“How can you be friends with your ex?” she asked, shaking her head. “That’s such white people nonsense.”

She’s not wrong, exactly. I mean, my ex and I don’t need to be friends. We don’t have kids together. We live in different states. We have separate social groups.

It’s also been twenty years since our divorce finalized. I have spent the last eighteen years happily married to my “forever husband.” Yet my ex and I never lost contact over the last two decades.

My husband and I have even had dinner a few times with my ex — voluntarily, for fun, just because we were in Philadelphia (where he lives) or he was in St. Louis (where we live).

I know it’s not normal. There’s a cultural script for what you’re supposed to do after a marriage ends. And it does not involve calling each other just to catch up, texting inside jokes, or being a shoulder for the other to cry on. You’re supposed to block each other on social media, grieve, heal, and then reappear looking radiant with your new, debonair British husband whom you met on an empowering trip to Europe, while the ex languishes in regret.

Granted, my ex did block me on social media for a bit and he calls my husband “fish and chips.” But we never fully cut ties.

Despite everything I just said, let me be clear about something. We did not consciously uncouple. I am no Gwyneth Paltrow. Our divorce was not a gentle, mutually agreed-upon evolution. It was a violent rendering, full of acrimony and drunk dialing. The kind of divorce where our friends were allocated.

He hurt me a lot during (and after) our marriage. He was so often cruel (in words and careless behaviors, never violent) that my friends staged an intervention.

I made excuses until I couldn’t. Then I ended things. It was one of the most difficult and painful experiences I’ve ever lived through. And he blamed me.

So why do I still pick up the phone?

This will come as no surprise to anyone: we were both abused as children.

We met in high school. Neither of us were in good situations, and when he turned seventeen, he forged his mother’s signature on enlistment papers and joined the military to get away.

A year later, when I turned eighteen, he helped me flee an unsafe environment where I was repeatedly sexually assaulted. So that he could take care of me, house me, and get me medical care, he proposed. On a sunny day in May 1997, owning little more than the clothes on our backs, we eloped.

He saved me, so that’s why I still talk to him. In truth, we saved each other. And we grew up together. For a while, it was beautiful.

Then the toxic attachment styles we’d both inherited—the behaviors that felt like love because they were the only things we’d ever seen—started doing what they do. He could be mean and withholding, and I could be reactive and angry. Too much harm accumulated over a decade, until there was no recovering what started in innocence and hope and courage.

The marriage couldn’t survive. But that doesn’t mean we were nothing.

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to love someone you don’t want to be with. It’s not romantic love—not anymore—but something profound nevertheless. My love for him evolved into a love that holds space for who we are and what we’ve done, honoring the beauty and wonder of our youth and struggles, without excusing the bad parts.

It’s not forgiveness exactly, though there’s been some of that too. It’s more like, I know the whole story. And I accept it all.

My friend’s skepticism of my ongoing relationship with an ex wasn’t wrong from a self-protection standpoint. And, in fact, my oldest friends who witnessed his behaviors towards me when we were married also give me the side-eye. Divorce is like a death. A clean break is often easiest, if you can manage it. Contact risks reopening wounds, rehashing toxic behaviors, and re-litigating blame.

I’ll admit that for many years, I had to sidestep his occasional bitter remark because he blames me for the breakup. But refusing to fight with him was a decision I made consciously. Because, honestly, it just doesn’t matter. We are a part of each other’s origins stories, whether we like it or not. And it’s okay if no one else understands. It’s not for them to judge.

Sometimes love is complicated and tragic. Sometimes the most honest thing you can say about a relationship is that it was real, and it mattered, even if it didn’t work out.

I choose to let this old flame burn in embers. I don’t want to snuff it out. But it’s not because we had a mature growing apart with no hard feelings.

It’s because once, thirty years ago, we were young and scared and reached for each other and meant it, even when meaning it wasn’t enough. That’s worth something. I’m still deciding what.

Thanks for reading Posts From the Edge.

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Leave Me a Tip

In July 2019, I went to my parents’ house to recover from kidney issues and related surgeries. At that time, my father was a competitive cross-fitter and Olympic weightlifter, even though he was in his late sixties. It was his sole focus in life—the only thing he did in his retirement—besides watching TV (YouTube and Fox News, naturally).1

Thanks to YouTube nutritionists and bro culture, he adopted a carnivore diet. It’s more than just eating meat. He gets the best, fanciest, free-range, organic, hormone-free, grass-fed, ocean-caught, no-nitrates, butchered only by leprechauns, and blessed by priests ordained in Antarctica (no tariffs), animal products available.2

He painstakingly weighs and counts his macros. Food takes up a lot of his planning and energy to acquire and prepare. He also really enjoys eating meat, so it’s a big part of his day’s happiness. He’s living his best life.

The fancy meat is his, and his alone. The rest of us don’t rate fancy meat. We get the regular hormone-injected stuff where the chickens are waterboarded and the beef might actually be horse. But whatever. We don’t cross-fit. If we did, he’d probably share.3

My parents have always had a strictly traditional marriage, and so my mom does the cooking. My father eats a lot, though, and she doesn’t want to cook all day—she’s tired and finds it irritating, especially because she has to weigh everything. To cope, she cooks huge batches of meat every few days. Several times per week, she’ll hard-boil two dozen eggs, grill a dozen bison burgers and top sirloin steaks, roast a couple of chickens, bake a low-carb meatloaf in a sheet cake dish (from meat she grinds herself), and make fresh yogurt from whole milk. Occasionally, she slips vegetables from her garden into bone broths she brews from scratch.4 She also cooks all the dog’s food from scratch.5

The Trad Refrigerator

This story takes place in my parents’ refrigerator. You see, my father is militant about earmarking his food. It’s probably a diagnosable neurosis. It’s his, and there will be hell to pay if anyone touches it. His dominion over his own rations also includes noisy opinions about what the rest of us put in the refrigerator, and hence into our bodies. The family is trained to avoid unpleasantness by sticking to their designated areas of the fridge, eating away from the house, and eating in secret.

Long ago, my mother developed a fridge organizational system. There are areas designated for my father’s food, the dog’s food, the community condiments, my father’s beverages, the community beverages, and garden produce (for my mother, who sneaks salads when he’s not looking).

Part of the fridge is cordoned off as inviolable for my father’s food. It’s his space. None shall trespass. We all silently understand, and no one speaks of it.

My mom doesn’t have her own space for food because she doesn’t eat, which is a habit she passed to me when I was a pre-teen.6 Occasionally, my younger brother brings my mother a milkshake, and she takes in calories. She doesn’t want my father to see, though, because he’ll try to get her to eat meat instead of milkshakes, and she’s sick of steak. She longs for lasagna.

My brother, as he lived there at the time, got assigned a produce drawer. It was his sole designated space for groceries. He filled the drawer with ranch dressing and ketchup packets from midnight fast food sojourns.

Vegetables Seek Asylum

The fridge arrangement was weird, but it worked—until my uncle moved in.7 You see, my uncle is a vegetarian. Can a vegetarian and a carnivore co-exist in a single household?

Not in Trump’s America.

It started innocently enough. My mother designated the second produce drawer to my uncle, so long as she got to partake in the salad occasionally. Within days, he expanded my mother’s garden, and they (my mother and uncle) dispensed with the lawn. Not to be outdone, my father took up the rest of the former lawn and made a giant weightlifting pad and bar structure.

