Quoting from The Economist, Jan. 31st 2026:
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Is America’s president building his own paramilitary militia?
America stared into the void this week, but pulled back. Federal action in the streets of Minneapolis goes well beyond immigration. It is a test of the government’s power to use violence against its own citizens — a dividing-line between liberty and tyranny. […]
[…] Mr Trump has not renounced his power to impose paramilitary force on unwilling states. Americans should be on their guard.
[…] Having dramatically curbed illicit flows across the southern border, he (Mr Trump) claims to be seeking “the worst of the worst”. But that is not what his enforcers are doing. Recently, only 5% of those detained have been people convicted of violent crimes. Instead ICE’s brutal means indicate ends that are darker than immigration control, for several reasons.
One is that the administration appears to believe ICE should be a law unto itself. In their zeal to fill quotas and live out their macho “destroy the flood” culture, ICE agents have revelled in wanton use of force. Administration officials have nonetheless told agents that they enjoy “absolute immunity” as they go about their duties and, a judge complains, have defied court orders. […] Impunity is a formula for more violence.
Another reason to worry is that ICE and its leaders are trampling the constitution. By insisting that witnesses and protesters are criminals, they are denying people their First Amendment rights to free speech and association. In a state like Minnesota, when the head of the FBI says people cannot bring a [legally owned] gun to a protest he is denying their Second Amendment rights. And when ICE agents stop or arrest people without cause and search their houses without a court warrant, they are denying their Fourth Amendment rights.
Last, deploying ICE to Minneapolis, a city with relatively few illegal immigrants, seems to serve a disturbingly broad agenda: […] to punish “sanctuary cities” that limit the help they extend to ICE; or perhaps as theatre to scare people and deter all kinds of migration to America. […]
The most disturbing possibility is that the president is creating a militia which answers only to himself. […]
[…] ICE is ideally placed to sidestep protections. […] Agents can stage provocations pretty much anywhere with impunity, including during elections. […]
A theme of Trump’s second term has been the accumulation of presidential power. […] If Trump has no anti-democratic designs on ICE, he should be eager to limit its actions.
[…] As a first step on the long road to winning back public trust, ICE agents should be better trained, stop wearing masks and start wearing body cameras and identification numbers. Deportation quotas lead to brutal tactics and must end. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, and Greg Bovino, who commanded in Minneapolis, have blatantly lied. They should be fired.
After this week, even that would not remove the spectre of a presidential militia. Hence the courts need to make clear that states can in fact prosecute federal agents who commit crimes; that ICE’s view of the constitution is wrong; and that the federal government cannot ride roughshod over the states. And Congress needs to hold the administration to account. […]
Americans woke up to a grave threat this week. But you cannot defend a republic with opinion polls alone. The guardians of America’s institutions should see Mr Trump’s change in tone not as a signal to relax, but an opening to force change.
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The Little Prince and the Fox 