Opinion: When Leadership Excuses Lawlessness – Minneapolis and the Cost of Anti-ICE Rhetoric

By Amanda Szulc, Opinion Contributor

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis is not a misunderstanding. It’s not a communications failure. And it’s certainly not “mostly peaceful.”

It’s a leadership failure.

Mayor Jacob Frey has chosen to frame federal immigration enforcement as illegitimate and reckless, while repeatedly excusing violent conduct toward federal officers as “peaceful protest.”

That choice has consequences. And those consequences are now playing out in the streets, online, and in the form of escalating threats against the very agents tasked with enforcing federal law.

Let’s be clear about what Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing in Minneapolis: ICE agents are executing lawful operations to remove illegal aliens, including those with criminal records. They are not freelancing policies. They are not rogue actors. They are enforcing laws passed by Congress — laws that still exist whether local politicians like them or not.

Yet instead of acknowledging that reality, Mayor Frey has leaned into rhetoric that encourages confrontation. He has publicly urged residents to “stand up” to ICE, while insisting that attacks on agents and damage to federal property are merely expressions of dissent. That framing is reckless. And it’s dishonest.

Alex Pretti Was Not a “Saint” — And Saying So Matters

The tragic death of Alex Pretti has become a rallying symbol for activists who want to delegitimize immigration enforcement entirely. The media rushed to sanctify him, skipping context and skipping facts.

Alex Pretti was not a passive bystander uninvolved in the events that unfolded. Newly surfaced reporting confirms what many were initially shouted down for saying: Pretti interfered with an active federal law-enforcement operation aimed at removing criminal suspects. In fact, he had assaulted federal officers just two weeks earlier, including spitting at agents and damaging a federal vehicle.

And here’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable — but necessary: He also chose to interfere with an active federal law-enforcement operation targeting a criminal suspect. That fact does not negate the tragedy of what followed. Both things can be true at the same time.

Acknowledging that reality isn’t heartless. Ignoring it is dishonest. And what’s truly infuriating is how selectively compassion is applied.
When a tragedy fits a preferred political narrative, we get wall-to-wall coverage, emotional appeals, candlelight vigils, and instant moral certainty. When it doesn’t, the outrage vanishes. There is compassion for victims only when their stories serve a narrative.

Where was that same media fury for Laken Riley, an aspiring nursing student raped and murdered in cold blood by an illegal immigrant while out for a run? Where was the national reckoning for Kate Steinle, killed on a San Francisco pier by someone who had been deported multiple times and never should have been in this country? Where was the sustained outrage for Mollie Tibbetts, whose life was taken while jogging in her own community?

These women didn’t get second chances. They didn’t get to finish school. They didn’t get to live out their dreams. And they didn’t get endless media sympathy or narrative gymnastics designed to shift blame away from policy failure.

Their stories were inconvenient. So they were quietly pushed aside. That isn’t compassion. It’s narrative enforcement. And narratives have consequences.

When law enforcement is portrayed as illegitimate by default — when agents are treated as villains-in-waiting — it sends a message, loud and clear, that federal officers are fair game. That hostility becomes understandable. That violence becomes excusable. That consequences become unlikely.

Federal agents now receive death threats. Their vehicles are vandalized. They’re harassed, targeted, and demonized simply for doing the job Congress assigned them. And the media shrugs — or worse, rationalizes it.

Respect for law enforcement is not outdated. It is not optional. It is not a partisan preference. It is a prerequisite for public safety.

And when the media abandons restraint, objectivity, and consistency in favor of ideological storytelling, it doesn’t just report on the erosion of trust — it accelerates it.

If journalists truly care about justice, they should start practicing the discipline they demand from everyone else. Because outrage without consistency isn’t moral clarity. It’s propaganda.

And the longer this continues, the more damage it will do — not just to law enforcement, but to the country that depends on it.

That passage isn’t inflammatory. It’s factual. And it’s exactly what the media refuses to grapple with.

The Violence Isn’t Hypothetical — It’s Already Here

While Mayor Frey waves away attacks on ICE as “peaceful,” federal authorities are documenting a staggering increase in threats against agents and their families.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers are facing an 8,000 percent surge in death threats, along with widespread doxxing, vandalism, and explicit calls for physical harm.

This isn’t just rhetoric anymore — it’s encouragement of criminal conduct.

In one recent case, a nurse was fired after posting videos online suggesting ways to target ICE agents with anesthetics, sabotage them through food or pharmaceuticals, and otherwise “make their lives miserable.” Let that sink in: a medical professional openly fantasizing about poisoning or incapacitating federal law-enforcement officers — cheered on by the same activist culture that insists this is all just “protest.”

This is the environment local leaders are enabling when they refuse to draw a line. Leadership Means Choosing Law Over Applause

Disagreement with federal immigration policy is lawful. Protest is legal. Advocacy is legitimate. But interference with law enforcement is not — and neither is excusing violence when it serves a political narrative.

Mayor Frey doesn’t get to have it both ways. He cannot call on people to resist ICE, dismiss attacks as peaceful, and then feign shock when federal agents are threatened, harassed, or worse. Leadership means telling the truth even when it’s unpopular — and the truth is this: ICE agents are enforcing the law, and attacking them is a crime.

The rule of law does not survive on vibes. It survives on consequences.

And right now, Minneapolis leadership is teaching people that there are none.