Is resisting ICE breaking the law

Is resisting ICE breaking the law?

Claiming that ICE are above the law and can’t be blocked by elected officials or don’t need warrants violates the constitution, and its amendments, which are designed to protect citizens from the administration. The administration serves at the people’s pleasure and the constitution ensures this. The point at which the administration sees the constitution as a hindrance is the point at which they no longer serve the people.

ICE’s methods are a breach of the law; deliberately so, with ill will, violence and malice aforethought. Unprovoked masked gunmen terrorising and brutalising civilians is not legal in any democratic nation. It completely destroys the social contract that allows us as apex predators to live in dense populations. If one demographic can treat the law as optional then they’ve surrendered their right to a response that is lawful by anyone else.

In real time, the instant the social contract is torn up, the government has lost all ethos and legitimacy and none of its institutions has any authority. Why? Because the government mandate comes from the people they serve; it is not a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“When the state systematically violates the compact, it forfeits authority.” John Locke.

What the framers envisioned:

Hamilton in Federalist No. 78 described the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch” precisely because it had neither the “sword” (executive) nor the “purse” (legislature). Lifetime appointments were specifically designed to insulate judges from political pressure as they’d never need to please voters or politicians again. And we all know how well that worked out with a deliberately engineered, completely asymmetric, balance dictated by political affiliation, which is precisely what they were trying to avoid.

When the administration starts gaming the system, they are no longer working in the best interests of their electorate. The sad fact is that when a political position has crossed so far into authoritarian territory that defending basic constitutional separation of powers sounds like a radical stance, we are deep into the territory the framers were explicitly trying to avoid. The Overton window hasn’t just shifted - it’s been deliberately torched.

Citizen Level

The July 2024 decision in Trump v. United States (Kavanaugh Stop) created a presumptive immunity for presidential “official acts” that is essentially limitless simply because it uses subjective evidence of motive to distinguish official from unofficial acts. This means that Trump decides what constitutes official acts such as pay for pardons, assassinations, kidnapping foreign leaders and the rest of the litany of overreach. The net effect of this is the erosion of the 4th amendment, that is, protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

However, the logical safeguard is actually black letter self-defense law at individual level. ICE cannot claim legal protection while committing an illegal act against the person from whom they’re demanding compliance. That’s not radical, it’s hornbook law.

ICE’s violation of the compact forfeits authority and illegitimate authority cannot demand legitimate deference.

State Level

Arresting elected state governors for exercising their constitutional authority isn’t a policy disagreement. It’s the functional definition of a coup in slow motion. Governors have not just the right but the obligation to refuse unconstitutional federal overreach - that’s literally what the 10th Amendment exists for. It’s not obstruction, it’s the system working as designed. Sanctuary cities and governors blocking ICE aren’t breaking the law (see next para). They’re correctly identifying that administrative warrants carry no constitutional authority over them.

At present, the administration is seeking to make a false equivalence between judicial warrants (signed by a judge, probable cause, due process) and administrative warrants (signed by ICE, no probable cause, no due process), and, most importantly, NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY. Administrative warrants fail Fourth Amendment scrutiny because they lack judicial oversight, which is precisely what the Fourth Amendment requires. This is the same 4th that has been defanged by the Kavanaugh Stop.

Locke establishes that government authority derives from the consent of the governed and is forfeit when the compact is systematically violated. The 10th amendment codifies that into constitutional architecture, where states retain sovereignty. Thus, federal overreach is not just resistible but must be resisted as a constitutional obligation.

Once the 4th and 10th have been captured and defanged, the government completes the systematic violation of the social compact. At this point they forfeit the consent of the governed.

Scaled to institutional level it’s the same principle. ICE agents conducting warrantless raids aren’t law enforcement in that moment. They’re armed men in masks. The authority they claim requires the legitimacy they’ve abandoned.

The Nuremberg principle - that following orders doesn’t absolve individuals - cuts both ways. If it applied to ordinary German citizens, it applied more forcefully to active participants in operations they observed firsthand.

To repeat; illegitimate authority cannot demand legitimate deference.