The Accountability Gap in Federal Immigration Enforcement

In January 2026, two people — Alex Pretti and Renée Good — were killed during federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. In Pretti’s case, the Hennepin County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Investigative reporting later identified the Customs and Border Protection agents who fired the fatal shots.

These deaths sparked public outrage and renewed calls to “defund ICE.” But while that debate reflects real anger, it misses a deeper and more consequential problem: federal immigration agents operate under weaker accountability rules than state or local police, even when enforcing the law far from the border, inside American cities.

If Congress does not address that structural gap, similar incidents will continue — regardless of how much money is added or cut from any single agency.

Federal Immigration Enforcement Is Not Local Policing

Federal immigration agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are part of the Department of Homeland Security. Their core mission is immigration enforcement and border security, not local public safety. That distinction matters because it shapes training, oversight, and how constitutional protections are applied in practice.

At the border, courts have long recognized a “border search exception” to the Fourth Amendment, allowing searches and seizures that would not be permitted elsewhere in the country. But Minneapolis is not the border. In the interior of the United States, the Fourth Amendment’s ordinary rules — probable cause, reasonableness, and limits on the use of force — are supposed to apply fully.

Yet federal immigration agents often operate in interior cities under the same institutional culture and legal framework developed for border enforcement. When force is used, accountability mechanisms look very different from those governing local police departments.

The Civil Accountability Gap

One of the most significant differences involves civil liability.

For decades, people whose constitutional rights were violated by federal officers could sometimes sue those officers personally under a legal doctrine known as Bivens. That remedy functioned as a federal counterpart to civil rights lawsuits routinely brought against state and local police.

In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has sharply limited when Bivens claims are allowed. Courts now routinely dismiss civil lawsuits against federal immigration agents — including cases involving shootings — on the grounds that immigration enforcement presents a “new context” and that only Congress, not the courts, may authorize such remedies.

The practical result is stark. When a local police officer uses excessive force, victims or their families can usually bring a civil rights lawsuit, even if criminal charges are never filed. When a federal immigration agent does the same, families are often told that no civil lawsuit is available at all — even if the constitutional violation is clear.

Rights exist on paper, but the legal mechanism to enforce them is missing.

Internal Oversight Without Public Accountability

Oversight gaps compound the problem. Use-of-force incidents involving CBP or ICE are typically investigated internally, by the same department that employs the agents involved. Unlike many local police departments, federal immigration agencies are not subject to civilian review boards, and disciplinary outcomes are rarely disclosed publicly.

Body-worn camera footage is often withheld or released only after prolonged public pressure or litigation. In the Pretti case, local authorities sought court intervention to preserve evidence, citing concerns that federal agencies might otherwise destroy or withhold it. Only after widespread scrutiny did DHS announce plans to expand body-camera usage — a step that, while welcome, remains discretionary and uneven rather than a statutory requirement.

Why “Defunding ICE” Isn’t Enough

All of this points to a broader conclusion: budget cuts or agency rebranding alone will not fix the problem.

The issue is not simply how much money ICE or CBP receives. It is the legal framework that governs federal agents’ conduct and shields them from accountability when constitutional violations occur — particularly when those agents are operating inside U.S. communities rather than at the border.

Without structural reform, abuses can persist under any funding level.

What Congress Actually Needs to Fix

If Congress wants to prevent future abuses, several reforms are essential.

Federal law should clearly authorize civil lawsuits against federal officers for constitutional violations, including in immigration enforcement contexts, closing the accountability gap created by recent Supreme Court decisions.

Serious uses of force should be reviewed by independent investigative bodies with subpoena power, rather than relying solely on internal agency processes.

De-escalation standards and use-of-force rules should be written into law and aligned with best practices already required of many state and local police departments.

And when federal agents operate inside U.S. communities, local prosecutors should not be automatically sidelined when deaths occur.

---

What to Ask Your Member of Congress

Ask your representative to support legislation that makes federal law enforcement accountable to the same constitutional standards as local police when operating inside the United States.

Specifically:

• Restore a clear legal right to sue federal officers for Fourth Amendment violations

• Require independent, transparent investigations of serious uses of force by federal agents

• Mandate de-escalation and use-of-force standards in federal law, not just internal policy

• Ensure that state and local prosecutors are not automatically excluded when federal agents kill or seriously injure someone in their jurisdiction.

This isn’t about abolishing immigration enforcement — it’s about ensuring that constitutional rights have real enforcement, no matter which badge an officer wears.

