The Patriot Post® · How Non-Enforcement Turned Immigration Into a Street War

None of this had to happen.

Not one damn bit of it.

All I see is a series of doom loops that form a death spiral with no good end in sight.

The fatal shooting of a woman during a federal immigration enforcement operation — and the subsequent attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — did not emerge from a sudden surge of cruelty or authoritarian impulse from President Donald Trump, no matter how much the Democrat Left wishes it so.

It is the foreseeable outcome of a long institutional unraveling in which immigration law was first neglected (by Democrats and Republicans alike), then moralized, and finally treated as illegitimate. What makes the present moment especially dangerous is not simply enforcement itself, but the organized resistance to it — resistance that deliberately amplifies fear, spreads falsehoods, and guarantees confrontation.

It bears stating plainly: There are laws governing immigration. The state governments and insane “revolutionaries” in Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, and California may not like it, but the federal government is not improvising. The actions now provoking protests and interference are grounded in long-standing immigration statutes passed by Congress and repeatedly upheld by the courts. Detention, removal, cooperation with local authorities, and the execution of warrants are not novel inventions of a particular administration; they are the ordinary mechanics of immigration law as written.

Yet for years, the executive branch declined to use those tools at scale, and border enforcement went from a relaxed posture to being completely ignored, asylum claims were allowed to metastasize into permanent presence, and removals slowed to a trickle. The message, however politely phrased, was unmistakable: Immigration law existed largely on paper. That signal was received clearly by migrants, smugglers, advocacy groups, and local governments, and cities adapted accordingly. “Sanctuary” policies were not mere gestures of sympathy; they were operational decisions to obstruct federal enforcement. Local police were barred from honoring detainers, and city agencies were instructed not to share information.

Immigration law was reframed as something quasi-illegitimate — technically federal, but morally suspect and politically optional.

It was never completely about altruism because around this non-enforcement grew an ecosystem awash in federal cash, leading to an explosion of NGOs and advocacy groups whose budgets, staffing, and relevance depended on volume and continuity. Their role was not neutral. They provided housing, transportation, healthcare, legal shielding, political organizing, and — crucially — narrative framing. Enforcement was no longer described as routine application of the law but as “raids,” “kidnappings,” or collective punishment, all to keep the money rolling in.

During the Biden administration, Christian “charities” and NGOs combined to create a burgeoning “coyote” business that was just a form of legal human smuggling. Illegal aliens became a product, a commodity to be exchanged for money, in a modern form of human trade along a federally constructed and protected underground railroad.

When the federal government eventually attempted to reassert control through large-scale operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it did so in an environment primed for resistance. Federal agents were no longer entering cooperative jurisdictions; they were now greeted with hostility and cries of “Gestapo!” and “Nazi!” States and cities that had spent years delegitimizing enforcement now openly refuse to cooperate, and some, like Chicago and Minneapolis, sued to block federal action outright, while others tacitly encouraged defiance by casting ICE agents as racist baby-stealing demons that stalk the night.

Resistance has ceased to be rhetorical and has become operational. Activists organized to track agents, surround vehicles, block streets, and intimidate landlords or employers who cooperated with federal authorities. Protest was no longer expressive; it was tactical. Its purpose was to raise the cost of enforcement — politically, legally, and physically — until enforcement collapsed again. Fear became the accelerant. Communities were deliberately told that “anyone could be next,” that citizens were being “snatched off the street” and deported, that lawful residents were at risk based solely on skin color. These claims were (and are) false, but their accuracy was unimportant because lies work better to induce panic, harden opposition, and provoke confrontation.

When people are convinced they are facing an existential threat, they behave accordingly. Fear and resistance feed fight-or-flight responses, and, like a nuclear reaction, the process becomes self-sustaining, with each increasingly powerful action met with an increasingly powerful reaction.

This dynamic simply did not exist a decade ago. Under Barack Obama, the federal government removed millions of illegal immigrants — earning him the moniker “deporter-in-chief” from activists. Yet America did not see widespread attacks on federal agents or mass street interference with removals.

The difference was not the absence of enforcement; it was the presence of cooperation.

The very cities and states now in open rebellion against enforcement routinely assisted federal authorities then. Immigration law was politically contested but not treated as illegitimate, and that is a distinction that matters. Enforcement carried out within a cooperative framework is boring, bureaucratic, and largely invisible. Enforcement carried out in a climate of organized defiance is volatile. When agents operate amid crowds trained to see them as enemies, when civilians believe they are morally authorized to intervene, and when every encounter is framed as a potential atrocity, the risk of violence — and deadly error — sharply rises.

This is how lawful authority collides with manufactured outrage — and how tragedy follows.

Renee Good was not the target of some grand design. President Trump did not have her killed in a drone attack. She was caught at the intersection of years of institutional failure, narrative escalation, deliberate resistance to the Rule of Law, and a bad decision that ended her life.

What we are witnessing is no longer an immigration debate. It is a test of whether laws passed by Congress can be enforced at all in jurisdictions that have decided those laws are immoral. But pretending that the law itself is the problem — or that it can be willfully ignored or doesn’t exist — leads to a death spiral of escalation and failure.

There are only three possible endpoints: a sustained reassertion of federal authority supported by cooperation; a formal surrender of immigration law to local moral discretion; or a continued escalation of street-level chaos punctuated by preventable deaths.