On January 7, Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an employee of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during deportation operations in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Immediately, millions of Americans defaulted to their ideological heuristics to interpret Good’s death. Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton criticized this dynamic. He said in the aftermath:
“Look, the objective fact is that if you lean left, then the ICE cop murdered the lady, and if you lean right, then she had it coming. And that’s just how it works.”
Of course, many right wingers were appalled at both Good’s killing and the subsequent celebration of state violence on the political right. Historian Darryl Cooper, who co-hosts the podcast Provoked with Horton, is a representative example. Cooper, by his own account, is an “immigration superhawk” who wants to “dramatically reduce legal immigration” indefinitely.
Nevertheless, he criticized the shooting and condemned the celebrations:
Anyone telling you to feel nothing, let alone joy or satisfaction, over watching a woman get shot in the head, for any reason, is not on your side. They want you to defile yourself for their amusement and follow them to Hell.
— Martyr Made (@martyrmade) January 9, 2026
On January 24, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by an employee of the U.S. Border Patrol, also during deportation operations in Minneapolis.
Following Good’s shooting, the political left (which recently erupted with demonic glee at the assassination of Charlie Kirk) called for violence against employees of ICE, its suspected supporters, and the entire political right. On January 18, a group of anti-ICE activists stormed a church in St. Paul, Minnesota (less than ten miles from Minneapolis) during morning mass and terrorized worshipers for more than twenty minutes.
It is fair to say Good’s shooting sharpened the distinctions within our society and that Pretti’s shooting escalated an already volatile situation.
From a libertarian perspective, what is to be done?
First, we should recognize that there is a dissensus on immigration within the libertarian ecosystem.
Institute Executive Editor Sheldon Richman supports open borders:
“I think people…as a general matter should be able to go where they want and seeking better lives and…you know as long as they’re not committing aggression.”
Director Scott Horton supports secure borders as outlined by Lew Rockwell:
“A totally privatized country would be as closed as the particular property owners wished it to be. It seems clear then that the regime of open borders that exist de facto in the United States and Western Europe today really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state in charge of all streets and public lands, public buildings and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors.”
Thomas Eddlem, the Institute’s William Norman Grigg fellow, interprets the Constitution as giving the federal government zero power over immigration:
“If immigrants do not fall under the jurisdiction of the United States (something which I agree, as immigration was constitutionally assigned as a states’ prerogative and practice at the time), then there should be no federal deportations at all.”
Of course, the federal government has been engaged in subsidizing and curating mass migration into our nation for decades. Immigration, both legal and illegal, has been a national government project of the first order. It’s only natural, and on-brand, for libertarians to have dark suspicions of the government’s intentions behind mass migration and the on-the ground function and fallout of such policies. Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, for example, used population transfers to enhance state power and crush resistance to state tyranny.
Meanwhile, America has a massive welfare system. As Richman observed in Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State:
“Government ‘benefits’ are insidious. As the bureaucracy ‘gives’ things away, it inexorably takes something away, a piece of freedom. People see the ‘benefit,’ but miss the costs.”
The state has not just committed the resources of productive citizens to their struggling (or politically connected) compatriots, but also to a theoretically unlimited stream of migrants. And it isn’t just about the money and opportunity costs. In one of the now infamous videos of the Good shooting, Good’s wife Becca emphasizes that they are both citizens. This has gone unremarked upon but is a truly stunning moment. Becca rhetorically leveraged the authority of citizenship, apparently unaware that state-subsidized mass migration degrades and destroys citizenship.
As Victor Davis Hanson explained in The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America:
“Citizens live within delineated and established borders. They share a common history. Their sacred physical space allows them to pursue their constitutional rights without interference from abroad. Living on common and exclusive ground encourages shared values, assimilation, and integration and defines national character…Citizenship, however, is not indestructible. The more it is stretched to include everyone, the less the likelihood it can protect anyone.”
Mass migration can also pose an existential threat to the established population. Institute Managing Editor Keith Knight observed that American Indians during the seventeenth century and Palestinians during the twentieth Century sure could have used an ICE-type organization. Knight supports secure borders in part for this reason:
“When it comes to mass immigration, it is unfortunately for me, my current position is (I’m open to being wrong) this is somewhat of a lifeboat scenario. I reluctantly advocate the use of the state to stop people from mass immigrating only because there is access to a welfare state. There is a concept that these people could come in such large numbers and once they’re here in large numbers, they’ll be able to oppress the domestic population. It is a really reluctant position that I have come to recently.”
While the ideological sorting proceeds, the facts on the ground have been established. Deportations are underway. Regardless of their stance on immigration, all libertarians have a responsibility to develop the most accurate picture of what is going on and to offer the most illuminating ideological interpretations of it for consideration in the public sphere.