At the time, I thought this was good. My mother had long lamented the garden’s neglect. My father hated maintaining the lawn because he had allergies. But soon all that homegrown produce wouldn’t fit into its single designated drawer.

On the days my mother didn’t have a meat processing line going in the kitchen, my uncle pre-cooked batches of rice dishes, oatmeal, vegetables, breads, beans, etc. Being my father’s brother, he has a similar penchant for—we’ll call it—detailedness. All of his food was carefully selected, weighed, and measured. His curated ingredients and pre-made dishes went into their own little glass jars with lids. Nothing went to waste. A slice of tomato left over? Glass jar.

Like my father with his artisanal meat, my uncle buys artisanal vegetarian food from Sprouts and Trader Joe’s. “I only eat the best,” he said. The fridge acquired a duplicate set of condiments, with the new bottles boasting of their delicate processing, rarer ingredients, and organic/non-GMO plant-based pedigrees. His tortilla chips must be blue. His beer, imported.

My uncle’s food is beautiful.

A Cold War

Soon, my uncle’s glass dishes and produce multiplied and expanded onto the refrigerator shelves like neatly stacked, very polite gremlins. And then he did the unthinkable: He reorganized the fridge while my mother was visiting my sister for a week.8 His dishes of vegetables encroached upon the meat, and possibly gave it cooties.

Not one to take such an aggression lightly, my father pushed back. He built meat forts. Butcher paper-wrapped protein was stacked like stones from shelf to shelf, stable only in their sheer density. And he didn’t just reclaim space. No! My father expanded to parts of the fridge previously held by other household members. His meat had a manifest destiny. He seized one of the produce drawers like it was the Crimea.

The next day, two bowls of plums from the backyard tree appeared on the shelf, taunting the wall of steak. As did a large bowl of garden tomatoes and several jars of my uncle’s homemade simple syrup.

When I returned after my surgery, there was no space for me to put a single lemon or a bottle of water. I was told by my father that lemons now go in the basket on the table. Water can be cooled with ice. My brother sweetly said I could keep stuff in his drawer. But there was only enough room for one item. I decided on pickles.

Since I was unable to drive, I worried about subsisting on pickles. My uncle invited me to nosh on his food at will. He opined that I should be plant-based for health reasons.9

My father adamantly disagreed. He argued my diabetes required me to eat carnivore. But even as he insisted I not eat carbs, he didn’t offer any meat. Nonetheless, his opinion and lifelong training made me hesitant to eat anything, so I stuck to pickles and fasting.10

As the week wore on, my father ran low on pre-cooked meat. He looked wild-eyed and resorted to protein shakes with raw eggs as his primary sustenance. So while the vegetarian arms race had constant reinforcements from the garden, the carnivore arms race suffered from shortages.

My father arranged the eggs where the meat used to be, like they were in bread lines. When the eggs dwindled, my father built a wall of sugar-free coffee syrups around the top shelf. The bottles were heretofore in the pantry because they don’t actually need to be refrigerated.

And this is where things stood when my mother returned home. She opened the fridge and gasped. “Why are all the syrups in here?” she asked.

“I needed to protect my space,” my father explained proudly, before exiting the kitchen in a cloud of self-satisfaction.

My mother looked at me with a silent question in her eyes.

“He’s manspreading,” I answered.

She didn’t know what that meant, but she nodded sagely.

The next day, my mother rearranged the fridge and restocked it with meat and eggs. She put a fresh batch of homemade dog food into two containers and placed them between the meat and vegetables. Dog food became the fridge’s demilitarized zone.11

An uneasy peace returned.

Peaceful Vegetables Get Expelled

Several months later, I visited for Thanksgiving. My uncle wasn’t there—something my parents neglected to tell me in advance. He had voted for Biden, which my parents found intolerable, and he had to move out.

Astonished, I sat in the living room listening to their justifications. It was their home, and they didn’t have to brook someone who would vote for the literal devil, Joe Biden.

I made noises of disapproval, too stunned to be articulate.

“Who’d you vote for?” my father asked—a challenge since my disapproval of Trump was known.

“Joe,” I responded, with a hint of defiance.

The single syllable hung in the air.

My mother gasped.

My father blinked and then grinned. “Oh, you mean Jo. The Libertarian.”

From 2012, beginning with the first Libertarian run of Gov. Gary Johnson, I had been active with the Libertarian Party at a high level.12 So they assumed “Joe” meant “Jo Jorgensen,” the 2020 Libertarian presidential candidate. It was a reasonable assumption, but I hadn’t meant to mislead them.

Clocking their reactions, I shrugged and left their assumption uncorrected.

My Evolving View of Trumpism

Let’s flashback to my personal journey with Trumpism. In 2012, Roger Stone—one of Trump’s closest political advisors—worked with the Gary Johnson campaign—and me, since I was General Counsel. I had occasional contact with Roger over the years, including in 2015 when Trump first announced a run. But I declined any involvement with Trump’s fledgling campaign, due to my sense that Trump was likely sexist and that it would make me uncomfortable.

Later, in December 2015, I told my friends that I didn’t think Trump would win the nomination—too unserious. I was wrong. Then, at the Libertarian National Convention in 2016, I told the delegation from the stage that we needed to run our dual-governor ticket because Trump was already making fun of us.13

I stuck with the Libertarians in 2016, and believed Clinton would win the presidency. Early in the Election Day returns, however, I saw the trends and knew Trump would win almost immediately. I told my staff my prediction. Admittedly, I thought it was a little funny. Trump’s election was, in my words at the time, “The most Amurrikah thing to ever Amurrikah.”

During his first term, I had mixed feelings about Trump and what he could do to our Republic. Perhaps I suffered from normalcy bias and a conservative upbringing. I even worked on some defensive legal matters before the grand jury in the Mueller investigation. But with exposure and time, my opposition to him grew.

As a person with life-threatening blood clotting and autoimmune issues, the pandemic was incredibly frightening. In a steadily growing chorus, people said to me that the pandemic would cull the weak, disabled, drags on society, like me. This was natural, and good, they said, openly wishing for my death as preferable to wearing masks.

Trump went from a response I respected (let’s get a vaccine developed and out as quickly as possible) to harnessing hatefulness and fear for political opportunism. He permanently lost my “political independent” tolerance. And I voted for a Democratic candidate for the first time in my life.

A Microcosm of MAGA

My family’s Fridge Wars revealed something about the worldview of those attracted to MAGA. Whether shelf space should be made for vegetables in a YouTube-carnivore-Jordan Peterson world was also about whether my uncle—and people like him (and me)—deserved space in America at all. And this dynamic is played out in family homes and text chains all over the country.14

MAGA didn’t create my family’s dysfunction. The fear, anxiety, and insecurity that engender intolerant and selfish behavior came from generations of poverty and abuse. But MAGA gave that dysfunction the veneer of legitimacy. MAGA says building walls isn’t selfish and uncharitable; it’s sensible and patriotic.

My parents have significantly more money than my uncle. Their attitude about their wealth gap is boringly predictable. They judge him: “We earned our money, and since you weren’t equally successful, we’re better than you. We made better choices. We deserve more. You deserve less.” Never mind all the complicated factors—including luck—that make up the differences in people’s financial circumstances.

