When Law and Order Becomes a Talking Point

Vice President JD Vance is heading to Minneapolis Thursday for a roundtable that the White House says will focus on “restoring law and order in Minnesota.” That phrase alone tells you everything about how this administration views what’s happening in the Twin Cities. But here’s what they’re not telling you: the law and order they’re restoring might not be the kind Americans actually recognize.

Operation Metro Surge has been running for nearly two months now. Federal officials claim they’ve arrested at least 3,000 immigrants in Minnesota. That’s a staggering number for a single metro area. But when you start pulling back the curtain, things get murky fast.

Immigration attorney Carrie Peltier has been working nonstop for the past year, and she’s seeing something that should trouble anyone who believes in due process. “Not a single one of my clients detained has a criminal record and all of them were in a process of some kind,” she said. Read that again. Not one.

When reporters started digging through court records, they found something interesting. Most of the recent filings are habeas corpus cases. For those who don’t live in legal jargon, that means someone is being held in federal custody who maybe shouldn’t be. It’s literally the oldest protection against unlawful detention we have, dating back to the Magna Carta. When you see a surge in habeas corpus filings, that’s not the mark of a well-executed law enforcement operation. That’s a red flag.

The Human Cost Nobody’s Counting

Columbia Heights school officials say their sense of security is shaken. Four students from their district were recently taken by ICE officers. Four kids. Think about what that does to a school community, to the families who watch it happen, to the other students who wonder if they’re next.

And then there’s Nekima Levy Armstrong. She’s a prominent local activist and an ordained pastor who joined a protest at Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday. The group chanted “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good” during services. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Armstrong’s arrest Thursday for disrupting church services. The twist? One of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office.

So we’ve got a pastor protesting at a church led by another pastor who happens to run ICE operations. You can’t make this stuff up. This is what happens when immigration enforcement becomes so aggressive that it bleeds into every corner of community life.

What Transparency Actually Looks Like

Here’s where my conservative principles kick in hard. I believe in the rule of law. I believe borders matter. I believe a nation that can’t control who enters isn’t really a nation at all. But I also believe in transparency, due process, and limited government that doesn’t overreach.

The Trump administration has released only limited information about who’s being detained. That’s not how this is supposed to work. When the government exercises its most serious powers, taking people into custody and potentially deporting them, Americans deserve to know what’s happening. We deserve details. We deserve accountability.

The federal government isn’t some benevolent force that always gets it right. That’s precisely why our founders built in checks and balances. That’s why we have courts and habeas corpus and the requirement that the government justify its actions.

If these 3,000 arrests are all dangerous criminals who pose genuine threats, then show us. Release the data. Prove it. But when immigration lawyers say their clients have zero criminal records and were in legal processes, and when habeas corpus filings are flooding the courts, something’s off.

Vance’s visit Thursday will likely focus on crime statistics and the need for tougher enforcement. He’ll probably highlight cases of actual criminals who were deported. And those cases exist. They matter. But they shouldn’t provide cover for a dragnet that’s sweeping up people who were following the rules.

Real law and order means the government follows its own rules too. Anything less is just order without law. And that’s not what America stands for.

Related: The White House Just Gave Republicans the Green Light to Impeach Partisan Judges