The Front Door Is Becoming a Suggestion

A Minneapolis killing, a leaked ICE memo, and the paperwork that makes force feel “normal.”

The winter light in Minneapolis is the kind that makes everything look like it’s already been drained of blood… Gray sky. Salted streets. Wind that finds the seam in your coat and works it like a thumb on a bruise. The ordinary misery of January, grocery runs, school drop-offs, people trying to keep the heat on, until the extraordinary happens, and it’s so violent you can’t pretend it’s weather anymore. Renée Good was a 37-year-old mother of three. An unarmed U.S. citizen. On January 7, she was killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis. This week, her family’s lawyers released findings from a private autopsy: she was shot three times, in the forearm, in the breast, and in the head. The head wound was fatal.

That’s not a “controversy.” It’s not a “clash.” It’s not a “both sides say.” It is a body on a table, and bullets inside a citizen’s life. And what did our government do with that fact? According to reporting describing the video, the White House and DHS have repeatedly insisted Good was a “domestic terrorist,” claiming she aimed her car at the agent and the agent fired in self-defense. But the videos described in that same reporting show something different: Good steering away as she tried to drive off, with shots fired from the side of the vehicle.

Then the Justice Department said the officer was cleared and that there would be no criminal investigation. Federal prosecutors quit in protest. And the machine did what it always does: it tried to turn the dead woman into the crime scene.

Why this matters:

• Minneapolis: a U.S. citizen is killed in a federal operation, and the state immediately tries to rewrite the story.

• The mechanism: violence gets laundered through procedure: “reviews,” “clearances,” official labels like “terrorist.”

• The pattern: the same instinct shows up again and again, at the front door, in raids, in “mistakes” that never seem to cut in favor of liberty.

• The brake: oversight isn’t a vibe. It’s the only brake that exists.

This is the point where a country either flinches back toward decency, or it learns to live with a new kind of horror. Because once you accept this, you accept the rest. You accept a federal government that can shoot a citizen during an operation, smear her as a terrorist, and stroll away from accountability like it misplaced its keys. You accept a nation where “order” means “you don’t get to ask questions.” You accept a future where the only crime is making a stink.

And here’s the thing: we are not being asked to accept this quietly. We are being dared. The atrocities don’t arrive with a marching band. They arrive with paperwork. The trick isn’t the violence. It’s the paperwork that makes you stop calling it violence. The propaganda trick of this era is that everything is always “procedural.” There are memos. There are “reviews.” There are statements “pending further information.” There are spokespersons who say trust us with the same face they used yesterday to tell you not to believe your own eyes.

It’s a sleight of hand: make violence feel administrative. But the autopsy is not administrative. It’s human. And the smear campaign isn’t a messaging problem. It’s a strategy: if the government can convince you the victim is the villain, it can train you to stop demanding consequences.

And if the death of an American citizen wasn’t enough, then here’s the second weight we’re being told to carry like it’s normal, like it’s paperwork, like it’s nothing: a memo from May 2025, only coming to light now, that reads like a blueprint for turning the front door into a suggestion.

As reported this week, the leaked internal guidance, circulated inside the agency and flagged by whistleblowers, asserts that ICE can force entry into someone’s home without a judge’s warrant, relying instead on an administrative immigration form, Form I-205, after a final removal order. In other words: a document signed inside the executive branch is treated like a judge’s signature. And if you don’t open the door, the memo contemplates “reasonable” force.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a quiet attempt to strip the home of its oldest meaning in American law: the place where the government has to stop and justify itself. And that’s the moment you should feel the air change. Because “the home of the free” is starting to sound a lot more like the home where civil liberties go to die, one memo, one raid, one cleared shooting at a time.

On St. Paul’s East Side, on a subfreezing Sunday, the kind of cold that turns breath into evidence, the front door stopped being a boundary and became a prop. Federal agents forced their way into the home of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a Hmong-American U.S. citizen, and, according to Thao and his family, did it with guns out and without showing a warrant, shouting orders like the house belonged to them. They led him outside half-dressed, blue shorts, Crocs, a small blanket, ignoring his request to put on warmer clothes, and kept him detained for about an hour before releasing him once they confirmed who he was. DHS later claimed he “matched the description” in a targeted operation for two men with final removal orders. Local officials disputed key parts of that account. But the larger truth remains: a citizen can be pulled from his own home, in the freezing air, on a “mistake,” and the state still expects us to treat it like an unfortunate mix-up.

This is how rights die now: not with a declaration, but with “mistakes” that keep happening in one direction. And if you were starting to think these stories couldn’t get any worse, or that the taste of disgust in your mouth couldn’t grow more bitter, you’re in for a surprise. Because now we get to see what it looks like when a country decides that even childhood is negotiable.

Look to Columbia Heights, Minnesota, where a five-year-old named Liam Conejo Ramos came home from preschool and, according to the school district superintendent, was taken from a running car in his own driveway, then told by federal agents to knock on his own front door to see who else was inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.” That’s the image you can’t unsee: a little kid, fresh from school, asked to help the state hunt the adults in his house. District officials said another adult at the home begged to take Liam so he wouldn’t be detained and agents refused. The family’s lawyer says Liam and his father were then flown to Dilley, Texas, and he believes they’re being held together. DHS disputes that framing, saying ICE “did NOT target a child,” alleging the father fled and that an agent stayed with Liam for safety. But even if you grant the government every ounce of the benefit of the doubt, the moral wound remains: we are now living in a country where a kindergarten-aged child can be swept into federal custody in the time it takes to unbuckle a car seat, and the system expects us to treat it as a clerical mishap instead of what it is: a warning flare that the line between “enforcement” and cruelty has been rubbed almost invisible.

So, what now? Here is the lie authoritarian movements sell early: you can’t do anything. They want you exhausted. Overwhelmed. Chasing the story like it’s a swarm of bees, always one sting behind. They want you doomscrolling in bed at midnight, feeling the hot shame of helplessness, and letting it fade into the background noise of your life. That is how atrocities become normal. But the United States is not a monarchy. Congress is not decorative wallpaper. The Constitution is not a vibes document. And the only way this stops is if enough people make it politically expensive to continue.

If you do one thing today: call your members of Congress and ask for oversight with teeth, hearings, transparency, and enforceable limits on federal conduct. And if you can’t make the call, forward this to someone who can.

So, together, let’s take a step as a nation that won’t stand for this anymore. Call them on it. Be calm. Be relentless. Make it real.

Find your members of Congress:

House:

Senate:

When a staffer answers, don’t debate the entire universe. Say this, slowly, plainly:

“I’m calling to request oversight with enforceable limits: hearings and transparency on the Renée Good killing, and a clear prohibition on forced home entry without a judge-signed warrant. Will the Senator/Representative publicly support that?”

Then stop talking and let them answer. Ask them to put your position on record. Ask for a response.

If you’re scared, good. Fear means you’re seeing it clearly. Courage isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice you make with shaking hands. Mandela said it best: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

And if you’re thinking, I’m just one person, remember this: the whole architecture of impunity depends on the public being silent. It depends on everyone assuming someone else will speak. Make it your turn. Because Renée Good does not get another turn. Because ChongLy “Scott” Thao does not get another turn. Because a five-year-old should not have to become a tool of the state at the end of a school day.

History does not only ask what the powerful did. It asks what the rest of us tolerated. And tolerance is not neutral, it’s permission. So today: pick up the phone. Call. Be specific. Be relentless. And tell them, out loud, that you are watching.