THE IMMUNITY ECONOMY
- lhpgop
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
What the Federal Government Failed to Stop, Minneapolis Learned to Normalize — and How It Helped Produce the Activists of Today
If the federal government had cracked down a decade ago, we would not have the activists we have today. It’s an uncomfortable observation, but a necessary one. The boldness, the tactical creativity, the casual willingness to chase federal agents through neighborhoods and block courthouses and tail ICE convoys did not arise spontaneously. It was learned — and it was learned because there were no consequences.
For nearly ten years, the United States tolerated a level of civilian interference in immigration enforcement that would be unthinkable in any other domain of federal authority. No one would dream of swarming FBI hostage teams, blocking DEA operations, or shadowing U.S. Marshals while they pursued fugitives. And yet with ICE, not only was the interference tolerated — it was romanticized.
A Decade of Non-Enforcement
The pattern is clear in hindsight:
2016–2019: Anti-ICE activism bursts into the open in sanctuary cities. Protesters follow vans, swarm bus transfers, disrupt courthouse arrests. No prosecutions. No injunctions.
2020–2022: Portland, Oakland, Minneapolis, Berkeley, and New York normalize civil disobedience against federal agencies. Text trees and phone banks spur activists to “defend the community.” Again: no serious consequences.
2023–2025: ICE-watch evolves into a mature counter-surveillance ecosystem. Vehicles tail federal convoys. Schools teach “Know Your Rights” doctrine. NGOs coordinate “community defense.” Local police refuse to assist federal operations. Prosecutors decline even the most basic obstruction charges.
By the time 2025 rolled around, the activist class had internalized a simple lesson:
Interfering with federal agents carries no cost — not legally, not financially, not socially.
Activism became not a risk, but a lifestyle. More importantly, it became a habit. And like all habits, it carried with it a psychological certainty: If nothing bad has ever happened before, nothing bad will happen next time.
The Sanctuary Paradox
Sanctuary jurisdictions created a political paradox the Constitution never contemplated. Local officials refused to cooperate with the enforcement of federal immigration law, but they could not nullify the law itself. The result was not the abolition of enforcement, but the withdrawal of municipal support from federal operations.
Instead of cooperating — as sheriff’s departments and police forces did for generations — sanctuary cities chose to stand aside. ICE was forced to operate alone in crowded, activist-dense environments with no buffer between federal agents and civilians who treated obstruction as civic virtue.
In effect, sanctuary cities created immunity without sovereignty. They granted activists all the freedom to interfere with enforcement, but none of the responsibility for the outcomes that interference produced.
The Collapse of Deterrence
Deterrence rests on three pillars:
Certainty of enforcement
Swiftness of enforcement
Meaningful penalties
Sanctuary politics destroyed all three. Activists in ultra-progressive jurisdictions learned that:
they would not be arrested,
if arrested they would not be charged,
if charged they would not be prosecuted,
if prosecuted they would not be incarcerated.
In such an environment, the line between civilian and combatant blurs. Not in the military sense, but in the sovereignty sense. Activists began to act not as individuals protesting laws they disliked, but as representatives of a rival jurisdiction — a “community” that claimed the right to nullify federal enforcement on its own territory.
The Minneapolis Case Study
Nowhere was this clearer than Minneapolis. After the George Floyd riots, the city’s political class embraced a doctrine of absolute non-cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Minneapolis police did not assist ICE. Minneapolis prosecutors did not charge activists who interfered. Minneapolis politicians framed ICE as an illegitimate institution.
But sovereignty cannot be void. When the city withdrew its police, activists filled the vacuum. When prosecutors declined cases, activists became bolder. When politicians legitimized obstruction, activists began to treat federal agents as adversaries rather than authorities.
By the time Renee Good arrived in Minneapolis, the immunity economy was already mature. Shadowing ICE vans wasn’t transgressive — it was accepted. Filming arrests wasn’t risky — it was normal. Warning undocumented residents of enforcement actions was considered “defending the community.”
The Counterfactual: If the Feds Had Gone Heavy
Here is the simple counterfactual that no one wants to consider:
If the federal government had arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced the early ICE blockers of 2018–2020, there would be no ICE-watchers in 2026.
The activist ecosystem would have collapsed under the weight of real consequences. The phone trees would have died. The NGOs would have adapted or dissolved. The subculture of federal nullification would have been suppressed before it became a generational identity.
Instead, the federal government tolerated the behavior. It absorbed the risk. It allowed civilians to believe they could contest federal sovereignty without penalty. The immunity economy grew until it encountered something stronger than immunity: the return of federal deterrence.
The Moment Deterrence Returned
When Trump returned to power and DHS reasserted sovereignty over immigration enforcement, the sanctuary bargain expired. Activists who had only ever played under rules of immunity suddenly found themselves in a different game — one with no guarantee of safety.
Renee Good’s fatal miscalculation was not ideological. It was operational. She acted as though the immunity economy still existed. It did not. And when the SUV moved, the agent fired.
The Cost of Tolerating Nullification
The lesson is not that activists should be crushed. Nor is it that federal agents should shoot faster. The lesson is simpler and more structural:
The state cannot tolerate nullification without eventually paying the cost in blood.
Sanctuary politics told activists they could obstruct federal authority with impunity. Federal inaction reinforced the illusion. By the time the government reasserted sovereignty, the activists had ceased to believe that sovereignty existed at all.
When civilians begin to behave as rival jurisdictions, the United States ceases to be a single sovereign. And sovereignty, once fractured, never breaks cleanly.
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