The day after federal immigration agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine spoke with his supporters about resisting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Graham Platner, a Democrat and Marine combat veteran, urged them to join “watch groups,” “rapid response teams” and “intelligence collection networks” to alert citizens and potential targets to the presence of federal immigration agents in their communities.
“Don’t just join a Signal thread and monitor it,” Mr. Platner told the audience in the coastal town of Kittery, referring to the encrypted texting app. “You’ve got to get in a room with people. You’ve got to develop relationships and trust.”
Mr. Platner was talking about a form of nonviolent resistance that employs methods common in war zones like Syria and Ukraine, where civilians built text chains to track and seek shelter from enemy attack drones and fighter jets.
Increasingly, though, Republicans have described the measures he was highlighting as something else: an American insurgency.
“The issue is always revolution, right? That’s what these people want,” Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona and a former Navy SEAL, told the right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday. “They want to fundamentally remake and tear down the institutions and the culture of this country.”
To Mr. Crane, the resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere added up to “communist insurrection,” and he argued that President Trump should use the U.S. military to reimpose order.
On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson, the right-wing commentator, struck a similar tone. “What you’re watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority,” he said, referring to the protests in Minneapolis.
Such language, reminiscent of overseas battlefields in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, has become a growing staple of American politics, especially among Republicans and Trump administration officials, who have described slain protesters as insurgents or “domestic terrorists.”
A danger, experts on such wars said, is that the martial rhetoric antagonizes protesters, cuts off the possibilities for civil debate and lowers the bar for violence on both sides.
“When you start using the language of warfare and treating someone that has an opposing view as a terrorist or as an insurgent, that legitimizes the use of violence against them,” said Seth G. Jones, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who advised U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such terms, Mr. Jones added, grossly distorted the situation. The protesters in places like Minneapolis and Maine are standing watch in the cold, sending out alerts on text chats and blowing whistles when they see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Insurgents use violence to overthrow a government and replace it.
“We’re nowhere near any of that,” Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Platner pointed to the government’s heavy-handed approach, captured in videos showing older women “getting thrown to the ground” by ICE agents for recording videos or protesting. Such brutality, he said in an interview with The New York Times, could easily be described as “using the language of militarism.”
“It’s literally what federal agencies are doing in our communities,” he said.
The parallels to war zones extend beyond rhetoric and are reflected in the federal immigration officers’ appearance and aggressive posture on patrols. ICE agents frequently deploy clad in helmets, camouflage and tactical gear that call to mind U.S. soldiers fighting in overseas wars. Many wear masks, which immigration officials say are needed to protect them and their families from retribution.
To Emma Sky, who spent years in Iraq advising U.S. military commanders, the masks evoke the state-sponsored sectarian militias that were often sent out by Iraqi strongmen to terrorize civilians. “It is in dictatorships and authoritarian systems that opposition movements are routinely described as terrorists or insurgents, which signals that violence is the appropriate response,” said Ms. Sky, a lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.
Those who label protesters as insurgents or domestic terrorists and suggest that they must be put down using force or arrest ignore the fact that most insurgencies are resolved through negotiation.
“My challenge to those on the right who have chosen to label what’s happening as an insurgency would be to ask how insurgencies often end, which is usually some of kind of political compromise,” said Andrew Exum, a former Army officer and senior Pentagon official.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “de-escalate” the situation in Minneapolis. He has not specified what tactics federal immigration agents might change after the fatal shootings of Mr. Pretti and another protester, Renee Good. But he replaced Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official whose harsh tactics drew the ire of state and local officials, with Tom Homan, the White House border czar.
By Friday, Mr. Trump was back to calling Mr. Pretti an “agitator” and possibly an “insurrectionist,” using the inflammatory language that characterized his administration’s initial response to the protests.
In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz also turned to the language of war and insurgency to describe the events in his state. “I mean, is this a Fort Sumter?” Mr. Walz mused this week to The Atlantic, referring to the opening shots of the Civil War.
“It’s a physical assault,” he said. “It’s an armed force that’s assaulting, that’s killing my constituents, my citizens.”
Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.
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