A Week of Connecting Dots Around Abusive Behavior

“Hope is not passive. Hope is in action, as we have seen in Minnesota. We are responding to broken systems.”

— Comfort Dondo, at the Intimate Partner Homicide Memorial, January 30, 2026

Senator Erin Maye Quade (photo by Sarah Whiting)

At a Minnesota legislative subcommittee hearing on January 29, about the “Federal Impact on Minnesotans and Economic Stability,” Senator Erin Maye Quade responded to comments by Senator Paul Utke (R-Park Rapids). Utke echoed the perspective of many who do not see the truth about the widespread incursion by ICE agents when he said that if people in the Twin Cities simply let ICE agents do their job, people would not get hurt.

Sen. John Marty (D-St. Paul) responded to Utke, saying that it is Minnesotans who are having their homes and cars broken into by federal agents.

Utke maintained the Republican message that federal agents came here to remove the worst of the worst — murderers, rapists, and child molesters who are walking the streets. “If local law enforcement was there to help build those perimeters and protect, so those that were trying to make those arrests could’ve done their job, everyone could have gone home and we wouldn’t have had these incidents. That is my opinion.”

Senator Maye Quade (D-Apple Valley) responded by saying that a recently updated report indicated many ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have been charged with the crimes ICE is supposedly taking off the streets. The report of charges filed against ICE and CBP agents includes sexual assault by gunpoint, child sex trafficking, rape, robbery, kidnapping, torture, and possession/production of child sexual abuse materials.

She pointed out that many of the Minnesotans sent to a Texas detention center are children. [After one of them, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos of Columbia Heights was finally returned home on February 1, schools in his district received death threats and were closed.]

Quade indicated that an elderly man who was not a criminal was dragged out of his home in his underwear in subzero weather. In Quade’s district, she said, a 20-year-old marine going to work  — a lawful U.S. citizen — was abducted out of a parking lot. People with no criminal records in Elk River and Willmar, among others, have been taken from ethnic restaurants where they worked. Teachers see ICE agents driving nonstop around schools. “They’re not looking for anyone except someone who is Black or brown, Asian, or indigenous,” Quade said.

During the few hours of the hearing, Quade continued, she had repeatedly received messages from constituents. Two minors had been targeted. “Can you help?” U.S. citizens were taken and need legal representation. “Can you help?” ICE was sitting in front of a middle school. “Can you help?” They were at a bus stop. “Can you help?”

Quade looked directly at Utke, sitting next to her, and repeated the message emphatically: “Can you help?”

“People are being terrorized and for what?,” Quade said. “The official statement of the United States government is to deport 100 million people. There aren’t even 100 million unlawful or undocumented immigrants in this country.”

To pay for this, Quade indicated, the U.S. has prioritized cutting healthcare and food security “to give $75 billion to an anonymous, masked, armed paramilitary that roams our streets brutalizing our citizens and murdering them in broad daylight. We need real accountability. We need real repair that starts here at the legislature. … Brave Minnesotans are giving rides, donating food, helping with rent assistance, being medics, blowing whistles.

“Minnesotans are the ones showing American what real patriotism and what ‘we the people’ looks like.”

She read some of the words from The Atlantic writer Adam Serwer [which we quoted in last week’s newsletter]. “Minnesotans have shown their community is socially cohesive because of its diversity, not despite it.”

Quade ended by saying Minnesotans will end the ICE occupation of U.S. cities here, “then we will repair.”

Kayla Nordquist is hugged after sharing the story of her sibling Sam (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Parallel Universe

The day after Quade made those remarks, I was in a room with a different group of Minnesotans who had gathered from around the state to honor 31 known victims of domestic abuse. Cinnamon Bankey and Natasha Kingbird, from the Sacred Hoop Coalition, opened up the Violence Free Minnesota memorial with a song and a land acknowledgement.

Kingbird pointed out that during the current occupation of Minnesota by federal agents, indigenous people had been taken to the federal building at Fort Snelling — just as they had in the 1800s when they were taken to a concentration camp used by the U.S. during the Dakota Indian wars. Hundreds starved and froze to death at Fort Snelling in 1862 because of the abysmal conditions.

