Tag: ICE

  • Federal Goons in Minneapolis, by Susu Jeffrey

    Federal Goons in Minneapolis, by Susu Jeffrey

    Pictured: ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, of Chaska MN, who shot Renee Good to death on January 7, 2026

    Federal Goons in Minneapolis

    By Susu Jeffrey / Original to Wings of Change / February 6, 2026

    The two masked federal officials who shot intensive care nurse Alex Pretti are Texans, Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Ochoa, 43, joined Border Patrol in 2018; Gutierrez, 35, has been with Customs and Border Protection since 2018. The January 24 killing of Pretti has been ruled a homicide, that is, an unlawful killing of a person.

    Although Pretti’s autopsy has not been released he was shot perhaps 10 times according to a The New York Times frame by frame review of video footage. Ochoa and Gutierrez were whisked out of Minneapolis soon after killing Pretti as part of the federal brotherhood protective practice.

    Jonathan Ross, 43, who shot Renee Good three times plus a bullet graze while she was sitting in her car on January 7 has a long military career. He served with the Indiana National Guard in Iraq in 2004-5 as a machine gunner on a combat patrol truck.

    In 2007 Ross joined the U.S. Border Patrol and worked out of El Paso, Texas. He moved to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2015, working in a deportation unit. Ross is a firearms instructor, on a SWAT team and specializes in tracking down “higher value targets.” Ross lives in “a large house on a quiet street” in Chaska, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. He is described by his father as a “conservative Christian.”

    ICE is the wealthiest law enforcement agency in the country. Ross’ Minneapolis attorney, Chris Madel. a law enforcement defender, ended his gubernatorial run after the Pretti murder saying “national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.” However Madel said he  still supported President Trump’s cliché about the immigration hunt for “the worst of the worst.”

    The Twin Cities are still overrun with armed, masked enforcers (at least 2000) who are terrorizing citizens into staying at home, and missing school and work. Business is suffering. Nevertheless, thousands and thousands of peaceful neighbors turn out for frequent demonstrations and attended the February 3 political caucuses. Besides the regular protests, neighborhoods are organized to act if ICE comes into their territory, trained legal observers are tracking ICE agents, and people are donating food and other items to distribution centers. People are also delivering food to those who are housebound by choice. Others are driving to and picking up children to and from school. Defying and standing up to ICE in Minnesota is a community effort.

    Susu Jeffrey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
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    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

     Join us on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly  targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are people of color. 

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”

    — Howard Zinn

  • MEN WANTED, by Susu Jeffrey

    MEN WANTED, by Susu Jeffrey

    MEN WANTED

    IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH YOUR CAREER CONSIDER JOINING AN ELITE PATRIOTIC UNIT

    MILITARY OR POLICE EXPERIENCE ADVENTAGEOUS

    FIREARMS EXPERIENCE DESIREABLE

    MUST BE PHYSICALLY FIT

    APPLICANT MUST BE ABLE TO OBEY SPOKEN ENGLISH ORDERS

    IMMIGRANTS & PERSONS OF COLOR DISCOURAGED

    ONLINE JOB TRAINING

    GENEROUS PAY — UP TO $50,000
    SIGN-UP BONUS

    HEALTH & SURVIVOR BENEFITS

    UNIFORMS FURNISHED

    WILLINGNESS TO JUMP ON A VEHICLE & SHOOT
    THE DRIVER

    EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES INCLUDING TRAVEL

    CHANCES FOR CAREER ADVANCEMENT

    APPLY TO THUMPER CORP, 1600 PENN AVE  20500


    Image by CALO News



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

    Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”                     — Howard Zinn

  • Tell Congress ICE OUT NOW

    Tell Congress ICE OUT NOW

    Robert Reich asks/implores people to call their Senators and Representatives not to approve Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill (spending bill) unless it includes a stipulation to DISARM ICE.

    RELATED

    The American Gestapo The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

     

  • Snippets: “The E’s have it” . . . and more

    Snippets: “The E’s have it” . . . and more

    The E’s have it:

    Epstein (transparency)

    Enbridge/oil pipeline builder (Line 5/also Line 3)

    Elbit Systems/Israeli defense firm (Thunberg London arrest)

    Ethnic Cleansing/Humanitarian Disaster (Sudan/Gaza)

    E-ICE (ICE crimes are documented everywhere; their purpose and violence are inexcusable)

    Senator Wyden on the new trillion dollar defense bill

    Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who voted no on the defense spending bill, said, “I cannot support a bill that increases military spending by tens of billions of dollars and fails to include guardrails against Donald Trump and Hegseth’s authoritarian abuses.”