No doubt, my father earned his money. My parents worked hard, made sacrifices, and built their retirement through decades of discipline. Legally, they don’t owe my uncle anything, including shelf space in the fridge. But they profess to be Christians, and that’s where my mind boggles.

MAGA is a “me me me” worldview with a flag wrapped around it. It’s the politics of “I earned mine, you should have earned yours.” It’s the belief that success is always deserved (for the good) and suffering is always justice (for the bad). It can’t comprehend that someone might be poor or disabled through bad luck and social barriers. Lack of resources comes from moral failure—from inherent unworthiness.

And anyone who suggests we should share what we have—that there’s no harm to letting your brother store vegetables in the fridge—that America belongs to all of us, no matter our backgrounds or gender or abilities, and that we have a responsibility to each other as humans, is naïve, entitled, or worse: It’s the wicked stealing what the righteous have earned.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

In Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, the ants work hard all summer storing food for winter while the grasshopper plays his music. When winter comes, the grasshopper has no food or shelter. We’re taught this story as children to learn the value of hard work and planning.

But here’s what MAGA forgets: the ants don’t let the grasshopper starve. They let him into their home. They feed him. And he entertains them through the long winter with his music. They survive together—the ants with their stored food, the grasshopper with his songs. The moral was never, “let the grasshopper die because he made bad choices.” The moral was, “different people contribute different things, and we need each other to survive.”

MAGA has rewritten the ending. In their version, the grasshopper deserves to freeze to death. He should have been an ant. His suffering is justice. And the ants sit inside their warm hill, congratulating themselves on their virtue, listening to silence instead of music.

Everything in my father’s house is his—he earned it. And everyone knows it. We don’t question it. We adapt. We eat pickles. We sneak milkshakes. We hide our salads.

In the end, we leave.

I suppose MAGA thinks they will be happier when everyone else leaves. In reality, their lives will be lonely and silent.

He wanted to join ICE because it pays a $50,000 signing bonus. He could use the money, and he’s ex-military, so I get it. But he has a tricky legal issue that is preventing the hire. My mom wanted me to work some magic and fix it—finding lawyers who had my skill and connections for handling it was otherwise evading him, especially because he doesn’t have extra resources right now.

I had major qualms. First of all, I’m married to an immigrant. The current anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights behavior of our armed government is terrifying us on an existential level—not just insulting, but deeply scary. My husband’s a naturalized citizen with no criminal record, but that’s only mildly reassuring.

Second, I don’t want my brother in ICE because I think he could get hurt. The violence is escalating, and I don’t want him in domestic combat. Third, I had to wonder: would helping someone join ICE be aiding and abetting America’s Schutzstaffel? Assuming that’s what I believe it is, and that belief is rational, what was my moral culpability?

I didn’t voice these concerns because my mother wouldn’t have understood them. And since there’s not much I would deny her, I said I would think about it.

When I hung up, my husband said, “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” I replied, with a grimace. The legal constraint on my brother wasn’t fair, and he needed a steady job and healthcare for his family. I was sympathetic. So I worked out a legal strategy.

But after completing hours of prep work, I decided against it. My decision was based on the third reason. I’d help him get any other job, but I wouldn’t help him join our SS. That was a month ago.

In the pre-dawn hours last Thursday, I couldn’t sleep. I’d been in a horrid flare for days and hadn’t been online in at least forty-eight hours. At 3 am, I opened Facebook.

The very first thing I saw was a slow-motion video of an ICE agent shooting someone in her car. I saw him pull out his firearm and take three shots—two through the open driver’s side window. Her SUV accelerated and crashed into another car across the street. The agent sauntered off, adjusting his face mask upward. Then I saw a still photo of the bloody interior of the car.

I gasped.

I hadn’t read the news while offline, and I was unprepared for this unbidden video. As a matter of habit, I avoid violent videos of true events. For two decades, from the beheadings of journalists to the shooting of Charlie Kirk, I’ve intentionally missed them all.

Shocked, I felt my chest tighten and tears prick my eyes while I searched for the news about what I’d just watched. I soon learned the victim’s name: Renée Nicole Macklin Good.1

ICE vs. The Constitution

For the next several days, online spaces raged. More videos emerged—some with sound, from varied angles, showing the context before and after. Particularly awful was the video of her wife sobbing on the snow with their dog.

It is my professionally informed opinion that ICE agent Jonathan E. Ross committed murder.2 But that’s not what this article is about. Plenty of others have dissected and analyzed this homicide. Rather, I want to discuss the larger context because this was the inevitable result of what Secretary Kristi Noem, her colleagues in the Trump administration, and her deputies have purposefully put into place.

After watching the video, the first thing I posted on Facebook was this:

Generally speaking, law enforcement cannot:

• Stop you while driving without reasonable suspicion that you are committing a crime

• Enter your closed private property (home, vehicle, business) without permission or a warrant

• Demand you present identification3

• Prevent you from exercising free speech, even if you are insulting and upsetting them

• Prevent you from occupying open public spaces, like sidewalks, streets, parks, and buildings

• Prevent you from filming them

• Stop you from leaving unless you are explicitly under arrest

• Stop you from accessing legal counsel

• Force you to talk to them if you don’t want to, including forcing you to show them your phone or any documents and devices you are carrying

• Use deadly force, like shooting at you, to stop you from leaving or fleeing

• Search or frisk your person or property without a warrant, an arrest, or reasonable suspicion that you are currently committing a crime while armed and dangerous

• Physically accost you in any way

These rules apply to all law enforcement, including the local police. ICE is even more restricted, because it exists for the discrete purpose of arresting out-of-status immigrants. ICE’s primary authority is civil immigration enforcement (per the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1357), and they lack general police powers over both citizens and non-citizens—especially over citizens. That means, in addition to the above, ICE cannot:

• Pull over cars or interfere with and direct traffic

• Break into cars or jump in front of moving vehicles to arrest drivers and passengers

• Assert any authority over citizens whatsoever

• Arrest, detain, or demand citizens (or anyone who isn’t an out-of-status immigrant) exit their vehicles4

• Search anyone who isn’t an out-of-status immigrant or their property

• Use force on anyone who isn’t under arrest, except in strict cases of self-defense

• Enter private homes and businesses without a warrant and especially after being told to leave

And yet, we have all seen videos of ICE repeatedly:

• Entering private property (including businesses) and refusing to leave

• Giving orders to citizens and lawful residents to stop, exit their car, provide papers, answer questions, move, provide access to property, stop speaking, or stop filming

• Breaking into vehicles (especially by breaking windows), and snatching at the occupants

• Moving in front of operating vehicles

• Using tear gas, pepper spray, tasers, and firearms when no imminent threat of bodily harm is present

• Arresting citizens

• Transporting people away from counsel, courts, and home jurisdictions, and detaining them without due process (including citizens)

• Depriving people of life, liberty, and property without due process of law

• Charging people with obstruction, only to see those cases repeatedly be dismissed by grand juries, judges, and trial juries

There’s some nuance—particularly around what ICE calls “obstruction”—and I’m getting to that. But as a practical matter, nearly everything we’re seeing ICE do right now is unquestionably out of bounds under the United States Constitution (and state laws apply too).

You and What Army?

Hear me clearly: My legal summary of your civil rights isn’t controversial or speculative. Constitutional law isn’t theoretical or underdeveloped. Anyone supporting ICE who says that ICE is operating legally and constitutionally is gaslighting you.

