Readers Write: ICE shooting, Venezuela

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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What we’re witnessing in Minnesota right now is not a routine law enforcement operation; it’s a full-scale occupation. When 2,000 federal agents descend on a city, stalk its neighborhoods and refuse to coordinate with the local law enforcement, they are no longer acting like a federal partner. They are acting like an invading force in a sovereign state.

The death of Renee Nicole Good was the inevitable result of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s aggressive and uncooperative strategy in Minneapolis. For weeks now, ICE agents have treated our neighborhoods like a tactical sandbox while ignoring local ordinances. This is a calculated erasure of our state and local authority, and it is triggering a crisis of state sovereignty.

We often talk about the 10th Amendment as an abstraction, but it exists to prevent exactly this: the federal government treating a state like a conquered territory. The Constitution is crystal clear that “police power” — the basic authority to maintain order and protect citizens — belongs to us and not the federal government.

When ICE unilaterally decides to turn our residential streets into a high-stakes combat zone without coordination they are violating the supreme law of the land.

ICE claims that these methods are necessary to enforce federal immigration law, but that pretext was always thin. Their actions showed just how thin it was when they killed a U.S. citizen who hadn’t violated any laws. If a federal agency can move with this kind of impunity, then our state borders are a fiction and our state and local elections are meaningless.

Logan McMillen, Minneapolis

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This is what happens when a fascist regime sends storm troopers — poorly trained thugs, really, who get huge bonuses for signing on — into our neighborhoods. Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem must go. This is on her.

Leslie Martin, Inver Grove Heights

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Evan Mulholland, Minneapolis

Regardless of where we stand politically, I think most of us care about the checks and balances built into our Constitution. Recent events have me wondering if we’re paying enough attention to how those are being tested.

The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the talk about Greenland, the shifting explanations for these actions — I’ll admit I’ve been trying to make sense of it all. And while I’m no historian, I’ve been reading what others who study these things have to say, and a pattern seems to be emerging that concerns me.

Presidents have always had some authority to deploy military forces without getting Congress involved first — that’s nothing new. Self-defense situations, helping allies under attack, NATO operations like Kosovo, United Nations actions like Korea — these have all happened under various administrations from both parties. But the recent deployments to Venezuela and earlier to Iran seem different. They don’t fit neatly into those established categories, and the legal reasoning keeps shifting.

Here’s what makes sense to me after piecing this together: It’s not really about drugs or oil. It’s about establishing a pattern where the president can use military force without congressional approval, even when the situation doesn’t clearly fall under existing legal justifications. When you add in federal troops being sent to states that didn’t ask for them, you start to see what might be a broader shift in how military authority works.

I’ve been reading about proposals in documents like Project 2025, specifically the Mandate for Leadership, that laid out a blueprint for putting the Department of Defense more directly under presidential control and removing some of the traditional independent checks. Whether you agree with current policies or not, we should all be asking: Is this the right balance of power?

With so much happening every day, it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. But some things are bigger than any single news story. The framework that keeps any one branch of government from having too much power. That’s something that should matter to us.

I’d encourage people to ask their representatives — whatever party they’re from — what they’re doing to maintain congressional oversight of military deployments. This isn’t about being for or against any particular action. It’s about making sure the system our founders set up keeps working the way it should.

Our government was designed to be a little messy and slow on purpose. That was on purpose — it’s a feature that’s meant to protect all of us.

Susan Kaercher Meyers, Hudson, Wis.

I hear some say President Donald Trump is playing three-dimensional chess or even four-dimensional chess as president. In my opinion, he is rather playing 52-card pickup.

Mark Tomasek, Oakdale

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On closer examination of the “Donroe Doctrine” it boils down to “I can do whatever the heck I want and there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it.” There seems to be no limit to the Trump reign of terror. Following the Adolf Hitler analogy, you can equate Trump’s actions in Venezuela to Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland. Trump is now threatening Greenland. If Trump follows through, it would be equal to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Could this lead to NATO declaring war on the U.S.? It’s hard to say but they would be justified in doing so. In fact it would be prudent to do so. While the U.S. certainly has the military capability, it would have very little public support for what amounts to an imperialistic land grab. Particularly if it leads to the needless and criminal death of American soldiers once again used as cannon fodder for obscene purposes.

The one thing that ultimately brings down people like Trump and Hitler before him is the law of unintended consequences. It is the reason we more or less lost every war we got into since World War II. Wars have uncertain conclusions and too frequently go in unexpected directions. Napoleon had a superior force at Waterloo and still lost. The British had the superior force throughout the entire Revolutionary War and still lost. Russia has been battling Ukraine with a superior force for years with a loss of a million men and still hasn’t won. If NATO, which includes Canada by the way, finds its Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump and his playpen of misfits will disintegrate. The ensuing chaos will no doubt embolden other world troublemakers to take full advantage of that chaos. The possibilities are mind-boggling.

In the 1981 TV miniseries “Masada,” when the Roman General Lucius Flavius Silva was told the siege of the mountaintop Jewish fortress had been successful, he replied, “What have we won? We have won a rock in the middle of a wasteland on the shore of a poisoned sea!” In the case of Trump it will be ice cube, although I am sure the irony would be lost on him.

Thomas Jesberg, East Bethel

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Does anyone really believe that we will be able to “govern” Venezuela without U.S. military involvement? I am sure all Venezuelans, those who fled the tyranny of the Maduro regime and those who still live there, are thrilled about his removal. I also believe those same folks would strongly and, possibly, violently object to U.S. presence. Venezuela and other South and Central American countries were oppressed by European colonizers because of their gold and other precious metals. Over time they gained their independence by ousting them. I cannot believe in 2026 they would want to revert to being colonized by the U.S. because of oil.