Governing at Gunpoint: ICE in Minneapolis

Minneapolis is reeling as masked, heavily armed ICE agents flood immigrant neighborhoods, pulling people from cars, entering homes, and clashing with protesters and observers. Businesses have shuttered, school districts have shifted online, and candlelight memorials mark civilians killed during federal operations. Now President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy federal troops, framing the unrest as an “insurrection” led by “professional agitators.” The message is clear: escalating force is being cast as governance. 

But we have been here before. 

In 1970, amid mounting protests against the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon adopted inflammatory rhetoric. Guardsmen were deployed to anti-war protests. This didn’t always end well for the civilians involved. Most famously—or infamously—members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of protestors, killing four college students and wounding nine others at Kent State University in 1970. Decades later, it was revealed that those men may have been ordered to fire on the unarmed protestors. Nixon’s language and policies helped legitimize the idea that military force could be used to control the civilian population—something that had been unthinkable to many Americans just a few years earlier. 

Pentagon officials recently ordered the National Guard in each state to create “quick-reaction forces” to deal with riots and other civil disturbances within the United States. According to official memos, units of about 500 Guard troops each will be trained to deploy within hours of unrest. They will receive additional equipment, such as riot gear, as well as training in how to disperse and control rioters. 

This comes on the heels of an August executive order directing top military officials to create units “available for rapid nationwide deployment” and after the deployment of Guard troops to multiple U.S. cities, including Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Memphis; and Portland, Oregon.  The latest order is yet another move to further militarize entities intended to interact with civilians and create a more active domestic role for the military. 

While this may not sound consequential, those of us who study militarization and policing recognize clear parallels between these and past moves. And the pattern is unmistakable. In the mid-1960s, police departments across the country adopted crowd- and riot-control tactics from the Vietnam War. The police created what came to be known as “Special Weapons and Tactics,” or SWAT, teams. A robust literature has examined the consequences of SWAT proliferation and utilization over the last five decades, finding over and over again instances of misuse, abuse, injury, and death to innocent civilians, police officers, and nonviolent offenders. We can anticipate the same from these “riot-control formations.”

The consequences are profound. As the boundary between policing and soldiering erodes, so too does the distinction between civil society and the security state. 

Political rhetoric has played a key role in accelerating this shift. Some officials have labeled dissenters as “domestic terrorists,” “radicals,” “vicious,” and “lunatics.” These labels are not mere exaggerations—they’re strategic. By framing dissent as extremism, leaders create the narrative conditions necessary to justify military involvement. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: militarized responses make protests appear more volatile, further fueling calls for militarization. 

Using military forces for domestic security also poses significant risks to constitutional rights. Although the National Guard has begun offering de-escalation training, these additions are layered onto institutions built for combat, not civilian policing. A few training modules cannot undo the underlying incentives and tactics that soldiers are taught to use in hostile environments. Expanding the Guard’s role in routine law enforcement raises serious questions about accountability, legal authority, and proportionality. The more frequently Guard units are deployed, the harder it becomes to maintain clear limits on their power. 

What makes the current moment especially concerning is that these changes are being normalized. Policies that treat Guard deployment as a default option risk transforming extraordinary tools into routine governance. History shows that once governments adopt militarized approaches, they are unlikely to abandon them. The legacy of SWAT demonstrates how temporary “emergency measures” become permanent fixtures of domestic security. 

Both recent events and historical events force us to confront a truth we keep trying to forget: when politicians use soldiers as props, violence follows. If we keep marching down this path, the next tragedy won’t be a warning—it will be the consequence we were told to expect.