State Violence Has Existed Since The United States’ Founding
What’s Happening in Minnesota: Militarized Federal Enforcement and Lethal Force
Policing, deportation, incarceration, and surveillance in the United States are part of a shared system of state violence deeply rooted in American history and reinforced through transnational collaboration. This system was born alongside the emergence of race-based social control in this country, and it continues to shape how the state treats Black, Brown, immigrant, and dissenting communities today. It is also mirrored and reinforced through longstanding collaborations between U.S. law enforcement agencies and Israel’s occupation forces, and it directly reflects the systems of state violence Israel has imposed on Palestinians.
State Violence Has Existed Since The United States’ Founding
The silencing of dissent is one of our “democracy’s” most consistent tools. It has been embedded in our country’s history.
Since the founding of the United States, state violence has been used to enforce colonial rule. Indigenous peoples were forced to assimilate, displaced, imprisoned, or killed for resisting conquest. The same machinery was first deployed to enforce the inhumane system of chattel slavery. In early America (the antebellum era), slave patrols (armed groups tasked with chasing down escapees, policing enslaved people’s movements, and suppressing resistance) were a formalized system of terror designed to maintain bondage and the racial order that upheld it. These patrols used excessive force as a matter of course, not as an aberration, and their role was to control, punish, and return Black people to servitude without regard for life or autonomy.
The same machinery was redeployed again throughout U.S. history: to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act, which criminalized Chinese existence and justified mass surveillance and expulsion; to imprison Japanese Americans in internment camps under the guise of national security; to uphold Jim Crow, using policing, incarceration, and terror to maintain racial segregation; and later during the civil rights era through surveillance, infiltration, and criminalization. It was turned again against the Chicano movement, anti-war organizers, and others who challenged state power. It then escalated, yet again, after September 11, 2001. In the name of “counterterrorism,” the U.S. government constructed an expansive legal and surveillance regime that overwhelmingly targeted Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities. The passage of the USA PATRIOT Act dramatically lowered the threshold for surveillance, allowing warrantless wiretapping, mass data collection, and secret investigations. Federal programs like the NYPD’s post-9/11 Muslim Surveillance Program mapped mosques, student groups, businesses, and entire neighborhoods, even when there was no evidence of criminal activity. As documented by journalists and civil rights groups, informants were routinely planted in mosques and community spaces, sometimes actively instigating or encouraging speech that could later be framed as suspicious or criminal. This was all about preemptive control, collective punishment, and the normalization of suspicion toward entire communities.
What we are witnessing now follows the same blueprint, even as the language has shifted. Where the post-9/11 era invoked “counterterrorism,” today the justification is “countering domestic extremism” or “domestic terrorism.” Each time, the justification has been altered, but the essence of the goal has not.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Border Patrol, and U.S. law enforcement, generally, are conducting raids and detentions that strip people of autonomy, rely on racial profiling, and apply lethal force with minimal accountability, actions that parallel the logic of the past even as the language changes. The systems of surveillance and repression that targeted abolitionists, civil rights activists, Muslims, and Chicano movement organizers in the 20th century, via infiltration, monitoring, and criminalization, also reflect this continuation of state power asserting control over communities seen as threats to the status quo. From Jim Crow policing to COINTELPRO targeting Black and anti-war activists, state institutions have repeatedly deployed the coercive apparatus of the state to maintain racial and political hierarchies.
It is a historical through-line: the logic of social control that justified enslaving people and hunting those trying to escape bondage now shapes how the state justifies surveillance, border enforcement, and police violence against marginalized communities. When agents abduct, detain, or kill human beings under the guise of “law enforcement,” what distinguishes those practices from their historical antecedents is not the underlying logic of control but the language used to sanitize them.
What connects Minnesota, Gaza, the West Bank, and cities across the United States is continuity. A system that refines techniques of control on the most vulnerable populations and then redeploys them more broadly. A system that tests repression abroad and normalizes it at home. A system that treats entire communities as expendable in the name of “security.”
The same logic that justifies military occupation abroad is used to rationalize policing, deportation, and surveillance at home. That is why calls to abolish ICE, defund militarized policing, and defend civil liberties cannot be separated from demands to end U.S. military aid to Israel. These are not parallel struggles; they are fights against the same architecture of state violence.
And that architecture depends on fragmentation: on our willingness to see these issues as disconnected, isolated, or unrelated. Refusing that fragmentation and insisting on connection is necessary for any serious movement for justice. Our struggles are undeniably interconnected.
How Does This Connect to Palestine?
The similarities are no coincidence. The Department of Homeland Security’s JINSA Homeland Security Program (HSP) brings members of American law enforcement to Israel to learn Israeli tactics developed and deployed against Palestinians, and a quick Google search for “DHS training programs with Israel” uncovers numerous Israeli-based universities, thinktanks, and businesses advertising training programs in Homeland Security for American law enforcement.
The existence and consequences of these programs are not a new revelation. In their 2018 report Deadly Exchange, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Researching the American-Israel Alliance (RAIA) detailed their impacts, highlighting that,
“These exchange programs with Israel facilitate the sharing of practices and technologies between US law enforcement and the Israeli military, police and intelligence agencies; Instill militarized logics of security into the civilian sphere, normalizing practices of mass surveillance, criminalization, and the violent repression of communities and movements the government defines as threatening; and deepen ties between US and Israeli officials to shore up support for a shared security model that justifies flagrant human and civil rights violations.”