---

The Stakes

The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good are not isolated tragedies. They are warnings about what happens when federal power expands inward while constitutional accountability fails to keep pace.

If the Fourth Amendment is to mean the same thing in Minneapolis as it does anywhere else in the country, Congress must act — not with slogans, but with structural reform.

Jack Smith’s Congressional Testimony: What He Said About Trump and January 6

This week, former Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for the first time since the Justice Department dropped its federal cases against President Donald Trump following his 2024 election victory.

The hearing was predictably combative. Republicans framed Smith as a political actor. Democrats framed the moment as a defense of the rule of law. Smith himself stuck closely to the record — and that may have been the most revealing part.

Here’s what actually came out of the testimony.

Smith Stood by the Charges — Without Hesitation

Smith made clear that he does not regret bringing charges against Trump in either federal case:

• the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and

• the mishandling of classified documents.

He testified that the decisions were driven by evidence and longstanding legal standards — not politics — and said plainly that he would bring the same charges again under the same facts, regardless of who the defendant was.

That point matters, because Republicans repeatedly tried to reframe the prosecutions as unprecedented or partisan. Smith’s response was simple: powerful people are not exempt from the law.

He Said Trump Was Responsible for January 6

Perhaps the most direct moment of the hearing came when Smith addressed the Capitol attack.

Smith testified that the evidence showed Trump caused January 6, that the violence was foreseeable, and that Trump attempted to exploit the chaos as part of a broader effort to block the peaceful transfer of power.

He did not rely on rhetoric. He relied on the same evidentiary theory laid out in the indictment: pressure campaigns, false claims of fraud, and deliberate efforts to replace lawful electoral outcomes.

Importantly, Smith did not claim Trump personally planned the riot. He testified that Trump’s actions created the conditions for it — and that distinction reflects how prosecutors actually think about criminal responsibility.

He Defended the Investigation Tactics — Calmly

Republican members focused heavily on investigative tools they argued crossed the line, including subpoenas and records requests involving lawmakers and Trump allies.

Smith responded that each step was taken within DOJ guidelines and approved through established legal processes. He framed these methods not as aggressive, but as necessary to understand how coordinated efforts to obstruct the election unfolded.

There were no dramatic revelations here — just a reminder that investigations of complex conspiracies don’t happen without following evidence wherever it leads.

The Cases Were Dropped — Not Disproven

One of the most important clarifications of the hearing is also the easiest to miss.

The cases against Trump were dismissed because DOJ policy bars prosecution of a sitting president — not because the evidence failed, and not because Smith reversed his conclusions.

Smith emphasized that point repeatedly, even as critics tried to treat the dismissals as exoneration. They weren’t.

That distinction matters, especially as political messaging continues to blur the line between charges dropped and claims debunked.

What Smith Didn’t Do

Smith did not:

• attack Trump personally

• speculate about future prosecutions

• comment on political consequences

• argue that Congress should act

He confined himself almost entirely to explaining what his office did, why it did it, and what the evidence showed.

That restraint may not satisfy partisans — but it reinforced the core argument of his testimony: this was a legal process, not a political one.

Why This Testimony Still Matters

The hearing wasn’t about reopening cases. It was about recording history.

Smith’s testimony put a marker down: federal prosecutors concluded that a sitting president engaged in criminal conduct, gathered evidence to support that conclusion, and were stopped only by institutional rules — not by lack of proof.

Whether Americans accept that reality or not will shape how future abuses of power are judged.

And that, more than any soundbite from the hearing, is what made this week matter.

When Congress Fails, Force Fills the Gap

How Broken Immigration Law Turned Civil Enforcement Into Paramilitary Policing

America’s immigration debate is often framed as a fight between compassion and enforcement. That framing misses the real problem.

What we are witnessing today is not the natural outcome of strict law enforcement—it is the predictable result of legislative failure. Congress created an immigration system that cannot resolve legal status in a timely or coherent way. Instead of fixing it, lawmakers have allowed enforcement agencies to compensate for that failure with increasingly aggressive tactics. The result is a system that looks less like civil law enforcement and more like domestic occupation.

This is not strength. It is institutional drift.

A System Designed to Stall, Not Decide

U.S. immigration law has quietly created a permanent gray zone—millions of people who are neither clearly authorized nor clearly removable.

Asylum seekers wait years for hearings. Temporary Protected Status is extended and threatened in cycles. Work authorization is granted without permanent resolution. These are not loopholes exploited by individuals; they are structural outcomes of a system Congress refuses to modernize or adequately fund.