Rather, DHS leadership and the Trump administration know ICE agents are breaking the law. They have, in fact, instructed them to do so. They’re intentionally violating people’s civil rights, and betting you can’t do anything about it. Here’s why they made that calculation.

1. They Believe in Hard Power

Recently, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” He made this statement in reference to the U.S. attacking Venezuela, but his view on power isn’t limited to our foreign adventures. He’s also asserted that President Trump has the power to do anything he likes domestically.

Stephen Miller is a white nationalist who believes in ethnic cleansing through mass deportation. He’s not hiding it. And Miller is one of the architects of current DHS operations.

Miller does not stand alone. More broadly, the philosophy that power is primarily exercised through brute force is daily demonstrated by the Trump administration. The administration secures supplication through leverage, harassment, threats, controlling and cutting off resources, litigation and prosecutions, and even deploying troops in our cities.

So it is no surprise DHS operates on brute strength first, the Constitution never. The leadership of DHS does not value principles (civil rights) above purpose (exerting their control). They also do not fear enforcement of the law against them; since Noem took over, DHS has outright ignored multiple court orders—because the courts do not have guns. DHS has also massively increased its spending on militarizing ICE with weaponry and armor. Noem now turns those weapons inward—to show the population who’s in charge.

ICE wants you to fear them. Convincing you they will shoot you on contact is the point. Eliminating resistance through intimidation is the goal. And it’s working: immigrants are fearful. Many have left the country voluntarily. Many more have turned back from their attempts to come here (legally or illegally), and international tourism has severely retracted. The Trump administration wants the citizenry who support immigrants to be fearful, be silent, passively accept ICE’s violence, and let it operate with impunity.

It’s correct for me to say, “ICE can’t legally detain, accost, or murder you.” But being correct will mean nothing to you when you’ve been shot dead. It’ll mean nothing to ICE when there’re no consequences for shooting you dead. And once everyone knows this, the population will cower.

2. So Sue Me

a. Civil Suits for Constitutional Violations by ICE

If the police violate your Constitutional rights, you can sue them for money damages. Lawsuits against federal law enforcement for violating your rights are called Bivens actions, so-called after Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).

In 2022, the Roberts Supreme Court abruptly limited the application of Bivens against the Border Patrol in Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022). No Bivens suits against the Border Patrol, it decided. The Supreme Court determined that the Border Patrol engaged in national security operations. Because national security (like the military) is different from law enforcement (like the FBI), Congress needs to pass a law specifically allowing the Border Patrol to be sued for Constitutional violations.5

But there’s a difference between the Border Patrol and ICE. The Border Patrol operates on the border, as its name suggests, and has long been quasi-military, like the Coast Guard (which is also under Homeland Security, not Defense). The Border Patrol doesn’t just check passports; it interdicts smugglers, traffickers, and terrorists. That’s why they are hardened. In contrast, ICE operates domestically, and historically has not been militarized. Its purpose is to find and arrest people who have violated immigration and customs laws. They operate under warrants, like law enforcement. Indeed, “enforcement” is literally the E in ICE’s name.

Under Noem, ICE has been transformed into a quasi-military force domestically, which is why they’ve been outfitted with sophisticated weaponry and armor. The highest levels of management at DHS and the Trump Administration now claim that ICE is for national security, like the military, instead of law enforcement.

While Egbert technically addressed the Border Patrol, DHS aggressively applies its logic to ICE amid this new national security framing. DHS expects the Supreme Court to eventually extend Egbert to all of its operations—meaning that you cannot sue them for violating your Constitutional rights without Congress intervening. Noem et al. believe Congress will not intervene, and the net result will be that it can operate under de facto absolute immunity.

This is of course terrifying because now ICE is acting like, and essentially claiming to be, an occupying force domestically. This is why the comparison to Nazi Germany’s SS isn’t hyperbole. The SS was a domestic quasi-military organization responsible for internal security, policing, and enforcing “racial purity” policies—all while operating outside normal legal constraints. ICE is claiming the same framework.

b. Personal Versus Agency Liability

Here’s another important piece in understanding the chessboard. Normally, when you sue for your rights being violated under the Constitution, you sue the agents who violated them, not the governmental agency they work for. Bivens actions are against individual agents.

This is because the government has sovereign immunity. America’s legal system is based on the English system of yore. The English can’t sue their king (the sovereign). Inheriting this principle, we can’t sue the government (sovereign immunity) unless the government agrees to it first.6 This agreement was provided to a limited extent when Congress passed the Federal Torts Claims Act, which allows you to sue when the government commits torts against you. The FTCA still applies when ICE commits torts against you, but there are a lot of limits procedurally and damages-wise.

You can sue the government for Constitutional violations. Constitutional violations aren’t torts, so these suits are not governed by the FTCA. Unlike torts, when you sue the government for Constitutional violations, you sue for injunctions. Injunctions are court orders that prohibit or require things. They are not money damages, and that’s why they are allowed despite sovereign immunity.7

In short, if ICE violates your civil rights, you can sue for a court order to make them stop and not do it again. But that doesn’t fix the harm that has already occurred—damages are how we do that, and damages aren’t available when sovereign immunity applies. There have been no FTCA-like laws passed by Congress to allow you to sue the federal government directly for damages for Constitutional violations (unlike Bivens actions where you sue the individuals, not the agencies).

That is why injunctions are most useful in class actions. If ICE violates your rights, and you represent a class, you can make ICE not do it again—not just against you, but also against other people. By mid-2025, DHS was being enjoined all over the place—although they were outright ignoring the injunctions and sending planes of people to El Salvadorian gulags, anyway.

With the courts aggressively upholding the Constitution with nationwide injunctions, the Trump administration made a beeline to the Supreme Court, crying national security. Normally the Supreme Court doesn’t jump so quickly, but they did for Trump all throughout 2025. Worse, this was against a backdrop of a long and contentious legal debate about nationwide injunctions—which I will not bore you with. The upshot is that nationwide injunctions are now unavailable in most cases, thanks to Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831 (2025).

Without Bivens suits, and injunctions being piecemeal and outright ignored, lawsuits against DHS are unlikely to concern anyone there—no one will have to pay tort damages out of their own pockets when DHS is sued under the FTCA.8 Bivens suits are more effective because when individuals can be sued and held accountable for damages, they worry a lot more about not violating your rights in the first place.9

With DHS officials telling their agents that they’re absolutely immune from suit (not just qualifiedly immune), they have told them there are no civil consequences for breaking the law. This has made the behavior of individual ICE agents unconstrained, and has incentivized them to follow illegal directives from their superiors so they don’t lose their jobs.

3. Who Jails the Jailor?

Without intrinsic motivation to follow the law at DHS, or extrinsic motivation through private lawsuits, we’re left with the criminal law. Murder is still a crime. But will anyone prosecute?

a. The DOJ Is Currently Lost

When Renée Good was shot, Noem, Vice President Vance, and even President Trump, all responded before an investigation could be conducted, aggressively claiming the shooting was justified. Vance went further and announced that Ross (and all other ICE agents) will be protected by the Trump administration and not charged with crimes when they use deadly force. The FBI Director, Kash Patel, immediately took control of the investigation and locked Minnesotan authorities out.