    From Hannah Arendt

    “The ‘apocalyptic’ chess game between the superpowers that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilization, is being played according to the rule ‘if either “wins” it is the end of both’; it is a game that bears no resemblance to whatever war games preceded it. Its ‘rational’ goal is deterrence, not victory, and the arms race, no longer a preparation for war, can now be justified only on the grounds that more and more deterrence is the best guarantee of peace. To the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer.”
    Hannah Arendt, On Violence

    There are now organizations like ICAN that before Trump and his cartel took over have taken huge steps internationally to ban nuclear weapons. But the Trumpites see only the military as a solution, when in reality it is the greatest threat to world peace. ICAN built the following UN treaty:

    The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

    The TPNW was adopted at the United Nations by a majority of nations in July 2017 and entered into force on January 22, 2021. It is the first globally applicable treaty to categorically prohibit nuclear weapons and provides a framework for their verifiable and irreversible elimination. 

    Trump has removed the US from many international arms treaties just as he has removed US participation in prevention of climate change at the recent COP international UN conference about climate change and continued to promote the greatest polluter in the world, CO2, caused by fossil fuel that also drives the military with over 1000 military bases worldwide.


    • What new authoriarian or fascist tripe will be thrown at us by Trump and his administration? As the poet William Blake once said: “Enough! Or too much.” My AI interprets that as: “the power of imagination and challenging conventional morality.” Robert Reich in his most recent Coffee Klatch on Saturday, 12/27/2025 explores the idea that Trump’s excesses and authoritarian dictates have exposed the conventional morality we have been living under, accepting the status quo around racism, women’s oppression and rights, healthcare, housing, and other oppressive systems for so many Americans.

    • As the population if the United States has become more diverse and has many more shades of color, the white supremacists have lost their hold while at the same time they are losing their unilateral hemogeny in the world (collapse of empire) and are trying desperately to hold on.

    • Trump and his cartel think the solution is a superior military that has put us on the edge of more war, especially in Latin America and particularly Venezuela which has two strikes against it. One, it is a socialist country and therefore the opposite of capitalism’s greed in its idiology. Second, and not without significance even though the Trump administration denies it, Venezuela has the greatest reserve of oil in the world. Much of that oil is offshore, but still belongs to Venezuela. 

    • Why is the oil so important? It sustains the military industrial complex and is essential for that hyper-military system that has those 1000 or so military bases worldwide. Those jets and other oil uses from US military bases alone are the greatest CO2 (fossil fuel) sources in the world. You say so what? But if you understand the climate crisis you know that they are destroying the planet with their use of fossil fuel. Yet Trump encourages fracking and major use of fossil fuels and supports the corporations that use them. That, of course, is in direct conflict with those of us who want to save the planet. 

    • The gas and oil companies who economically control our government along with domination from other corporations, most especially including the weapons’ industry, which again is tied into the hyper-military. 

    • So how are all those corporations, internationally those multinational corporations and the financial groups that support them going to make money? They desperately cling to their old and destructive ways. But that creates jobs, they say. But statistics have proved that turning to a green basis for the economy can create just as many if not more jobs. That scares them. Instead of changing their ways because they might lose their power and their money, they continue on the road to destruction instead if using their time and money for new innovations that could help save the planet.

    • US industry has lost its innovative edge. Daily I see that this or that country worldwide has created a new tool to deal with the climate crisis, and China is ahead of the US in the war against climate change. Instead the US is stagnated, caught in a MEGA web that serves no one except the rich while convincing too many Americans who are Trump supporters that there is no genocide in Palestine. Recent examples I have seen online include the Netherlands inventing a tubing they put in the ocean that collects plastic that they then process the plastic to prevent pollution. Other nations have built large areas of solar panels on flat land dedicated to solar power. In Morocco they have developed an inexpensive small solar panel that can be placed on their balconies. There are many more examples but you will not find them described in the mainstream corporate media. 

     “In the end there is no democracy without informed citizens, no justice without a language critical of injustice, and no change without a broad-based movement of collective resistance.”

