enforcement is and how it differs from what ICE and now CBP (Customs Border Protection) are doing on the streets of Minneapolis.

The Republican law makers and the Republican talking heads on American cable news cannot say the words “federal law enforcement” enough in response to the other side’s expressions of disbelief that this could be happening. But one thing is very clear to me as someone who worked for a long time in federal law enforcement in this country, and should be clear to all Canadians who value the rule of law: what is happening in Minneapolis is not law enforcement.

Law Enforcement in a Free and Democratic Society

The primary function of law enforcement is to preserve and protect life. Protecting rights and freedoms, maintaining public order, and investigating and deterring crime in an effort to uphold the rule of law are central to the function served by law enforcement in a free and democratic society.

Law enforcement officers are, accordingly, typically prohibited from wearing masks. On the contrary, they are mandated to show their faces and wear their names on their uniforms. Up until only a couple of years ago, for example, it was against the RCMPs uniform and dress manual to even sport a beard as an officer. This is because face coverings tend to be a barrier to trust and accountability.

Law enforcement officers are trained to hold back on the use of lethal force unless they have reasonable grounds to believe they must to prevent a death or grievous bodily harm to someone.

Law enforcement officers are professionally trained to de-escalate tense public order situations. In Canada, this is done through “relationship building” which “aids in the development of respect, reciprocity, trust and empathy.”¹

So what is ICE?

Source: New York Times

ICE has fired on 16 people since last January. They have killed four people over the same period, and 32 people have died in ICE custody over the course of the last 12 months.² They are being deployed in the thousands to blue states to intimidate, to harass, to silence and to chasten a population that votes at all levels of government for the other team.

In “about four months,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, ICE has more than doubled its complement of officers and agents from 10,000 to 22,000. They now number roughly the equivalent of Canada’s entire primary armed forces reserve personnel.

The so-called Big Beautiful Bill allocated $75 Billion over four years to ICE to arrest, detain and deport immigrants. To put this phenomenal sum into context, the entirety of the generational investment in defence and security that Canada announced in Budget 2025 is in the same ball park over five years.

To recruit this massive influx of new members, the Department of Homeland Security is paying out $50,000.00 signing bonuses. They are offering up to $60,000.00 in student loan repayments. This is part of a $100 Million “wartime recruitment” campaign “targeting conservative radio show listeners, gun rights aficionados, military affairs followers and men’s interests enthusiasts.”³

There’s no effort to recruit candidates who are reflective of America’s population base. There’s no effort to recruit candidates who speak languages other than English. No emphasis on recruiting women. There is no attempt to increase diversity amongst applicants, to screen for bias, racism, or discriminatory beliefs or attitudes.

The recruitment pitch goes something like this: “America has been invaded by illegal aliens, criminals, rapists, drug dealers, fraudsters and predators. We need you to help get them out.” They received 220,000 applicants over the past five months—virtually all from the MAGA-verse, one can safely assume.

Training has been truncated significantly to just 47 days in what some call a nod to the 47th President, but is more than just that. By contrast, training to become a Regular Member of the RCMP takes six months in residence at the iconic training facility known as Depot in Regina, Saskatchewan.

So what is ICE? ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was created after 9/11 as part of a major centralization of the US law enforcement and intelligence agencies under the Department of Homeland Security. Under the Trump Administration it is rapidly taking on the role of a secret police force with the mandate to eradicate domestic opposition. This is a salient feature of any totalitarian regime.

We in Canada should watch this carefully and not be lulled into conceptual conflation of this new armed force in American politics with what we understand as law enforcement. It should go without saying that this is not that.

Some 2000 ICE agents were sent to Minneapolis, Minnesota in December of last year ostensibly to carry out immigration arrests and deportations, and to crack down on fraud. Ilhan Omar, the Congresswoman for Minnesota, who was born in Mogadishu Somalia, has called ICE a “lawless” “occupying force".

If you think this is hyperbole, imagine 2000+ armed and masked men descending on Lethbridge, or Red Deer, or Saskatoon. Imagine them scooping up your neighbours, and going door to door conducting “immigration checks”, hauling your spouse from their car, demanding “papers,” using flash bangs on your suburban street. Imagine they were sent by a Federal Government in Ottawa because your community didn’t vote for the party in power.

That’s what’s happening in Minneapolis. It is an armed surge into the blue state that has Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz as its Governor. The number of ICE officers on the ground in Minneapolis started at 2000 but has grown to 3000 as the situation has continued to escalate.

The mayor of the twin cities, Jacob Frey is also a Democrat, and former professional runner who has won a major marathon and competed in the 2008 US Olympic trials.