Once relatively infrequent, since Noem took office in January 2025, federal immigration agents have been involved in an increased number of domestic shootings. As of publication, there’ve been sixteen shootings and four confirmed deaths, with several of the victims being citizens. Beyond these shooting-specific figures, there’ve been thirty-two deaths in ICE custody, making 2025 the deadliest year for the agency in at least two decades.10

Despite the concerning body count, no ICE agents have been prosecuted by the DOJ. Worse, leadership within the DOJ’s gutted Civil Rights Division immediately informed staff they will not pursue any investigation of Ross’s murder of Good.11 The DOJ will not enforce the criminal law against ICE personnel involved in these deaths.

That said, the Trump DOJ will not be in power forever. And the federal statutes of limitations for serious crimes (murders, assaults, kidnapping, torture, and corruption) are five years at the shortest, with some being unlimited. Declining to investigate and prosecute now doesn’t serve as a future bar. Prosecutions may happen eventually.

b. The Obstruction Smokescreen

Shooting citizens in broad daylight is bad PR and carries the danger of civil uprisings if people become too provoked. While it’s hard to imagine in current America, when uprisings become fervent enough, they turn into coups, civil wars, and revolutions. Hard power practitioners, like the Trump administration, seek to cow the population and push the limits as far as they can without inciting violent rebellion.

To paint a veneer of legitimacy, confuse the public, mire court proceedings, and openly punish dissenters, DHS claims “obstruction” in every conflict. To ensure the broader population gets the message that they must not object to anything ICE does, Noem claims large swaths of the citizenry are engaged in “domestic terrorism” or criminal obstruction, and threatens violence and prosecution. The accusation is victim blaming, and intimidation.

To be clear, obstruction is an actual crime. Forcibly preventing an ICE agent from carrying out their legitimate duties is illegal. For example, if you see an ICE agent arresting someone pursuant to a warrant, you can’t tackle the agent so the arrestee can flee. You can taunt, refuse to assist, passively resist, film, mock, and shame them.

But, as used lately by DHS, the “obstruction” accusations are plainly frivolous—and you don’t have to take my word for it. The DOJ is repeatedly failing to secure convictions. The “obstruction” and “domestic terrorists” accusations do not create a legal justification for ICE to harass and abuse the population.

c. State Prosecutions Offer Hope

One avenue remains: state criminal prosecution. States can prosecute federal officials who commit crimes within their borders. There’re centuries of precedents for this, with the modern framework in place since 1890.12 Federal employment doesn’t grant automatic immunity from state criminal law—despite what the Trump administration is telling its people.

Admittedly, DHS will fight prosecutions aggressively. They’ll assert Supremacy Clause arguments, claiming that the agent’s actions were permissible under the Immigration and Naturalization Act and powers granted to the President for national security. They’ll remove the case to federal court, complicating the litigation. And the DOJ will provide the legal defense, so the accused will not go bankrupt with legal fees and will not be financially incentivized to plea bargain.

But here’s what matters most: bail.

If a state prosecutes an ICE agent, that agent gets arrested and then attends a bail hearing. For serious charges like murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, or assault with a deadly weapon, bail can be denied or set prohibitively high—especially if the defendant is a flight risk, or an ongoing danger to the public (like continuing in their job while exhibiting an unapologetic propensity for violence).

Which means the agent could sit in jail for months or years while the DOJ fights to get the case dismissed on Supremacy Clause grounds (federal removal doesn’t mean that bail conditions will automatically become more lenient—especially when the Trump administration is concurrently seeking stricter bail rules). And that’s all before their lawyers prepare for a trial on the merits—the DOJ’s litigation will require waiver of the right to a speedy trial.

Even if the case is eventually dismissed or they are ultimately acquitted, agents face the realistic prospect of serving real time pending trial. That’s a deterrent with teeth. ICE agents might think twice about shooting citizens if they know they could spend years in pretrial detention while lawyers argue about federalism, procedure, and evidence. We should be sure to tell them.

So What Do We Do?

The Trump administration is betting on fear, impunity, and our meekness. They think the Constitution is just words on paper when agents have guns and the DOJ has their back. But history shows that fear only works if we let it. We can break that bet—starting right now, right where we are.

1. Friends Don’t Let Friends Join ICE.

If someone in your life is eyeing that $50,000 signing bonus or thinking the uniform means power, remind them: this job isn’t just about enforcing immigration law anymore. Under Noem and this administration, it’s become domestic combat with escalating violence and no real accountability. Agents like Jonathan Ross are being sent into communities armed like soldiers, told they have “absolute immunity” (a lie), and facing genuine risks—from public outrage to the possibility of state charges and years in pretrial detention. Don’t romanticize it. Don’t help them sign up. Help them find something else—anything else. Loyalty to family and friends means keeping them out of a machine that’s turning citizens into targets and agents into villains.

2. Teach ICE Agents That Accountability Isn’t Dead, Just Delayed.

The current DOJ won’t touch them. But the Trump administration won’t be in power forever. Federal statutes of limitations for serious crimes give us breathing room. Declining to prosecute now doesn’t erase the crime—it just postpones the reckoning. Future DOJ leadership could revisit these cases, especially with the body of evidence building from videos, witness statements, and public records. And that’s without considering that the states can prosecute at any time they see fit. We should educate ICE agents about their incarceration and lawsuit risks.

3. They Can’t Kill All of Us.

The most powerful weapon we have is outnumbering ICE. If the U.S. Army struggled to occupy the much smaller Afghanistan, then it’s obvious that a less professional, recently militarized DHS can’t forcibly hold the United States when her citizens decide against it.

Stand up and resist. You can do this by gathering evidence. Film every encounter. Document victims’ stories and share them widely. Shame and name violators publicly. Protest, resist civilly, organize vigils and noise demonstrations. Refuse hospitality. Encourage your local district attorneys and attorneys general (all elected officials) to prosecute, and volunteer evidence.

In 2025, the Trump administration famously sought to “flood the zone” with legal violations so that they could not be curtailed by overwhelmed courts and pro bono law firms. Flip the script and flood the zone with videos of peaceful people suffering from the jackboots until the rest refuse to look away.

A word about antagonizing ICE: I won’t tell you, “When they go low, we go high.” Outrage at oppression and injustice is human and valid, and I share the frustration that overly polite (or perhaps corrupt) politicians have let a strongman bully the world. But, strategically, consider what you get for verbally antagonizing ICE. On one hand, you’ll get the fleeting satisfaction of letting them have it. You’ll also invite violence directed at you.

On the other hand, you won’t convince any ICE agents that they should quit (which they can, at any time) by screaming insults at them. Your videos and witnessing (which is needed for prosecutions, lawsuits, and online counter-education) will lose credibility because people will attack you. By all means, voice your displeasure—just be smart about it.13

4. Be The Best Witness You Can Be

If ICE stops you, speak the magic words: “Do you have reasonable suspicion that I’m committing an immigration crime?”

It would be extra useful for all the civil rights lawyers who want to help if you video their responses.

If they say yes, then say: “Please articulate why you have reasonable suspicion that I’m committing an immigration crime.”

When they can’t provide reasonable suspicion, say: “You have no authority over me and I’m not required to cooperate. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights to not speak with you and to leave … or to film, speak out, protest, and passively resist ICE presence in civilian spaces.”

Bystanders should call local law enforcement to ask for help de-escalating and supervising ICE activities. Local police can also serve as witnesses.

