In recent days, the streets of Minneapolis once again became a front line in a struggle that extends far beyond one city.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns — conducted with militarized tactics, secrecy and intimidation — have been met by public resistance from ordinary people who showed up not because they were required to, but because conscience demanded it.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is not simply an immigration enforcement issue. It reflects a deeper democratic rupture — one that echoes the language, logic and practices of authoritarian regimes across history and geography.
This rupture is not isolated. It occurs against the backdrop of a documented decline in civic freedoms within the United States itself.
According to the Civicus Monitor, the most comprehensive global tracker of civic space conditions, the United States was downgraded in December from “Narrowed” to “Obstructed.”
The reasons are telling:
- increasing attacks on press freedom
- arrests of protesters, and
- the deployment of the National Guard in U.S. cities.
The U.S. now sits alongside countries such as Hungary, Indonesia and Lebanon — nations where civic space is heavily contested and fundamental freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly are routinely constrained.
Bill of Rights is being infringed upon
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
The U.S. Constitution is explicit in its protections — and those protections apply to people, not only citizens.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, assembly and protest. Yet those opposing ICE raids increasingly face intimidation, surveillance and force designed to deter lawful dissent.
The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, yet immigration enforcement frequently relies on racial profiling, warrantless arrests and coercive practices that bypass judicial oversight.
Even the Second Amendment — often invoked selectively — rests on a broader constitutional principle: Power resides with the people, not with unchecked state force.
Authoritarianism rarely arrives all at once. It advances through the normalization of exceptions — where rights are suspended for some, communities are treated as inherently suspect and fear becomes a governing strategy.
Dehumanization as state policy leads to atrocities
Equally alarming is the language used to justify repression. Protesters are dismissed as “radicals,” “extremists” or “domestic terrorists,” while migrants are described as criminals, invaders or existential threats. This rhetoric is neither accidental nor harmless.
We have heard it before.
In apartheid-era South Africa, Black South Africans were labeled “agitators,” “terrorists” or “Communists” — language designed to strip people of humanity and political legitimacy. Entire communities were framed as security threats, justifying mass raids, detention and violence in the name of “law and order.”
More recently, senior figures in Israel’s right-wing government publicly referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and called for Gaza to be “erased” or “flattened.” This language was not fringe; it was articulated by those wielding state power.
Across contexts, the function is the same. When people are dehumanized, violence becomes easier to rationalize. When entire populations are labeled threats, collective punishment becomes policy.
History shows — without exception — that atrocities are preceded by rhetoric that denies the humanity of those targeted.
FBI raid of Fulton County voting site creates ‘chilling effect’
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
This unsettling trend is not limited to immigration enforcement or protest policing.
News that the FBI executed a court-authorized search warrant at the Fulton County elections office on Wednesday in Union City — at the heart of Georgia’s election infrastructure — underscores how the reach of federal power into local civic functions is expanding in unprecedented ways.
This FBI raid of the Fulton County election office shows that lawful enforcement actions can have a chilling effect when they intersect with already fragile public trust in democratic institutions.
In a climate shaped by election denialism, intimidation of election workers and partisan attacks on the legitimacy of voting systems, such actions risk reinforcing fear rather than accountability. When the administration of elections becomes a site of law enforcement spectacle, democracy itself is weakened.
White supremacy and the convergence of repression
These developments are not isolated. They reflect a broader resurgence of white supremacy and ethnonationalist ideology.
Across regions, the same convergence is visible: repression of Black and brown communities, criminalization of migrants, rollbacks of women’s rights, attacks on LGBTQ+ people and the delegitimization of dissent. These struggles are interconnected. They reinforce one another.
In the U.S., the policing of Black protest, the targeting of migrants and the portrayal of activists as enemies of the state draw from the same ideological root: the belief that equality itself is dangerous and that power belongs to a narrow, protected group.
People are organizing in the streets and digitally
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Yet, even as repression intensifies, courage rises to meet it.
In Minneapolis — and in cities across the country — neighbors, faith leaders, students, workers and families are standing together. Many are not directly targeted by ICE or state power, but they show up anyway.
This is how democracy survives.
Increasingly, that solidarity is being organized through informal, decentralized community networks — Signal groups and similar neighborhood alert channels — where people share information, warn one another of raids, coordinate legal observers and offer practical support in real time to promote community equity and protect vulnerable members.
These digital spaces have become modern-day civic commons: flexible, fast and grounded in trust rather than hierarchy. They are not radical cells; they are communities filling the gaps left when public institutions fail to protect the people they serve.
From the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to women human rights defenders in Iran, history teaches a consistent lesson: Democratic renewal is driven not by force, but by ordinary people who refuse to accept injustice as normal.
Citizens have a choice not to look away at what is going on
Democracy cannot endure through fear and fragmentation. It endures through participation.
Standing in solidarity — defending the right to protest, rejecting dehumanization, supporting civil liberties organizations — is not radical. It is constitutional. Silence, by contrast, is what repression depends on.
From a global perspective, the warning is clear.
The language being used, the tactics being deployed and the communities being targeted mirror those of authoritarian regimes throughout history. Given the United States’ outsized global influence, this trajectory risks legitimizing repression far beyond its borders.
History will remember who stood up — and who looked away.
Susan Marx is chief programs officer at Civicus World Alliance for Citizen Participation, where she oversees the alliance’s membership, advocacy, research, innovation and communications across 175 countries. She resides in Atlanta and previously served as the director of the Human Rights Program at the Carter Center.
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