Frey is, in other words, as hard as nails. He is very unlikely to be bullied effectively by the Trump Administration. He told ICE to “get the fuck out” of his city in an emotional press conference following a now notorious incident that saw Renee Good shot three times in the face at close range by an ICE member. But they don’t appear to be going anywhere and the situation as of the time of writing only appears to be on the path to further catastrophe.

The Killing of Rene Good and Truth

Good’s killing, as we know, has brought ICE into the spotlight. US Vice President JD Vance almost immediately gas lit the nation following the incident, characterizing what happened as a “federal law enforcement official…” “engaging in federal law enforcement action.” He said it was “a federal issue.” And that “that guy is protected by absolute immunity,” referring to the masked ICE member who killed Good at point blank range with three shots to the head and then muttered “fucking bitch” as her Honda Pilot rolled lifeless into the boulevard.

He went on to state that Minneapolis officials were encouraging people to commit violence against ICE. That he was certain Good violated the law, and that the officer was acting in self-defence. Good was later labelled as a domestic terrorist by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem hours after her death.

Amidst all of the sickening displays, Vance’s press conference stands out. It was jaw dropping in its detachment from reality. It was a moment when the Vice President of the United States in an unabashedly totalitarian way told the nation to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”.⁴

This quote from George Orwell’s 1984 sums up in eight chilling words the essence of what continues to play out on American cable news. The party is telling Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears and believe that Good was a domestic terrorist who deserved to be shot three times in the face for trying to drive away from a group of armed masked men who were surrounding her vehicle after she dropped off her kid at elementary school.

Vance’s assertion that Good’s killer enjoyed absolute immunity set the ICE officer above the law. By further demonstrating that ICE answers not to the courts or to any kind of review or oversight body like Alberta’s Serious Incident Response Team, or Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, Vance and Noem and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt showed that there is no distance between ICE and Executive Power.

Concepts, like ‘law enforcement’, are reality’s anchor points. When they are broken down and diluted to the point of meaninglessness, we begin to lose our shared reality. Truth becomes what the party tells us. To think otherwise or say otherwise becomes a dangerous prospect. We wander petrified like Winston Smith, afraid that Big Brother and the Thought Police will find us out for thought crimes.

For the sake of law and order in our own country, we in Canada need to stop referring to ICE as law enforcement, thereby (and no doubt inadvertently) putting them on an equivalent plane with legitimate police officers in Canada where the rule of law and the principle of police independence remain pillars of our free and democratic society.

What we are witnessing play out not far from the Manitoba border is how the rule of law in a once democratic society is subverted by a totalitarian government. The principle of police independence is central to the rule of law. If citizens believe that they are being targeted by police because of political direction the principle of police independence shatters, as does the rule of law. The rule of law means nothing if the law is seen to be applied unevenly against those who are targeted as the “enemy”.

Epilogue: Elements of Totalitarianism

There are roughly half a dozen features of a totalitarian regime.⁵ The Trump Administration has them all.

1. The presence of a charismatic leader: President DJT

2. An ideology to which all must subscribe and is exclusionary creating an us vs. them dichotomy: MAGA vs. the Radical Left Scum

3. The existence of a single mass party: The RNC

4. A secret police prepared to use all methods: see ICE and CBP in Minneapolis and elsewhere throughout Democratic run states.

5. A monopoly on the media, direct control of the education system, and a determination to change basic social, artistic and literary values: see Fox News, Truth Social, the Murdoch Empire, efforts to silence Kimmel etc. See Trump’s attacks on Harvard, Columbia, and higher education generally. See the Trump Administration’s renaming of the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts, and involvement in cultivating exhibitions at the Smithsonian.

6. An insistence that the interests and welfare of individuals must always be subordinate to the interests of the state: See the attacks on trans athletes, on Somali-Americans, on average US citizens trying to get past ICE on their way to work in Minneapolis or Los Angeles or Portland.

The rule of law is breaking down in the US, and with it the principle of police independence. Can we can expect a counter-movement from American society? And will that bring widespread instability to the United States? Or will America succumb to totalitarian rule?

1. From the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police National Framework for Police Preparedness for Demonstrations and Assemblies. https://www.cacp.ca/_Library/_documents/202002062047221602854342_cacpnationalframeworkforpolicepreparednessfordemonstrationsandassemblies.pdf

2. https://www.wcvb.com/article/ice-immigration-shooting-data/69948697; and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline

3. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/31/ice-recruitment-media-campaign

4. George Orwell, 1984. (Penguin, 2008)

5. Alan Haworth, Totalitarianism and Philosophy. (Routledge, 2020), 6