5. Keep Suing. Something Will Get Through.

Civil suits are harder than ever, but they’re not dead. Persistent litigation can chip away at the system and make agents think twice. Even if victories are piecemeal, they create records, force discovery, give us injunctions, and build precedent. Every filing reminds agents they’re not untouchable. And perhaps Bivens will end up applying to ICE after all.

6. Support Civil Rights and Immigration Lawyers.

These attorneys are on the front lines, often working pro bono or subsisting on infrequently won contingency fees. It’s impoverishing and stressful. We do it because the need is overwhelming, and we are called to serve. Groups like the ACLU, NILC, and local immigrant rights organizations are also drowning in cases. Donate, volunteer, spread their know-your-rights materials. Courts may be slow and inefficient, but they’re the strongest existing bulwark against the “iron laws” of fascists. Bolster them.

7. Replace Congress (Both the House and Senate).

It’s a big ask to replace them, but it’s essential that Congress begins to represent the people once again. Congress has the power to rein in DHS, restore oversight, defund militarization, and protect rights by letting individuals sue for constitutional violations. They won’t do it so long as they are more afraid of Trump or their lobbyists than they are of the voter.

Educate your friends and family, campaign for candidates who prioritize civil liberties over enforcement theater, and vote like the future depends on it.

8. Lobby Your Governors To Assert States’ Rights

The United States is still a federal republic. That means that the state governments have the ability to refuse the federal government in many circumstances. People often think that the Supremacy Clause means that the Federal government can assert its will over the states whenever it chooses. That’s emphatically untrue, and even our current Supreme Court still mostly considers federalism (the concept that the federal government has limited, enumerated powers) to be sacrosanct. When the governors of California, Oregon, and Illinois told the President that they did not want the National Guard activated in their states, the federal courts—all the way to the Supreme Court—backed them, and the President had to withdraw.

A Court of Fear and Impunity

Halfway through writing this essay, I felt such despair that I worried I wouldn’t be able to offer any useful advice. I’ve understood what was happening legally all along, and rallying hope has been difficult for the past year. There are no shortcuts. There are no Marvel superheroes coming to rescue us.

If we want to defeat those who would subjugate and abuse us, we must do it collectively, through a thousand paper cuts, through the audacity of being brave and immovable in what is right.

When setting up their Court of Fear and Impunity, Miller, Noem, Vance, et al. bet the population would cower. Let’s prove them wrong.

We’re Americans, after all.

So I’ve never actually seen Die Another Day. But, surprisingly, I love the Madonna theme song for that movie with the same title. I can relate to it far more than a normal person should.

To explain why, I have to go back twenty-five years. To the day I died.

In 2001, I was a twenty-two-year-old first-year law student. I attended the University of San Diego on a ninety percent scholarship. To keep it for all three years, I had to stay in the top ten percent of my class. Law school is notoriously brutal. And I’d staked a hundred grand in tuition on my ability to outperform several hundred other smart and competitive people.

I had a plan. I’m introverted, so I avoided speaking in class. I also rarely briefed the cases we were assigned to read. Instead, I quietly focused on distilling the black letter law into study outlines and took dozens of practice tests. And I poured hours into my legal writing class, since exams were essays.

My studying was ahead of schedule by Thanksgiving. This was fortunate because, in the three weeks leading up to our first semester’s final exams, I noticed shortness of breath and chest pain while exercising, and then while walking up the stairs in the law library. During the study week before finals, I went to three doctors: campus health, and twice to urgent care at the Navy hospital (I was a Navy wife back then). All three told me I was fine—probably just deconditioned, despite running a few miles several times per week. The campus clinician gave me a Z-pack of antibiotics.

That first semester of law school, I stayed at my parents’ house to save money because my then-husband was stationed in Washington state. (This turned out to be an issue during September 11th a few months before, but that’s another tale.)

The night before my first exam—Contracts—I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t breathe when lying down. As dawn broke, I was gasping for air. With some effort, I got up from where I sat in the bed to find my mother (who is an early riser). I don’t know what I expected her to do, but I knew something was very wrong. I managed a few steps before collapsing. I hit the floor knees first before blacking out.

After the dark consumed me, I entered a tunnel. I floated toward a bright light. In that moment, I was not afraid. I was peaceful, calm, and fully aware that I was no longer in my body. But that didn’t seem like a big deal, because I knew my body wasn’t me.

Soon I was surrounded by the golden shimmer, and I was warm and pain-free. I couldn’t see anything, not in the way that we think of sight in our human form. I didn’t have physical senses. But I had knowledge. And that knowledge included a conversation with a nonphysical presence.

“Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?” it asked. It didn’t specify what that meant, but I understood—to stay was to stay there, in spirit, wherever that was. To go, was to return to my body.

“I just started law school,” I immediately replied. I still don’t know why that was my primary concern, but I’m only here to report what happened.

“Then sit up.”

Instantly, I was back in my body, struggling to rise to my hands and knees. Fear slammed into me like a tidal wave, followed by intense pain. Tears flowed down my cheeks, but I was too oxygen-starved to cry.

I crawled out of the bedroom. My younger brother, who was still in high school, was in the bedroom next to me. He’s not a morning person, and I will never know why he roused at that pre-dawn moment, but he opened the door to see me collapsed at his feet. He told me later he suddenly had to go to the bathroom, and hadn’t heard me moving around.

“Get mom,” I whispered. He took me seriously because, a moment later, he banged on my parents’ bedroom door. My mother took one look at me and started screaming. She told me afterwards that I was a horrible shade of blue-gray that gave her nightmares for weeks.

I vaguely recall a conversation between my parents about whether driving me to the hospital would be faster than an ambulance. I was unable to speak or move, and I was in shock. My father and brother pulled me to my feet, dragged me down the stairs, and stuffed me into my father’s car. My memory of the drive comprises snatches of panic and cold sweats.

When I got to the hospital, I was aware, but because I couldn’t speak, the ER staff thought I was confused. I was manhandled onto a wheelchair, and an oxygen mask was strapped to my face. A few minutes later, they hauled me onto a CT machine platform. They wanted me to lie on my back, but that felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, and I refused and struggled, unable to communicate. My father was with me in the room, and he convinced me to relax while the nurse told me I would only have to lie back for thirty seconds and I could sit the rest of the time.

I don’t remember it specifically, but I had an IV placed. While they were prepping things, another nurse shoved a clipboard in front of my face with a liability waiver and a pen. “Sign here,” she said, tapping at the bottom of the page.

I tried to read the waiver before signing it. I had been studying contract law just an hour earlier! I squinted at it, trying to understand the tiny type.

My father, who is also a lawyer, said, “Don’t worry about it! Just sign it. You’re under duress.”

That sounded right, so I scrawled my signature and then laid back and held my breath.

The thirty seconds it took to scan me put me in such distress that I started vomiting. They gave me an anti-nausea medication that made me feel like bugs were crawling all over my skin. My reaction must’ve been extreme, because they sedated and intubated me.

I awoke again in the ICU, which is where I spent the next two weeks. The pulmonologist told me I had bilateral pulmonary emboli (blood clots in both my lungs originating from my pulmonary artery)—dozens of them. After I’d recovered a little, he told me I had the most severe PE he’d ever seen someone survive. He told me it was a miracle I hadn’t died.

But what he didn’t know is that I had died. I’d crossed over. And I’d chosen to come back.