If you’d like to learn more, you can access the full report here.
The consequences of these exchange programs have been on full display in Minneapolis these past few weeks. After murdering Renee Good and Alex Pretti, law enforcement followed the classic Israeli playbook: block medical staff until it is too late to save the victim’s life; then immediately label them as a terrorist regardless of any evidence to the contrary; and attack anyone who disagrees publicly or dares show up to protest. It’s a story that has repeated itself countless times across Palestine, and one that will become commonplace here if we fail to confront this transnational system of terror.
These connections are not just limited to training courses. Palestine has long been described as a laboratory for oppression where tech firms, militaries, and governments test out their newest tactics, weapons, and technologies on a civilian population abandoned by the international community. Under the second Trump Administration, ICE has aggressivelyacquired accessto Israeli surveillance technologies and deployed them against Americans, including entering into a contract with the Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions, giving them access to technology that allows them to hack into any mobile phone, including encrypted applications. Large American defense and surveillance companies like Palantir also have deep connections to the Israeli occupation forces, blurring the line between American and Israeli surveillance technologies and utilizing the occupation to develop repressive tools and test them on Palestinians before deploying them on America’s streets.
This reality is why calls to abolish ICE cannot be separated from demands to end Israel’s apartheid occupation of Palestine/Palestinians and why these struggles must be understood as one interconnected fight. Confronting one requires confronting the other. To ignore this reality effectively ignores half of the fight for our own freedom and democracy.
What’s Happening in Minnesota: Militarized Federal Enforcement and Lethal Force
Since early January 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched what it’s calling “Operation Metro Surge,” deploying thousands of federal immigration agents, including ICE and U.S. Border Patrol, into Minneapolis and across Minnesota as part of an aggressive immigration crackdown. These agents have carried out mass arrests (over 3,000), aggressive raids, and extensive surveillance in immigrant and Black and Brown neighborhoods.
During this operation, so far, two U.S. citizens have been shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, sparking protests, anger, and calls for accountability.
- On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and Minneapolis resident, was shot multiple times and killed by an ICE agent during a federal enforcement action. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide, and video evidence and eyewitness accounts contradicted federal claims that she posed a threat.
- On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in south Minneapolis. Pretti legally carried a concealed firearm in Minnesota, which had been taken from him before he was shot. Video evidence shows that he was unarmed and attempting to assist others during the confrontation when federal agents opened fire.
The speed and uniformity with which U.S. officials labeled Renée Good and Alex Pretti “terrorists” mirrors a well-worn tactic used by Israeli officials to launder state violence into legitimacy. In November, after a video circulated showing Israeli forces executing a Palestinian man at close range, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, immediately described the victim as a “terrorist.” The label was deployed despite the video itself showing no imminent threat. Its purpose was to transform an apparent execution into a justified act of security enforcement and to preempt any demand for accountability, something the apartheid state is notorious for doing. This is a core tactic of Israel’s playbook: branding Palestinians as “terrorists” to retroactively justify atrocities and shield war crimes from accountability. This strategy long predates 2023 and has been deployed relentlessly throughout the genocide in Gaza, where Israeli officials have systematically labeled Palestinians as “terrorists” to rationalize mass killing, collective punishment, and the destruction of civilian life.
That same logic appeared in the U.S. After video evidence showed that Renée Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti were unarmed and disarmed respectively, posing no immediate threat, federal officials, including Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, moved quickly to brand both victims as “terrorists.” As in Ben Gvir’s case, the accusation was not supported by any evidence. It functioned instead as a political reflex: a way to retroactively justify lethal force, delegitimize the dead, and signal that certain lives fall outside the boundaries of public concern or legal protection.
In both contexts, the pattern is identical. Lethal force is used. Visual evidence contradicts official claims. The state responds by invoking “terrorism” as a narrative shield. The word becomes a weapon, one that collapses due process, erases humanity, and reframes state violence as necessity. This rhetorical move is central to how occupation abroad and militarized policing at home sustain themselves through the disciplined repetition of fear.
Talking Points
- From Indigenous genocide and ethnic cleansing to slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, the U.S. has repeatedly relied on state violence to enforce racial hierarchy, suppress dissent, and police minority communities.
- Reporting shows that secretive federal watchlists and intelligence systems now track Americans (especially anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian) on the basis of protest attendance, speech, or association.
- ICE agents are deploying Israel’s tactics of violence and state terror – first developed and tested against Palestinians – to America’s streets.
- After murdering Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, American officials immediately labeled them as terrorists despite the video evidence clearly demonstrating the absurdity of that accusation, just as Israeli officials routinely do when they’re caught on camera brutalizing and murdering Palestinians.
- Calls to abolish ICE, defund militarized policing, and defend civil liberties cannot be separated from demands to end U.S. military aid to Israel. These are not parallel struggles; they are fights against the same architecture of state violence.
- Large American defense and surveillance companies like Palantir have deep connections to the Israeli occupation forces, blurring the line between American and Israeli surveillance technologies and utilizing the occupation to develop repressive tools and test them on Palestinians before deploying them on America’s streets.
- Because these systems of oppression are fundamentally linked and reinforce one another, confronting ICE’s assault on Americans’ freedoms requires confronting Israel’s apartheid oppression of Palestinians. Ignoring this reality and fighting only one while leaving the other unaddressed undermines half of the fight for our own freedom and democracy, dooming our efforts to fail.
