Therefore Stalking Federal Police Without Consequence is a Threat to Our Quality of Life
In January 2026, hundreds of masked anti-ICE demonstrators stormed a Minnesota area Hilton Hotel, following rumors that federal agents were staying there. Protesters shattered windows, sprayed graffiti, and chanted anti-ICE slogans. This is yet one of countless examples of Federal Police Officers, ICE officers in particular –who are literally followed when they are in an automobile or on foot. Even the New York Times, in a January 2026 article wrote that federal police officers, pursing Immigration duties, are stalked: “Local people using their cars, whistles, phones and local networks to monitor and confront the agents wherever they can, sticking close to them to complicate their efforts, like cornerbacks guarding wide receivers.”
I personally lament that none of this behavior is described by the vast majority of anti-Ice protestors as law violative. After all, we live in a society in which a violation of the law is had when you taunt your victim within inches of her person, or by placing the “Other” in reasonable fear. By example, the MeToo movement (with shared anti-Ice membership) would hold that when a man follows an ex-girlfriend (as have been protestors following in lockstep with ICE officers), that is the felony of stalking and or misdemeanors of harassment. Similarly, an experienced cop or prosecutor knows that stalking police officers with loud horns and whistle noise, joined by forming a crowd to help a person evade an arrest –are crimes. Former Judge Hannah Dugan, is now a convicted felon for having formed a crowd in the jurisprudential sense, specifically when she obstructed ICE officers, by whisking an illegal immigrant out of a back door of her courtroom.
This leaves us with a quagmire marked by party lines and hypocritical applications of when people should be criminally charged with hampering law enforcement. For many Democrats, if you use your automobile to impede movement of ICE vehicles, you are engaged in lawful 1st Amendment speech. Republicans, generally, define such conduct as violative of federal and state laws. I could tell readers of this article that in my role as a Washington D.C. Police officer, if you used your automobile to obstruct our police cars, you would be aggressively pulled from your automobile and taken to jail and your car towed.
Because of the stable structure of our society, people generally do not block police cars. This is a new trend –a tool of the anti-ICE movement. Similarly, blowing horns and following officers in lock-step is rare since any city cop, me included, will tell you that by the third shadow or horn blast, you would be in handcuffs. In fact, I and a retired Chicago police officer watched a video of unformed ICE officers in Minneapolis asking a woman repeatedly to move her car in order that they could pass. She brazenly and steadfastly refused. We observed that the ICE officers showed great restraint in repeatedly asking her to move before they rightly dragged her from the car. My colleague and I expressed to one another that she would not have received that patience from us or most U.S. cops –three times and she would be done. Americans don’t seem to have a problem with that unless it is an ICE officer giving the commands. As in the psyche of most Americans, best defined as a vantage point of entrenched cultural values and norms of how to interact with the police, when we now watch news coverage of activists throwing projectiles and blocking ICE Police cars with their bodies or 4000 pound automobiles, it is dizzying as much as it is unheard of for us to see police officers retreating.
Much of what Americans deem as a great quality of American life is that there is purpose in shouting “Call 911!” There is as much an expectation of Americans that the police will arrive quickly, be obeyed, and will resolve the most inconsequential problem to the most violent one. Compare and contrast that the U.S. State Department country specific web pages alerting Americans to avoid travel to certain countries because the police response times are long, and that law enforcement is virtually powerless against lawless civilians with superior power. Compare and contrast that when we watch TikTok videos and nightly news videos of mobs following in inches of an ICE officer, as the protester blows a whistle and others surround the officers, we are now being told to change our ingrained way of thinking that the acts are harassment and assault. This thought process, if it takes hold, will erode societal confidence in the police and such will eventually transcend beyond federal officers, especially when in the same video we see ICE officers retreat. These surrenders will soon become an indelible mark in explaining the loss of effectiveness of local and federal law enforcement.
As I have argued in other articles, the blocking, following, and pummeling of ICE Police Officers has a starting point politicians inciting people to attack ICE officers. By example, Minneapolis’s Mayor Frey was on national television telling ICE Police Officers to “Get the f___ out of Minneapolis.” Philadelphia Sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, in uniform telling a national audience after the shooting of Renee Good: “You got to resist because we have democracy, and we want to keep it that way…Stand up against things that are happening around the world, but keep yourself safe, and don’t let them pull you into harming yourself. Don’t let them pull you into the smoke.” In fact, Bilal, like Frey, and the Philadelphia District Attorney (Larry Krasner), told the masses that on duty ICE officers need to be arrested [on-duty], joined with their telling citizens to report and officers –as in to call 911 to report ICE officers. From my vantage point of view, as an experienced cop and now a practicing trial attorney, such conduct by these politicians and police leaders, represents the crimes of obstruction of justice, inciting, and conspiracy. This is not free speech. This is speech designed to cause people to stalk and harm federal police officers.
The offending police leaders and politicians should be prosecuted by the U.S. DOJ. I go as far as to assert that Mayor Frey and Governor Walz are engaged in insurrectionist behavior as in their efforts are to frustrate the role of the federal government. In fact, one Minnesotan was so incited, he has been walking around his Minneapolis neighborhood with an exposed AR-15 daring ICE to enter. He stated: “Yep, this is my block, this is my area. I don’t go into other people’s neighborhoods and try to intimidate them. I try to protect my people.”
The point of this article includes that politicians and police leaders must appreciate that their speech must be tempered by virtue of the fact, there are many people who will do as they say, suggest, or imply. There is an awesome “oral” responsibility which comes with knowing your speech can cause people to take to the streets. I support the DOJ investigations of Mayor Frey and Governor Walz, since I blame these politicians and others who have exploited their oral power position as to ICE, because the result of such reckless speech has created the appearance of an unprecedented rift, a brewing civil war of sorts, where it as an army of local police officers in a battle against federal police officers. What these disorderly politicians do not know is that the camaraderie and bond between police officers in U.S. culture was robustly strong before the immigration crackdown. The history of scientific research documenting American police officer bonds suggests that even in sanctuary cities, such bonds will continue even in the face of the highest echelons of police leadership and their tethered politicians calling for a police civil war. No doubt local cops sympathetic to federal cops have been forced\ordered to stand down as opposed to helping brother\sister officers.
