On November 4, 2025, in a Home Depot parking lot in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, two masked federal agents arrested Dennis Quiñonez. His one-year-old daughter was strapped in her car seat. The agents got in the car and drove away with her still inside while bystanders screamed “There’s a baby in the back!” Four hours passed before her grandmother got her back. Dirty diaper. Bruise on her face. Developing a rash.¹ Quiñonez and his daughter are U.S. citizens.
The next week, armed agents entered a Chicago daycare during morning drop-off and dragged a preschool teacher out in front of children.² In Minneapolis, agents held a woman face down in snow.³ In Queens, federal officers pointed assault rifles at a mother and her four children, ages 2 to 13, because they had the wrong address.⁴ In Beaverton, Oregon, a father was grabbed outside his child’s preschool while his kid cried “Daddy, police!”⁵ Ring cameras across the country capture pre-dawn raids where people are held at gunpoint in their own homes.
Thousands of people, every day, grabbed and detained and separated from their families.
The response from people in positions to act? Briefs. Civil lawsuits. Not even half measures.
Hand-wringing is privileged behavior. The people calculating whether action might set bad precedent, whether aggressive prosecution might invite retaliation, whether it’s strategically wise to wait for better conditions; they’re never the ones being disappeared to a mega-prison in El Salvador. They’re not the ones being permanently separated from their terminally ill children. If it were them, they wouldn’t be saying “well, stopping this might create concerning precedent, so let’s wait a few more election cycles.” They would want someone to act now, today, before the van arrives. If it was them or the people they loved then they would stop at nothing to end it.
That calculation, the careful weighing of institutional risk against human lives, is a weapon authoritarians use against institutionalists. They make doing the right thing difficult, then watch people make excuses for not doing the morally right thing.
And here’s what makes the caution not just morally bankrupt but strategically indefensible: it keeps failing. The administration has ignored a third of court orders without consequences.⁶ DOJ officials told attorneys to consider telling courts “fuck you,” and we know this because they wrote it down.⁷ The Supreme Court has sided with the administration on more than 80 percent of emergency requests in 2025,⁸ and in September they went further: in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, they ruled 6-3 that ICE can stop people based on how they look, what language they speak, and what kind of work they do.⁹ Justice Sotomayor’s dissent: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”⁹ We shouldn’t have to live in that country. We do. The courts aren’t failing to protect people. They’re giving permission.
And it’s about to get worse. ICE is hiring 10,000 new agents, more than doubling their deportation force from 6,000 to 16,000. The One Big Beautiful Bill gave them $75 billion, making ICE the highest funded law enforcement agency in the country, outstripping the FBI.¹⁰ More agents, less training, and a Supreme Court that just told them racial profiling is constitutional.
Rather than choosing between principle and pragmatism, we are choosing both moral failure and a losing playbook simultaneously. The careful approach keeps losing while people keep disappearing.
The Fugitive Slave Act required northern states to return escaped slaves to bondage. Federal law. Supremacy Clause.
Northern states said no. They nullified, refused, passed laws criminalizing cooperation with slave catchers, and put their offices between the federal government and the people being hunted.
That defiance was illegal. It was also right, and history knows it.
People are being disappeared to a mega-prison in El Salvador and Alligator Alcatraz. Courts are being ignored. The administration mocks the judges who try to stop them. They grab citizens, take babies, and enter daycares with guns drawn.
Where is the line? What would have to happen that hasn’t already happened?
The crimes are documented. A federal judge found probable cause for criminal contempt against administration officials who defied a deportation order.¹¹ Qatar gave the president a $400 million jet with no Congressional consent.¹² A meme coin operation has funneled hundreds of millions to the president while selling access to the Oval Office.¹³ Kushner took $2 billion from Saudi Arabia.¹⁴ Pardons trace back to million-dollar donations.¹⁵ Insurrectionists aren’t just given pardons, they’re given positions of power.¹⁶ Retaliatory prosecutions are becoming normalized.
Either way, we set a precedent. We break precedent by putting ICE agents, cabinet officials, and Supreme Court justices in prison when they earn it. Or we set the precedent that none of this is punishable, and every future administration knows exactly what they can get away with.
State attorneys general have jurisdiction over conduct that violates state law. The statutes exist, the evidence exists, and state-level prosecution is legally viable right now, today, without permission from the federal government or the Supreme Court.
The tools exist. We need people willing to use them.
