It's happening

Over the weekend, two big events happened in Texas. One was small and unfolded in private rooms; the other was larger and entirely public.

In the first, Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old that immigration agents reportedly used as bait to get to his family members, was released from the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in San Antonio, Texas. He and his father were escorted back to their home in Minneapolis by Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas.

The second huge event, the one that happened entirely in public, was an election Saturday to fill a vacant seat in the Texas state Senate. Democrats flipped the seat by an astounding margin—57% to 43%. The numbers were even more surprising than they might sound: the seat has been held by Republicans for the last 48 years.

In 2024, Trump defeated Harris in the same district, winning by 17 points. A pro-labor veteran, Democratic candidate Taylor Rehmet nearly reversed those results in a stunning defeat unsettling Republicans nationwide.

I’m not going to lie to you. Government actions in Minneapolis and across the country remain brutal and are still underway. The administration publicly made gestures toward backing off at the end of January, perhaps only in an attempt to get the budget settled without losing any previous massive allocations to ICE personnel and detentions. However, it’s clear that Stephen Miller’s and Donald Trump’s crusade against immigrants is proceeding full steam ahead. ICE and Border Patrol will continue to be violent, terrorizing whole communities.

Other crises have appeared on the horizon. On Sunday, two reports emerged of measles outbreaks in detention facilities. In one of them, Dilley, many more children, and even infants, are reported to be held. And measles, especially in unvaccinated or under-vaccinated populations, can be lethal.

We’re going to continue to get this kind of terrible news and to have setbacks. But today, I want to talk about some of the big, good change making its way across the country. A popular uprising is underway. It is happening. If you and I, and our friends and neighbors keep this going, we’re going to defeat Trumpism and whomever claims the movement as their inheritance. We have a chance to build real democracy in America.

Court matters

But the government is taking real hits. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery—the judge who ordered the release of Liam and his father—was critical of the administration, writing that "The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children." Biery included Bible verses and a photo of the boy in his communications about the case.

Other judges are similarly skeptical of the government’s actions. Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko, appointed by Biden, took exception to the administration’s approach to public dissent over its immigration policies. When the government wanted warrants for eight suspects as part of a protest during a Sunday service at a local church where an ICE official was reported to be a pastor, Judge Micko denied five of the eight requests, including the ones for journalist Don Lemon and his producer.

Steve Vladeck noted that when the government demanded immediate review of the decision, Chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota Patrick J. Schiltz—who was appointed by G.W. Bush—didn’t immediately reverse Micko’s ruling, but began more in-depth consideration of it, noting that it was an exceptional and unsettling request.

After more shenanigans from the administration, in which the government tried to circumvent Schiltz but was still unable to obtain what it wanted, a separate federal grand jury was empaneled, finally giving Attorney General Pam Bondi the result she had been publicly calling for when she described the church protest as “a coordinated attack.”

In a separate case this week, a federal judge blocked a renewed attempt by the Trump administration to bar members of Congress from making unannounced visits to immigrant detention facilities. The administration tried a shell game of claiming different funding and different requirements, but U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said DHS could not keep elected representatives from carrying out their oversight responsibilities.

The good news about all this is that the court system is not crumbling in the face of increasing authoritarianism. If anything, it’s becoming more confident and more assertive about disbelieving the government’s sketchy legal arguments and accounts of events. Even where the government is eventually able to make an end run around those standing up for democracy, these decisions have a real effect.

Survey says

Polls, too, are showing that the public as a whole, including Republicans, is taking issue with Trump’s policies and the aggressiveness of immigration sweeps and assaults on residents.

A Fox News poll showed Democrats hitting the highest percent support for a generic ballot ever received in the history of the survey, receiving 52% of the vote—with 46% for the Republicans. This result beat even the 50% received in October 2017, a year ahead of the blue wave midterms that saw Democrats gain 40 seats in the US House of Representatives. And 59 percent of voters indicated that ICE was being “too aggressive” in its deportations.

A Pew survey revealed at the end of January that 37% of Americans now approve of Donald Trump, with only 27% claiming to support “all or most” of Trump’s policies and plans. That number is down from 35% a year ago.

Politicians are reading the tea leaves as well. During Senate budget negotiations, an amendment made by Bernie Sanders calling for repealing the $75 billion previously allotted for ICE failed by a single vote.

(And yes, performative showmanship is part of the vote if senators know what the final result will be, which lets some senators cover their asses with angry constituents. But that the amendment received this kind of support still shows the tremendous pressure elected officials are under from the public, if they want to keep their jobs.) 

Local interventions

And voters aren’t just planning how to vote in future elections. They’re taking action right now, close to home. News of the plans for expanding immigrant detention by building or acquiring facilities around the country are running into trouble. After a January announcement by Homeland Security that it planned to acquire a 43-acre parcel that would be developed as a detention and processing site in Hanover County, Virginia Public Media (VPM) reported that that the Hanover Board of Supervisors opposed the acquisition.

The board, however, had limited power to stop a federal building from opening. In response, hundreds of area residents jammed into meeting spaces to voice their fury. Last Friday, the Canadian owner of the property said it was canceling the sale.