Over the next week, I learned from the university that I had to take all five of my exams by the end of the three-week examination period, or I would be dis-enrolled and lose my scholarship. The pulmonologist was visibly angry with the school when we discussed discharging me for exams, declaring them cruel, and advised against it. I could barely walk or talk, still couldn’t lie down, and relied on supplemental oxygen. I also hadn’t done any studying while hospitalized because they had me on a hefty dose of Xanax to keep my heart rate controlled.

Nonetheless, at my insistence, I was discharged and took five exams over three consecutive days. I struggled physically, but my early strategy of focusing on writing skills and practice exams paid off. I got my grades a few weeks later. I’d scored in the top five percent of my class.

In January, when I returned to school, the list of the students in the top five percent was posted on the wall because we were automatically invited to Law Review. After it was posted, one of my classmates stomped over to me. I don’t remember her name anymore, but I remember what she said, her lip curled into a sneer and an accusation in her tone: “If you were supposed to be so sick, how’d you do so well?” she asked.

I hadn’t widely shared where I was during exams, but word had gotten around.

“Maybe the oxygen made me smarter,” I joked with a shrug.

If life were a Hollywood movie, that would be my Die Another Day credit roll. I would become a hero in the vein of Erin Brockovich. Everyone would leave the theater feeling like the world was just.

But alas, this was only the first of six pulmonary embolisms that I suffered over the next two decades—once in court while I was in the middle of oral argument. Then, last year, at forty-five, I had a stroke. I’ve failed multiple anti-coagulants and doctors don’t know why I clot. And, insult to injury, I’ve survived two bouts of endometrial cancer. I also have several autoimmune diseases and complex PTSD.

I’ve come so close to death so many times that my friends and family joke that I can’t be killed.

A life of serious chronic illness has a few downsides. First of all, it’s expensive. I frequently can’t work, and I have experienced tremendous disability discrimination in my profession. My medical bills are something to behold. Nearly every major decision I’ve made in my adult life is centered on my access to hospitals and the cost of prescriptions.

I’m also frequently exhausted and in pain. It’s depressing, and my PTSD alone is debilitating.

This past year has been especially hard. For the first time as an American, I’m afraid of our government in an existential way. Healthcare is grotesquely unaffordable, and the Medicaid safety net was eviscerated for people like me. Civil rights are being trampled. Yesterday, we invaded Venezuela.

I watch all of this and wonder: will my big mouth—because I have opinions—put my immigrant husband at risk? Will I lose the healthcare that keeps me alive? Will we be trapped here, in a failing economy, stripped of what little property and freedom we have left?

But shut my mouth, I cannot.

Despite my many struggles, I’ve devoted my life to telling the stories of the downtrodden and to fighting for the rights of the ordinary.

I spent most of last December in bed, barely able to function, largely because I haven’t been able to get necessary-to-life medication as insurance companies tighten access. I stopped writing, stopped working, and wondered what I had left to give. I felt myself fade in a way I hadn’t experienced since the first time I had cancer.

But I’m not dead yet. And apparently it’s not my time to go. After all, I went to law school.

On a core level, I’m a raging ball of stubborn foolhardiness, and I refuse to stay down where life keeps putting me. I refuse to accept my fate, or to be quiet and meek.

This morning, I’ve once again gotten up, a sneer on my lips and a glint in my eyes. I have words to say, tales to tell, wisdom to share, and ideas to spread. I have wrongs to right, and trials to suffer—maybe even conquer. I have bears to poke. At the very least, I intend to go down swearing.

I guess I’ll die another day.

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1. “Endeavored to prevent the population of these States . . . obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions . . .”

2. “obstructed the Administration of Justice”

3. “Made Judges dependent on his Will alone”

4. “Sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people”

5. “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”

6. “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”

7. “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”

8. “depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury”

9. “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”

10. “He has excited domestic insurrections . . .”

These are all quotes of indictment of King George III from the Declaration of Independence—the same document that hangs in the Oval Office mere feet from Donald Trump.

Ironically, Trump has never read it: “Well, it means, exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.” (Donald Trump to Terry Moran (ABC News), April 29, 2025.)

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Here’s an excerpt, and I’ll let the story speak for itself:

The enormity of the number hit her between the eyes again. “Eighty-five thousand babies,” she mumbled, looking at her balled-up fists. She jumped out of her chair as emotion swept through her; she was about to veer horrifically into conduct unbecoming a judge.

“Five-minute recess. I’ll be back.” She stormed out of her courtroom and jogged to the bathroom in her office, locking the door. Sitting on the toilet, she sobbed into her hands, because nothing she ordered would cause those children to be found, or those bureaucrats to care.

She splashed water on her face and calmed down. Throwing the DHS’s bureaucrats in jail was politically fraught and unlikely to result in anything positive. The best she could do was order the DHS to pay every cent of the ACLU’s legal fees. Heaving a resigned breath, she went back to her bench.

When she returned, her courtroom was remarkably silent, given the crowd. Feeling shockingly powerless, she made the appropriate orders and ended the hearing. She had nothing left to give the law that day.

I’m not Nostradamus. The ways judges can be evaded by litigants, especially the executive branch, is obvious to experienced lawyers. Also, the case fictionalized in my novel was based on a real scandal spanning multiple administrations of both parties. (At the time of publication, Biden’s DHS was on deck and Missouri’s Republican Senator Josh Hawley was investigating.)

Without diving too deeply into theories of power, both legitimate and illegitimate, it is simply a fact that society requires people to agree to be civil in order to function properly. For the most part, people agree to the rules, and that is to our mutual benefit.

In the case of the United States, the most fundamental set of rules that everyone has agreed to is the Constitution. Public servants (from judges, to law enforcement, to bureaucrats, to the President) all swear an oath to uphold it.

It’s the bedrock of our civil society. Most of us revere the Constitution. And most of us find it shocking when someone lies and breaks their oath to faithfully uphold it.

When there are no mutually agreed rules—no written and predictable laws that we all submit to—we devolve into the Law of the Jungle, namely, the most ruthless person with the most strength, controls, to the detriment of everyone else.

Do not underestimate the seriousness of the moment.

One of our rules in the Constitution is that we have courts. Those courts decide the law and facts in disputes both major and minor. It’s as close to fair as we can currently get, and everyone here has a right to access them. (Everyone means everyone, not just citizens, not just the rich and powerful, not just people who’ve never done anything wrong.)

The Judicial Branch is an essential, and co-equal, part of our government. The courts vow to adhere to the Constitution and the laws made by Congress. The rest of government (including, especially, the executive), and we the people, agree to comply with the decisions of the courts.

Without this last part, the law is whatever the person with the most power (guns, money, ruthlessness) says it is. Or as President Trump sees it:

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” is Trump’s way of saying that he can substitute his judgment for the courts, for the Congress, and for the law. But that’s not how it works. If one person’s whims become the law, then he is a king or a dictator, and his power is by force and not by agreement of the people. Courts are an institution—not a single person—and there’s good reason for that.

Since Trump believes his word is law, his administration has decided that they no longer wish to be bound by the rules, and hence by court orders. There are at least half a dozen court orders (not just in immigration) that the Trump administration is presently violating, including two Supreme Court decisions.