One question decides 2026 and 2028.
Every candidate, every level; dog catcher to governor, state rep to attorney general.
Will you criminally prosecute?
Will you use the power of your office to hold these people accountable? Will you put them in prison?
Anyone who hedges on this question has told you everything you need to know about them. They’re running the same calculation that comfortable people always run when other people bear the cost, telling you they’ll choose caution while innocent people are beaten, kidnapped, and detained under inhuman circumstances by anonymous and thus unaccountable thugs.
You want to be a political superstar? You want enthusiasm that donor money cannot buy? You want volunteers driving across state lines to knock doors? You want to be the candidate people have been waiting for?
Give this answer and mean it with all your heart.
The answer is that you will do what is morally right, always, without concessions or excuses. And I have great news for you, when challenges and conflicts arise as an inevitable consequence of telling fascists “no, we will use every tool available to fight your injustices.” When that conflict comes, the good and moral people of this country will enthusiastically support that politician. Why? Because that’s more than a politician, that’s someone representing the courage our nation aspires to have. Millions will have your back when you say “step back. This ends now.”
The lane is wide open. Whoever takes it wins something that cannot be purchased: a movement that believes in them.
Do the right thing. Always. And never apologize for it.
Anything else is at best capitulation and at worst complicity.
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References
1. TIME. (2025, November 9). Viral videos show toddlers caught up in sweeping ICE arrests. https://time.com/7332405/ice-arrest-toddler-la-video/
2. Fazio, P., & Dvorak, A. (2025, November 5). Teacher pulled out of Chicago day care by armed ICE agents, alderman says. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/teacher-pulled-chicago-daycare-armed-ice-agents-alderman-says-rcna242210
3. Wight, C. (2025, December 17). Minneapolis police chief critical of ICE agents’ conduct after woman dragged through street. CBS Minnesota. https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minneapolis-ice-confrontation-police-chief-brian-ohara-responds/
4. Hogan, G. (2025, November 19). VIDEO: Federal agents bust into Queens apartment, pointing guns at mother and her four kids. THE CITY. https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/19/queens-ice-raid-guns-children-mother/
5. Wilson, C., & Bartholomew, H. (2025, July 22). ‘Daddy, police!’: New video shows masked ICE agents arrest father outside child’s school in Beaverton. Oregon Public Broadcasting. https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/21/new-video-ice-agents-arrest-father-beaverton-preschool/
6. Jouvenal, J. (2025, July 21). Trump accused of defying about a third of major court orders since taking office. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/21/trump-court-orders-defy-noncompliance-marshals-judges/
7. Reuveni, E. (2025, June 24). Protected whistleblower disclosure of Erez Reuveni [Whistleblower complaint]. U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/06-24-2025_-_Protected_Whistleblower_Disclosure_of_Erez_Reuveni_Redacted.pdf
8. Supreme Court emergency orders related to the Trump administration, 2025. (2025, December 23). Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/Supreme_Court_emergency_orders_related_to_the_Trump_administration,_2025
9. American Immigration Council. (2025, September 9). How the Supreme Court’s latest decision clears the way for racial profiling during immigration raids. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/supreme-courts-decision-racial-profiling-immigration-raids/
10. PBS NewsHour. (2025, December 4). As ICE boosts recruitment, critics concerned over changes to hiring and training standards. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-ice-boosts-recruitment-critics-concerned-over-changes-to-hiring-and-training-standards
11. Whitehurst, L., & Durkin, A. (2025, April 16). Judge finds probable cause to hold Trump administration in contempt for violating deportation order. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-finds-probable-cause-to-hold-trump-administration-in-contempt-for-violating-deportation-order
12. Karl, J., & Faulders, K. (2025, May 11). Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-palace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511
13. Sigalos, M. (2025, May 6). 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/06/trump-meme-coin-crypto.html
14. Kirkpatrick, D. D., & Kelly, K. (2022, April 10). Jared Kushner’s firm got $2 billion from Saudi wealth fund. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html
15. Faulders, K., Scott, R., & Demissie, H. (2025, May 28). Trump’s flurry of pardons include some to campaign contributors. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-flurry-pardons-include-campaign-contributors/story?id=122313284
16. Dreisbach, T. (2025, August 7). Video shows Department of Justice official urging Jan. 6 rioters to ‘kill’ cops. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5493197/doj-trump-jan-6-defendant-jared-wise-capitol-riot
