ICE Is Failing the Legitimacy Test

Carrying a concealed handgun in public is now commonplace in much of the country. For many, this is not only a prudent act of personal safety, but an expression of liberty and a bulwark against government overreach. At the same time, America's law-enforcement officers insist they must exercise vigilance while patrolling dangerous streets. When officers make a split-second decision to shoot someone who is carrying a gun, many political leaders, especially on the right, believe they need to be given deference because their lives were at risk. The tension between these two ideas is acute, putting law enforcement and citizens on a potentially catastrophic collision course. One such collision took place in Minnesota on Saturday. It was fatal for the citizen. And it was potentially delegitimizing for law enforcement. A broader crisis of government legitimacy is imminent in the absence of a change in direction by the Trump administration. Judging from the video evidence and news reports, this is what seems to have taken place: The Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti carried his loaded, concealed 9-mm handgun to a protest against the ICE agents. He had no criminal record, and a permit to carry the gun. Holding only a phone when an agent moved in to make an arrest, he was pepper-sprayed and thrown to the ground. Then, as federal agents wrestled him into submission, Pretti’s coat rode up and his holstered gun came into view. It set off panicked screams of “Gun!” among the agents. One of them reached in and removed the pistol from Pretti’s waistband; another then drew his own pistol and shot Pretti in the back. Pretti died in the street never having touched his gun. He had been disarmed before the first shot was even fired. In response to this tragedy, the president of the United States wrote on social media: “LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!” But surely doing their job well must include respecting the people they serve. For true Second Amendment advocates, Pretti’s decision to bring a gun to a protest in no way excuses his killing. A protester with a gun, they believe, is not courting his own demise. To these advocates, under the Second Amendment, there is no wrong time and place for a citizen to be armed; it is a right that “shall not be infringed.” Some states prohibit guns at protests, but Minnesota is not one of them. As of 2025, more than 20 million Americans held a concealed carry permit. And 29 states have adopted Constitutional Carry, meaning a permit is not required. Robert F. Worth: Welcome to the American winter None of this is to say that policing an armed society is easy. It requires highly trained, well-led officers who can navigate incidents including routine calls and crimes in progress with discipline and restraint. It also requires a commitment to transparency—and to accountability, when police wrongly shoot a person exercising their right to carry a gun. In this regard, ICE and the federal government have failed dismally. ICE agents are poorly screened and quickly hired. They spend just 47 days in their training academy, a shorter duration than nearly all law enforcement organizations; Minnesota, for example, requires about double the training for its police officers at 1,050 hours. In the field, they are saddled with quotas for how many people they must apprehend. That leads to desperate measures and poor decisions. Many of these agents wear masks to conceal their identity and project an air of menace. They regularly flout their own body-camera policy, which their agency is seeking to roll back. They have been instructed to use force to enter homes without the judicial warrant the Constitution requires. They perform poorly at crowd control, resorting to tear gas and pepper spray with an alarming frequency. Compounding these problems, the federal government has vilified the men and women shot by ICE agents, including U.S. citizens; refused to conduct transparent investigations; and contemptuously blocked state agencies from doing so. Federal officials have declared ICE’s killings lawful and justified over social media without any pretense of a formal review, making statements that are cruel, derogatory, misleading, or simply false. People who want the government to account for what it has done are told to go pound sand. A particularly vivid example of this dynamic occurred three weeks ago, when an ICE agent, also in Minneapolis, killed Renee Good as she tried to drive away from him. The agency argued that a car on the move is a lethal threat, so an officer who steps in front of a car can shoot a driver who doesn’t stop. The New York City Police Department prohibited shooting at moving vehicles in 1972, and most major cities tightly regulate the practice. Professional police agencies have learned that shooting the driver doesn’t stop the car or make the officer any safer; the best bet is to get out of the way. Rather than explain this contradiction, ICE dismissed criticism, immediately...

ICE Is Failing the Legitimacy Test

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