Kayla Nordquist spoke at the memorial on behalf of her brother, who was killed by seven people precipitated by relationship abuse and isolation. “Violence starts with control, with isolation that looks like protection. … For members of the public, I need you to hear this clearly. Emotional and psychological abuse is not less serious. They often are the doorway for physical violence. … Abuse rewires your sense of normal. … Sam deserved safety. He deserved protection. He deserved to come home. Instead, seven people made a choice that ended his life. Don’t ignore controlling behaviors just because it doesn’t leave bruises. Silence protects abusers, not victims.”

Power and Control

Gender-based violence is not about a moment of anger, but about a sustained pattern of asserting power and control. As I learned stories about escalation that led to the homicide of 31 known domestic violence victims from Minnesota in 2025 — much of it caused when someone was attempting to leave a relationship — the parallel was unmistakable with the violence we have seen erupt from ICE agents. Some of them throw tear gas canisters into parks and streets — impacting everyone from children and elderly in the area — simply for being there to doubt the power of ICE to take people with no cause or due process.

The details cited by Quade came from a January 26 report of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, which noted that at least 30 individuals employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been charged with or convicted of sexual and violent crimes between 2015 and 2025.

Some of the details in the report:

• At least 20 of the 30 agent criminals committed offenses against children, many of them in the last two years. The report mentions cases like Minnesota-based ICE agent Alexander Steven Back, who was arrested in November 2025 for allegedly soliciting sex from a minor.
• An off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who killed a man has a history of racism, child abuse, and explosive tempers. Brian Palacios remains employed by ICE. In February 2025, Palacios was barred from having any contact with two of his girlfriend’s children, after they testified that he beat his own sons and frequently made homophobic and racist remarks.
• Border patrol agent John Daly III, also known as the East Valley serial rapist of Arizona, was arrested 22 years after his first known offense.
• Arizona Border Patrol has the most agents on the list, at nine. The Detroit sector of ICE and CBP — with jurisdiction over Ohio and Michigan — has five individuals. Some, like Cincinnati ICE’s Andrew Golobic, used their authority as federal agents to abuse victims on the job. Cincinnati ICE’s Samuel Saxon nearly killed a relative.

After Saxon was arrested, Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, pointed out that there is “a real problem with gender-based violence by ICE agents — and the agency is not taking it seriously. Andrew Golobic used his position of power against women who feared deportation to extort sex. The police have been called to Samuel Saxon’s home 22 times.”

Tramonte also has called out the prevalence of “people who claim to be the ‘good guys’ using the tactics and tools of the criminals women were trained to watch out for.” She told American Community Media that today in U.S. streets, “if somebody resists arrest because they don’t know who they’re being kidnapped by, they get charged, they get thrown to the ground, they get shot.”

Ms. Magazine reports that “so-called ‘ICE impersonators’ are on the rise as Immigration and Customs Enforcement itself has been violently arresting people without warrants, sometimes in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles. Nearly impossible to distinguish between real and fake agents, men have allegedly lied about their identities to intimidate, kidnap and rape women with precarious immigration statuses, according to survivors’ accounts.”

Tramonte said the current list of 30 ICE and Border Patrol agents who have committed crimes especially against women and children “is just the tip of the iceberg. It is simply the people who have been caught. Many of these men were employed by ICE and the Border Patrol for decades, abusing people sexually and violently the entire time.”

She warned about the dangerous culture in these agencies. “DHS must answer for its faulty hiring, vetting, and re-verification processes. The public cannot trust law enforcement agencies that employ so many dangerous criminals and refuse to police their own ranks.”

Of the 30 listed individuals in the recent report, 29 have been charged with sexual offenses, and two-thirds of those were against children.

“The horrors of the Epstein files show a group of powerful and wealthy men and women who sexually assaulted children and showed no concern either for their crimes or that they might have to answer to the law.”

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 31, 2026

Related resource

History of ICE and gun shootings (The Trace)

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