2026-01-27, 7:58 AM PST.
Greg Bovino is gone, thank goodness. Some agents are leaving with him, though it’s unclear how many. Donald Trump had calls with both Governor Walz and Mayor Frey and had positive things to say about them both. The other men concurred in independent posts. The Trump administration has abandoned its narrative of Alex Pretti as a domestic terrorist, a would-be assassin, someone out to massacre law enforcement, a violent, rioting, assaultive anarchist. The Trump administration pushed this narrative from the early minutes after the shooting, and it took until yesterday afternoon for things to finally shift. The Trump administration launched and continued a multi-day smear campaign across many officials and press conferences, yet they presented zero supporting evidence. At least they’re not continuing it now. Who knows what the future holds?
But we do know the present, and Monday held heartening news.
It’s far from over, it seems: Border Czar Tom Homan, an unelected official accountable to nobody but Trump himself, is now in charge in Minnesota. He’s on the record saying, “I don’t care what the judges think.” Thousands of masked agents are still in Minneapolis, a city with about 600 police officers. Lawsuits are still being filed, I’m sure, and even those getting speedy trials will have to wait months for any sort of unappealable justice. The administration still plans to deport 4,000,000 illegal immigrants in Trump’s second term, but Biden did this without killing us.
And nothing can undo this harm. Two peaceful citizens have been gunned down in their streets. Twice the administration has failed to acknowledge potential fault in its masked agents. Twice the administration has shifted the blame to the victims within minutes. Twice the administration has pushed a narrative contradicting comprehensive video evidence. And this is to say nothing of those who have been harassed, stalked, or permanently blinded by federal agents, those who have been detained for only the color of their skin, or those who have died in detention centers. A city has been stressed beyond belief, many traumatized, many community members detained, some people dead.
No amount of trials will undo this.
This morning, as I cooked breakfast, I watched the opening of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he spoke against DHS at length, ending with a 2024 video of Alex Pretti on duty as a nurse. Pretti was honoring a deceased veteran. I hadn’t seen that video before, and I was glad I tuned in. Then I started listening to Judy Collins’ rendition of Amazing Grace. And I started crying for the first time in many months.
It felt good. It was healthy. I am outraged at all this. I am also just plain angry that I can’t write code anymore. I love writing code. But I have to process these killings. I have to explain immigration law and Constitutional rights to native-born Americans far older than me. I have to try to communicate that all people, regardless of where they were born, were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that we respect those rights even if you broke the law to come under our sovereignty. We may very well deport you, but we ought to give you a chance to plead your case, and we wrote a Constitution for all of us: Americans and otherwise. I was born here, I did nothing to earn my citizenship rights. I am very thankful for that, but I did not “earn” it. Yes, people are “skipping the line” but they may very well have good reason to do so: their situation may simply be more urgent. Let’s give them a trial and find out instead of sending thousands of masked agents who shoot peaceful immigration advocates ten times in the back as they kneel on the street, or three times in the head as they drive away.
Please notice that I mentioned my citizenship rights. As a citizen, I have the right to live here, and illegal immigrants simply don’t unless they prove their case in a trial. But there are other rights, rights that the Constitution grants to all people under US sovereignty, regardless of how they got here. And those rights include protection against unreasonable search and seizure and a fair trial. For goodness’ sake, the Trump administration illegally violated these rights, according to the Supreme Court!
I’m frustrated that so many don’t seem to even care. The free rider problem is real. In response to They’re killing us, someone told me, “Mark, they’re not killing me.” We as Americans don’t identify as Americans. We haven’t come together like we did after 9/11. We see other American citizens exercising their First and Second Amendment rights and we otherize them because we disagree with them. We try to poke holes in video evidence and sworn witness testimony so that we can agree with an administration that is supposedly full of professionals who should be able to find even a single piece of evidence to support their claims. So many of us aren’t believing our eyes, and so many of us don’t see the danger.
The worst part, I sometimes feel, is that I’m seeing some genuine progress. It’s paradoxical and makes it sound like I, at my core, want us all to be angry and divided. That’s a simpler world. And simpler worlds are easy. And being angry at someone who will never change is easy, because someone who will never change isn’t worth kindness or empathy or care. I can use them as a sounding board for all my rage. I can blame a single someone for all this death and destruction.
But we cannot ever say with 100% certainty that anyone will never change. By nature of the saying, TACO implies that Trump often changes, at least to a degree. Many of the people I see as monstrous sociopaths were at one point normal kids who changed into cruel administrators. I don’t hold out hope that they’ll submit themselves to a free and fair trial anytime soon. But I can’t write off the possibility of change.
People I speak with are learning things, regardless of their age. Some didn’t know about Obama’s title of “Deporter-in-Chief.” Some have dug up memories about the establishment of ICE, CBP, and DHS in the post-9/11 government restructuring. Some have claimed that illegal immigrants “lose the right to live here” when arrested, but I’ve made progress clarifying that they never had that specific right to begin with, and rights aren’t lost on arrest.
Most importantly, at least one person started questioning the government after Alex Pretti’s death, even if they didn’t do it after Renée Good’s death.
That’s real progress.
Again, more sources to come later. For now, I ask that you give me grace as I continue to process this news and try to live a balanced life. Thank you for reading.
2026-01-27: Fix typo in “Deporter-in-Chief”