The Military Can Protect ICE In Minnesota

United States law enforcement arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on Saturday, who was wanted on federal charges of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and conspiracy to import cocaine. According to the Department of Justice, agents worked “in close coordination” with the U.S. military to execute the arrest warrant. The U.S. military has been used before to assist law enforcement in arrests abroad, such as the capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said he’d been assured by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the “kinetic action” in Venezuela “was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.”

“This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” Lee said on X.

Federal immigration agents conducting arrests here in the United States, however, are increasingly facing “actual and imminent attack” from left-wing subversives. Just Wednesday, a woman was killed after she allegedly tried ramming her car into ICE agents in Minneapolis. Video footage appears to show officers instructing the woman to exit her vehicle. The woman accelerates and appears to hit or nearly hit an agent who was positioned in front of her vehicle.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said the deceased woman attempted “to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.”

An ICE officer “fearing for his life … fired defensive shots.”

Wednesday’s attack comes just months after an anti-ICE shooter opened fire on an ICE transportation vehicle in Dallas, fatally striking one detainee while injuring two others. Rounds found near the perpetrator were inscribed with “ANTI-ICE.” Just two months prior, alleged members of Antifa attacked the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. The facility was housing illegal aliens ahead of their deportation. The attackers “began by shooting fireworks toward the facility and vandalizing vehicles and a guard shed,” according to an indictment of two of the alleged conspirators.

DHS reported in November that since Jan. 20, there had been 99 car ramming attacks against federal law enforcement.

Notably, President Donald Trump tried to deploy the National Guard to protect federal immigration officers and property under attack by left-wing extremists and was thwarted by rogue judges. The Supreme Court then denied a request from the Trump administration to temporarily stay a restraining order issued by a Biden-appointed judge. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the administration’s request to stay the lower courts ruling.

Alito, dissenting, said “[w]hatever one may think about the current administration’s enforcement of the immigration laws or the way ICE has conducted its operations, the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted.”

In the majority ruling, the high court relied on the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the use of federal military forces from carrying out domestic law enforcement duties. Alito notes the legislation has never been understood to limit the president’s ability to use armed forces when justified by his constitutional duties.

This is a dangerous environment for federal immigration officials. They are facing coordinated political violence and operating in jurisdictions where local and even state officials are openly hostile to the rule of law. If those conditions justify military overseas, they certainly justify military protection at home.