Immigration courts are overwhelmed. Backlogs stretch into the millions. Cases take years to resolve, even when individuals follow the rules and show up for every required appointment.

In any functioning legal system, unresolved status is the exception. In U.S. immigration law, it has become the norm.

When law cannot decide, enforcement begins to improvise.

Enforcement Is Replacing Adjudication

Civil immigration enforcement was never meant to substitute for a functioning legal system. Its role is to carry out decisions made by law and adjudicated by courts—not to fill policy gaps left by Congress.

But part of today’s chaos comes from the fact that recent administrations have interpreted the same immigration statutes in dramatically different ways. With Congress unwilling to clarify the law, successive executive branches have relied on executive orders, agency guidance, and enforcement priorities to impose their own interpretations of what the system should do.

The result is instability by design.

One administration narrows enforcement and expands temporary protections. The next reverses course, rescinds guidance, and accelerates removals. None of this resolves the underlying legal questions. It merely shifts enforcement pressure back and forth, often abruptly, leaving courts overwhelmed and enforcement agencies tasked with implementing political swings rather than settled law.

In this environment, enforcement begins to replace adjudication.

When legal outcomes depend more on who occupies the White House than on timely court decisions, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are pushed into the role of policy instrument rather than neutral executor of law. Speed and visibility become tools for signaling control, especially when executive authority is used to bypass slow-moving courts.

This is not a failure of enforcement. It is the predictable consequence of governing through executive discretion instead of legislation.

Until Congress establishes clear statutory rules that survive changes in administration—and funds courts to apply them consistently—immigration enforcement will remain volatile, politicized, and increasingly reliant on force to compensate for legal uncertainty.

Paramilitary Tactics Undermine Public Order in Cities

Law and order depend on clarity: who has authority, who answers to whom, and how civilians are expected to respond.

Paramilitary-style immigration enforcement breaks that clarity.

When heavily armed federal agents operate openly in cities, they inevitably come into contact with ordinary citizens—people who are not subject to immigration enforcement and over whom ICE has no general policing authority. These encounters are not theoretical. They happen in neighborhoods, near workplaces, and in public spaces where civilians expect normal civil governance.

Unlike local police, federal immigration agents are not accountable to city leadership, do not operate under local command, and are not trained or structured for routine de-escalation with the general public. In some cases, federal units operate in numbers that rival or exceed local police presence, without the community relationships or jurisdictional clarity that make public order possible.

To residents, this does not feel like protection. It feels like an outside force operating without consent or accountability.

Public order erodes not because citizens reject the law, but because enforcement no longer looks lawful. Confusion replaces legitimacy. Authority becomes ambiguous. And cities are left to manage the fallout.

This is not how order is maintained. It is how trust breaks.

“If You’re Legal, You Have Nothing to Fear” Misses the Point

Law-abiding citizens do not expect to prove their innocence during daily life in their own communities.

Civilians are not required to carry proof of status. They are not obligated to submit to questioning by immigration agents. And they have no clear way to assess authority when agents are masked, unidentified, or operating outside local command structures.

In those moments, legal status is irrelevant. What matters is whether the system respects clear jurisdiction, due process, and predictable rules.

A lawful society does not rely on ambiguity or intimidation to function. When enforcement tactics create uncertainty even for citizens, the failure lies with the system—not the public.

Enforcement Theater Is Not Policy

Paramilitary immigration operations persist because they are visible, fast, and politically useful. They create the appearance of action while avoiding the harder work of reform.

But they do not reduce court backlogs.
They do not resolve legal status.
They do not improve long-term compliance.

They are a substitute for governance.

The longer Congress delays, the more expensive and destabilizing this substitute becomes—for cities, for law enforcement, and for taxpayers.

What Real Law-and-Order Immigration Policy Would Look Like

A serious system would restore the proper sequence of responsibility:

• Congress writes clear, modern immigration law

• Courts are funded to decide cases promptly

• Enforcement carries out decisions within firm civil limits

That means ending permanent legal limbo. It means timelines measured in months, not years. And it means drawing hard boundaries between civil enforcement and armed operations in American cities.

Force should be rare, restrained, and clearly justified—not a routine tool for compensating for broken law.

Conclusion: Responsibility Can’t Be Deferred Forever

Strong nations do not govern by force. They govern by law.

Paramilitary-style immigration enforcement is not evidence of strength—it is evidence that institutions at the top have failed to carry out their responsibilities. When Congress avoids hard decisions, pressure flows downward, and enforcement is left to manage problems only legislation can solve.