This is a major departure from past presidencies. As the Fourth Circuit recently wrote in its opinion denying the Trump Administration’s appeal in the Abrego Garcia case,

It is in this atmosphere that we are reminded of President Eisenhower’s sage example. Putting his “personal opinions” aside, President Eisenhower honored his “inescapable” duty to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education II to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.” Address by the President of the United States, Delivered from his Office at the White House 1-2 (Sept. 24, 1957); 349 U.S. 294, 301 (1955). This great man expressed his unflagging belief that “[t]he very basis of our individual rights and freedoms is the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and [e]nsure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts.” Id. at 3. Indeed, in our late Executive’s own words, “[u]nless the President did so, anarchy would result.” Id.

Abrego Garcia v. Noem, 8:25-cv-00951 (D.Md, Apr 17, 2025), ECF No. 88.

And yet, a week later, not only has the Trump administration refused to comply (in this case, and in others), it has mounted a disinformation campaign in the court of public opinion to convince Americans that Trump is their savior from violence, only legitimate authority for truth and justice, and the source of law.

That this is dangerous to the freedom and prosperity of all people in the United States should be self-evident.

What can the courts do?

The courts can make orders. And when their directives are not followed, they can hold the violators in contempt.

Contempt comes in two flavors: civil and criminal.

Civil contempt’s main focus is on compelling compliance. For example, if someone refuses to answer a lawful question on the stand, the court may order them to do so. If they still refuse, the court can fine them daily, or put them in jail, until they comply. Once they comply, the contempt is resolved and the fines or detention cease.

On the other hand, criminal contempt’s focus is on punishment. The crime is prosecuted in a trial. The convicted contemnor may be fined or put in jail for up to six months. Compliance after the contempt does not prevent punishment.

President Trump is likely immune from any contempt actions, and the courts are unlikely to try it. It is up to the Congress to impeach the President for failing to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” as required by the Constitution, art. II, § 3.

But his deputies, cabinet, lawyers, and civil servants have no such protections. They can be held in contempt. They can be fined. They can be jailed. So, too, can the United States departments be fined. And while a criminal conviction of contempt can be pardoned by Trump, he has no such pardoning powers over civil contempt.

And so this is where we now find ourselves. The trial courts are gearing up to make contempt orders, and the Supreme Court and Appellate Courts are admonishing Trump to not play brinksmanship games with the third branch in hopes of avoiding it.

Trump isn’t heeding their warnings. Civil contempt looks likely in Maryland in the Abrego Garcia case. Criminal contempt has already been charged in the DC district court. And a number of other courts have requests for contempt hearings by aggrieved plaintiffs that are proceeding through due process. (By the way, the United States and its agents are all entitled to due process, just like the people they have denied it are, and that’s why this takes so long.)

You and what army?

When members of the Trump administration are held in contempt, who will enforce the judgment? Fines can be enforced by levies and attachments, and the US Marshal Service isn’t usually needed. But jailing requires a jail and a jailor. The Department of Justice controls both. And the DOJ is controlled by the executive (ie Trump, and his Attorney General Pam Bondi).

The US Marshals are employed by the DOJ even though they work within the courts. They are charged by law with enforcing court orders, and take an oath to do so (along with enforcing the Constitution). If the Marshals are ordered by AG Bondi to ignore the orders, they will have to choose between the illegal directive from their superior and their duty. What they will do remains to be seen.

The courts have a failsafe. If the DOJ and the Marshals won’t cooperate, the judicial branch has the power to deputize other enforcement officers and jails who operate outside the DOJ.

Of course, when this eventuality comes to pass within the next month, we are talking about a power struggle between the executive and the judicial branch which, at best, “promises to diminish both.” Abrego Garcia v. Noem, 8:25-cv-00951 (D.Md, Apr 17, 2025), ECF No. 88.

At worst, we are talking about a civil war in which Americans (civilian, law enforcement, and military) choose sides and take up arms against one another.

A civil war would determine who rules the jungle, but at the cost of our civilization.

One hopes that Trump’s better nature will stop him from leading us to the precipice. But I have somewhat more faith in the American people refusing to follow him over the cliff when he swan dives off it. While a percentage of our population reveres him enough to support him as king, most Americans still believe in the Constitution, our rule of law, and our freedom from monarchs.

At least, I hope so.

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Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi angrily and vociferously declared all over Fox News that not only is he a gang member, but he’s a terrorist, and a high-level leader of the gang.

(Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went further and said he was a human trafficker.)1

Bondi is telling lies, and she knows it. She’s twisting the evidence for her unsuspecting audience at her boss’s behest.

So let me untwist it for you.

When Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019, he was doing the typical loitering at a Home Depot for jobs that many undocumented laborers do.

(I grew up in Southern California and it was common knowledge that poor immigrants did this to survive. Such workers were considered safe enough for housewives to approach and take home for work, so nobody thought these were gang hangouts. Also, gang members don’t need to mow your lawn for $5 because they have money from their black market activities.)

Anyway, Maryland police arrested them for loitering. They decided Abrego Garcia was possibly a gang member based on him wearing a hoodie with US dollars graphics on it and a Chicago Bull’s hat.

One of the officers also claimed an anonymous informant said Abrego Garcia was a captain of a gang out of New York. That officer was fired a short time later for misconduct surrounding informants. The informant was never identified, nor did they testify. Further, Abrego Garcia had never been to New York.

Having not committed any Maryland crimes, Abrego Garcia was turned over to immigration. At a bond hearing, the immigration judge determined the hearsay statement by the police officer in the report was credible enough to deny bond. An appeals court agreed.

Now this is the important part: A bond hearing is not a determination of the evidence and merits. It’s just to decide whether someone should stay in custody while awaiting trial. Limited evidence is presented at this point, and neither the officer nor the informant testified or were cross-examined.

Bondi knows this, and yet she is shamelessly claiming a judge decided he was a gang member. That is literally untrue.

After that, there was a trial and the evidence was admitted and examined. At trial, the immigration judge decided there was no credible evidence that Abrego Garcia was part of any gang.

The judge went further and placed Abrego Garcia on protective (ie do not deport) status because he was actually a victim of gang violence in El Salvador as a child, which is why he came to the US (as a minor fleeing violence and being impressed against his will into a gang).2

Most immigrants do not win their protective status cases. This judge was convinced he was truly a victim and would be killed in El Salvador.

And knowing this, because it is in their files, the US sent an innocent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, to be detained indefinitely, tortured, and murdered. And rather than admit it and be embarrassed, they are lying to the public about it. They threw this man’s life away for pride and politics.

There’s zero chance the district judge in Maryland is going to side with the Trump administration on this. While SCOTUS is less trustworthy in its willingness to rebuke Trump, they’ve repeatedly signaled that the administration is on thin ice legally and ought to save face now. [Update: The Fourth Circuit has also strongly suggested that the Executive Branch immediately right this wrong and not embarrass itself further.]

Sadly, Trump and his lieutenants are uninterested in doing the right thing. And this is just one of hundreds of stories coming out about the unjust and inhumane destruction of human lives across America. When some of these people die as a result, the Trump Administration, and all those who participated, will have committed murder.

This is a human being.

I did it anyway.

Am I a fool? Maybe. But I can’t seem to stop myself from writing. I’ve been doing it for years on Facebook, enriching Meta and making sure the American Thought Police will have plenty on me in the civil wars to come. If I can’t stop, won’t stop, I think Substack is a better forum.

So here we go.

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