    —Henry Giroux



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing the voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

  • Time to Unmask Trump’s Detention and Deportation Squads

    Time to Unmask Trump’s Detention and Deportation Squads

    It is past time to unmask the violent agents targeting people like Narciso, and halt Trump’s racist, xenophobic mass detentions and deportations.

    Time to Unmask Trump’s Detention and Deportation Squads

    By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan/ Democracy Now / Column / June 26, 2025 

    With each passing day, the violence wielded by ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grows more intense and widespread. One grotesquely emblematic example of this was the recent violent arrest of 48-year-old Narciso Barranco in Santa Ana, California. Narciso, a hardworking immigrant laborer who came from Mexico over thirty years ago, is the father of three US Marines. While landscaping outside an IHOP restaurant on June 21st, he was assaulted by at least seven armed, masked men, who tackled him and repeatedly punched him in the head. They handcuffed him and shoved him into an unmarked SUV. The plainclothes agents wore face masks, bullet-proof vests and military-grade helmets. Some of the vests read, “Police–US Border Patrol” on the back, but to anyone confronted by these gangs, no identifying marks, names, or badges were visible.

    Image Credit: Instagram/@santaanaproblems

    One of Narciso’s sons, Alejandro Barranco, a US Marine Corps veteran, was able to visit his father in jail. Narciso was still wearing the same work clothes that were bloodied in the assault.

    “He looked beat up, he looked rough, he looked defeated, he was sad,” Alejandro said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Anybody would be scared if they see these guys come up to them, masked, not in uniform, guns out.”

    City of Santa Ana councilmember Jonathan Hernandez, also on Democracy Now!, added, “We are watching violence unfold, racial profiling increase in cities like Santa Ana, where 41% of our residents are migrants, 70% are of Latino descent…agents come into our community, and they’re refusing to identify themselves, they don’t have judicial warrants and these ICE raids are an example of the government’s overreach.”

    In mid-June, President Trump briefly paused immigration raids on farms, hotels and restaurants, ostensibly to ensure these key industries that have supported him in the past continue to do so. “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.

    Soon after, he reversed himself. The short pause revealed a fundamental truth about undocumented immigrants: the US economy doesn’t function without them. Nevertheless, urged on by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, ICE, Homeland Security and Border agents are snatching and deporting the very workers on whom our economy depends.

    There are some sectors of the economy that are thriving amidst the mass deportations. GEO Group, the private prison corporation, has seen its stock rise by over 50% since Trump’s election. Palantir, the tech and AI firm co-founded by Trump backer, billionaire Peter Thiel, has seen its stock rise over 500% in the past year. It was recently reported that Palantir is building tools to allow near real-time tracking of immigrants in the US. The Program on Government Oversight, POGO, reported that Stephen Miller’s financial disclosure reveals he owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock.

    Meanwhile, the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court has handed Trump a deportation-related victory. Several immigrants sued the government to stop or reverse deportations to Guatemala, South Sudan and Libya. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction against these so-called “third party nation removals.” This week, the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices overturned that injunction, without comment. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that the Trump administration’s “flagrantly unlawful conduct,” backed by the Supreme Court, is “exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death.”

    Resistance is active, growing and making a difference. Grassroots pressure and legal battles have won the release of international students targeted for their solidarity with Palestinians, among them Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and the first such student arrested and threatened with deportation, Mahmoud Khalil.

    Likewise, grassroots, legal and Congressional pressure forced the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. The Maryland father received asylum during Trump’s first term, in 2019, based on credible threats from an El Salvador gang. Then, this past March 12th, he was snatched from a parking lot and sent, against a court order, to El Salvador.

    Under enormous legal and grassroots pressure, the federal government finally returned Abrego Garcia to the US. Despite that victory, upon his return the federal government promptly rearrested him, charging him with human trafficking for allegedly driving undocumented immigrants several years ago. He remains in federal custody in Tennessee, and, if released, ICE will likely attempt to deport him.

    Meanwhile, Narciso Barranco sits in ICE detention, with his two sons still on active duty in the US Marines not far away, at Fort Pendleton. It is past time to unmask the violent agents targeting people like Narciso, and halt Trump’s racist, xenophobic mass detentions and deportations.

    The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.