Responsibility in a lawful system is sequential. Legislators decide. Courts adjudicate. Enforcement executes. When that chain breaks, disorder follows—no matter how much force is applied.

If Congress wants order, it must reassert its role. That means funding immigration courts, replacing temporary patches with durable law, and restoring clear boundaries that citizens can recognize and trust.

None of this is easy. Responsibility rarely is.

It is time for United States Congress to do the hard work it has deferred for decades—so civil enforcement can return to being lawful, limited, and accountable, and so cities are no longer forced to absorb the cost of legislative failure.

Every year Congress delays real immigration reform, taxpayers spend more on enforcement theater, emergency responses, and instability—while the underlying problem grows more expensive to fix.

The Price of Real Justice vs. the Cost of a Show

Many Americans still want answers about Jeffrey Epstein. Who was involved? Why haven’t more people been held accountable? Why does it feel like justice only applies to the rest of us—and never to the rich and powerful?

It’s a good question. Because if this administration really cared about crime, justice, and protecting children, the Epstein investigation would be a top priority. Instead, the government has chosen to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a prison complex in the Florida Everglades that looks more like a political stunt than a serious solution to anything.

Let’s talk about cost. Let’s talk about results. And let’s talk about what that tells us about who this government really works for.

What It Would Take to Prosecute the Epstein Network

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t act alone. He had connections—some still in positions of influence today. Survivors have named names. Flight logs, visitor lists, and financial records exist. Some of these files have been sealed. Some have been quietly ignored.

But none of this is impossible to investigate. In fact, experts estimate that it would cost somewhere between $20 and $200 million to do a full, credible investigation and prosecution of Epstein’s trafficking network. That includes:

• Releasing court documents and sealed records

• Interviewing survivors and witnesses

• Investigating financial and travel records

• Prosecuting 10 to 20 high-profile individuals

That’s a lot of money—but in government terms, it’s a drop in the bucket. We’ve spent more on minor construction projects or military equipment no one uses. And unlike those, this would deliver something Americans want: real accountability.

So why hasn’t it happened?

What We Got Instead: Alligator Alcatraz

While the Epstein files sit in legal limbo, the government is spending over $450 million a year to run a brand-new ICE detention center in the Florida Everglades. Nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” it’s being held up as a symbol of tough-on-crime immigration policy.

But what is it really?

• A massive detention facility hidden deep in Big Cypress Preserve

• Operated by ICE, mostly holding people in civil—not criminal—proceedings

• Packed with people who have not been charged with violent crimes

• Staffed under questionable conditions, with reports of overcrowding and neglect

• Promoted through VIP tours and social media photo ops

The facility looks dramatic. Rows of detainees, guards in black gear, flooded swampland. But does it make anyone safer? There’s no evidence it reduces crime. What it does do is give politicians a talking point—something to post on Truth Social while real issues go ignored.

Comparing the Two

Investigating and prosecuting Jeffrey Epstein’s network would cost somewhere between $20 million and $200 million in total. That would cover releasing sealed court documents, interviewing survivors, tracking financial records, and holding powerful people accountable in court. It’s a one-time cost with lasting benefits: real justice, a public reckoning, and a clear signal that no one is above the law.

Now compare that to Alligator Alcatraz, the new ICE detention center in the Florida Everglades. It’s costing over $450 million every single year just to operate. That money goes toward detaining mostly nonviolent migrants—people in civil proceedings, not criminals. There’s no evidence this facility reduces crime or makes Americans safer. But it looks good in staged photos and gives politicians something to brag about online.

One approach is focused, targeted, and fair. The other is bloated, theatrical, and cruel. One delivers justice. The other delivers headlines.

And somehow, the one that actually goes after real criminals—the one that might finally hold Epstein’s accomplices accountable—is the one they won’t fund.

What This Tells Us

This isn’t about resources. We have the money. It’s about priorities.

This administration promised to “drain the swamp,” “go after the deep state,” and protect children from predators. But instead of following through, they’ve given us a prison in a swamp while the Epstein network gets swept under the rug.

That’s not justice. That’s a distraction.

And it’s a pretty expensive one.

The Bottom Line

If you’re angry that Epstein got away with it—and that the people around him still haven’t been held accountable—you’re not alone. But don’t let this administration point you at immigrants or migrants as the problem. They’re not the ones who flew on Epstein’s plane. They’re not the ones with sealed court records and high-powered lawyers.

Real justice would mean shining a light on what really happened. Real justice would mean facing uncomfortable truths—even if they lead to the rich and connected.

Instead, we got Alligator Alcatraz.

Not because it works.

But because it distracts.