Watching ICE in Minneapolis

This year, 2026, should have us all wondering what exactly the “American Dream” means in this moment. Is it an elusive green light at the end of the dock embodied in The Great Gatsby? Is it chasing mythology and social impressions? A close-knit, nuclear family living safely cordoned off behind a white picket fence in a car-based suburb, with cordial relations with state authority and a weekly visit to God. The Hollywood postcard of American perfection needs a splash of modern reality. What is a better depiction of our ideal?

Before ICE began its terrors in Minneapolis over the past few weeks, I had hoped to unpack bits of what it’s like to be an immigrant in this country now. The rhetoric and actions of Trump 2.0 are intentionally nudging anyone unWhite to examine the virtue of living in a white-power America. I have been wondering about how to do this unpacking here, in my community-focused Substack. Without doubt, there are shared parallels between our Atlanta cycling community and the way in which Minneapolis residents are showing up in response to ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities. In essence, the sensibilities of the anti-ICE actions in Minneapolis are parallel to communities acting from kindness and selfless love. These actions are actually a contrast to the traditional ideas encapsulated by the American Dream.

At the beginning of this year’s onslaught, America illegally attacked Venezuela. That was pretty American. The USA: a hypocritical paternalistic bully, screaming abroad about the very liberties we do not have domestically. I wondered about the asylum seekers who have immigrated here to escape Maduro’s regime. How does it feel to be immigrants in this America? The very conditions they fled under a dictatorship are raging in the American injustice here.

Just after that attack abroad, one week into 2026, I watched in horror the brutal video of poet Renée Nicole Good being murdered in the streets. Within minutes, we were being lied to by twerps in federal offices. Not yet through the vigils and memorials for her loss, I felt a glimmer of hope in her Good’s resistance. For a few bright hours last week, I grew triumphant pride for Minneapolis in a historic city-wide strike on Friday, January 23, in Minneapolis. In response, on Saturday, January 24, the day after the city-wide strike, yet another Good Samaritan Alex Pretti, a cyclist, VA Nurse, United States citizen, was executed in the streets of Minneapolis. Again, ICE began gaslighting the country.

I have not shared much here about my history as a lawyer. My first full-time job was as a young immigration attorney, which had followed a year-long public interest internship hosted at my law school. The draconian consequences of immigration law ARE emotionally taxing. I left that first job ages ago and only recently have found some strength for that work again. I mention this to add context; in both the courts and in the streets, due process is dying.

The murders of Good and Pretti stand out to me. Many have died through abysmal conditions in detention centers. Yet, these two, who were martyred at the hands of ICE feel different. They were actively moving us towards a dream that was unAmerican. Instead of comfortably hiding in the pockets of their white privilege, Good and Pretti were on the streets. They put their bodies on the line for those outside their nuclear family. They were working within the confines of the law to provide evidence and justice against the country’s thugs. In exercising their constitutional protections, they met the countries ugliness in ICE. Good and Pretti tested the promises of the American Constitution. Proximity to brownness is dangerous here. Ultimately, the resisters in Minneapolis were really fighting for equality. They were out in neighborhoods caring for one another in decentralized, organic moments of community resistance.

The people on the ground there paint a vision of a collective dream deeply antithetical to the values embodied in the typical American dream. The people who are opposing ICE in Minneapolis are heroes. Their actions are entirely unAmerican. They represent, instead, a growing demand for collective action, humanism, and solidarity with the less privileged. It took murdering a privileged class of white people in cold blood, in broad daylight, to make a large part of this country see our collective American nightmare. The resistance to ICE embodies the liberation imagined in dreams of collective action.

Good and Pretti shared a spirit which was larger than the American dream you and I were sold. Their spiritual lift is for a softer, more human country. Their actions and lives illustrated a counterpoint to the limits of the Hollywood citizenry. Good, for example, a queer woman leaves behind a blended family. Good was looking out for, and taking care of a community around her. She found herself at the most dangerous place in the world. She was killed at the juncture of American police, patriarchy, cars, and guns. At the ugly juxtaposition where an insecure “trained” male ICE thug killed her and collectively punished us. The intent is essential.

The people on the ground in Minneapolis represent a bright hope for the better. Their on-the-ground actions for collective equality, brotherhood, and peace are not American dreams at all. They are entirely unAmerican. A true telling of the making of America makes this clear. There is a long history to cover here: about land stolen from natives, colonizers who spat on the collective kindness of the natives, and then unrepentantly betrayed the gifts of the indigenous in a celebration called Thanksgiving.

The value of education and creativity is to grow the capacity for dissent. Do the checks and balances we advertise abroad also apply to ICE? My unAmerican roots press me to question this. The public relations packaged dreams that brought my body here do not seem to fit the values embodied in our federal government. The America I see unfolding in Minneapolis is NOT the typical imagery advertised in Hollywood’s public relations script for America. I have been unpacking the expectations of my immigrant past alongside the myths advertised in the American dream. Filled with growing rage and grief, this country is making me wonder what it is we mean by the “American Dream.”

Do NOT despair. Act. A multi-state vigil ride in solidarity for cyclist is being organized by Alex Pretti’s cycling community. An Atlanta ride will roll on Saturday 1/31/26 at 1:30pm. Options for a shorter ride are also available. Please check with your bike buds!