Greg Sargent of The New Republic recently spoke with immigration advocate Lia Parada, who told him, “I just met with some organizers in Roxbury, New Jersey, where a town council of all Republicans stood up and said that they were opposing the warehouse being opened up there.'“

Political analysts are noting that awareness of what the government is doing is seeping down even to voters who normally tune out altogether from politics. It’s a huge accomplishment, one that is due in part to the tragic loss of life and harm inflicted on civilians by military-style operations. But it’s also due to the millions of people who have stood up themselves and expressed their displeasure, making the government’s actions more visible.

On the ground everywhere

And protests are growing. In the wake of Renee Good and Alex Pretti being gunned down by immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota, thousands more residents are joining the fight. More than 34,000 people in the state have taken steps toward training as ICE observers. Far from scaring most Minnesotans into lying low and waiting for the government to do its dirty work of arresting their neighbors, people are defying even the risk of harm to stand up.

Sociologist Dana Fisher, who studied protests against Trump’s first administration, has been following the response to his return. In a piece for The Guardian last weekend, she outlined a shift underway, noting that:

“An overwhelming majority of respondents to our survey (99%) reported that they support organizations engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, including sit-ins and blockades. Moreover, when we asked participants about the degree to which they support the movement taking more confrontational actions against the Trump administration and its policies, and if they personally would be willing to join such actions, the results were unequivocal: 79% agreed that they ‘support social movements taking more confrontational action against the Trump administration’ and 65% agreed that they ‘would participate in more confrontational action against the Trump administration if [they] had the opportunity’.”

Slipping up

Historically, many authoritarian leaders have had more patience than Trump and worked more quietly. They waited until shock troops had been expanded, and public dissent effectively outlawed before engaging in the kind of crackdowns on everyday people who fall outside the categories of officially targeted minorities.

Since federal—government itself, along with business leaders and many academic institutions—caved so readily after the return of Trump, perhaps the White House believed that the people as whole would surrender, too.

But they’ve gone too far too fast. Those who are attempting ethnic cleansing of the country as violently and quickly as possible have enough infrastructure and apparatchiks to terrorize any city, but not enough to simultaneously terrorize every city.

Stephen Miller and Trump seem to think that blitzes attacking their enemies will lead to widespread surrender. And in fact, for a long time, the whole military theory of aerial bombing blitzes were that they would terrify people into mass surrender. But historically, air raids overall had the opposite result. Think England during the Blitz. Think of the U.S. bombing Hanoi, year after year, dropping more bombs on Vietnam than the country did on Germany.

But being able to terrorize a people is often not sufficient to force them surrender. To be afraid in this moment is rational. But fear does not have to mean paralysis. Whole American communities have spent decades or even centuries of resisting this kind of violence. And even for those without that heritage—people who never believed their government might shoot them in the face during a traffic stop or put bullets in their back after pinning them facedown on the street—are standing up.

Performative is fine to start

If you aren’t yet sure what to do, start with performative actions that show your care and concern for others. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland had no certainty about what would happen if he went to El Salvador and demanded to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia in detention last year. And he was roundly mocked for making the trip, with people claiming it was a self-aggrandizing and empty gesture—and worse, a mistake for his political future.

Yet, as G. Elliot Morris shows, that was the moment that immigration attitudes in the country began to shift against the administration. And Van Hollen’s gesture toward forcing accountability did in fact open other doors. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was eventually brought back from CECOT, the prison there. He was a member of the first group of detainees ever to leave the prison in its history.

Abrego Garcia’s fate has not been decided. He may still be deported at some point, though it would likely be to somewhere other than El Salvador. But the government was forced to undo its initial harm. His attorneys have defeated the malicious plan to make his punishment a symbol of the government’s omnipotence. For now, he’s home with his family. Every one of these victories chips away at the government’s illegitimate use of power.

In the same vein, there are so many other children than Liam Conejo Ramos held in detention in the U.S. today. But the photo of him was the one that sparked attention. By demonstrating that he can be saved, by celebrating his release, we can show that it’s possible for the surviving shards of democracy to push back and make real change.

The risk to focusing on a child like Liam is that the public may think that the job is done once the poster kid for government abuses against immigrant children has been freed. But the other path forward from this moment is that by humanizing him and showing that it’s possible to defeat the Trump administration’s cruelties, we can take that concern for Liam and expand it to every child trapped in immigration detention, including some children from Liam’s community who are still held.

Bringing everyone into this fold of civil rights and humane treatment won’t happen automatically. It takes work. But the seeds have been planted, and a movement is growing.

What you have to do with all this

In November of 2024, when I talked about creating networks and finding your people before Trump got back into office, this is what I was talking about.

Across 2025, many centrist pundits said that unfocused protest was silly or pointless. And people in the Trump administration mocked those who took to the streets. But millions of you came out anyway. I tried to encourage everyone to take small actions as soon as possible, saying that it was necessary to build muscles for more fraught encounters over time. I said that stopping Trump would likely come down to people in the streets. And the kinds of encounters we’re seeing now is what I was talking about.

People who have looked at history of dissent in the U.S. or around the world know that this is how it goes. I get messages from so many of you, saying that you distributed ICE flyers, or that you contacted local officials about stopping a proposed detention facility near you, or that you organized a local demonstration to make specific demands for change. I get reports from people who went out and got tear gassed in Minneapolis or Portland. It’s beautiful to know that so many people coast to coast are making a constellation of stars by which everyone might steer through this darkness.

Whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing more of that. And if you haven’t been doing anything, now is the best moment to start. We’re a long way from finished. But we have traction, and we’re gearing up to do the real work.

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