After the Biden–Harris Justice Department spent three years stretching the interpretation of “obstruction of an official proceeding” to hammer January 6 defendants and Donald Trump, a very different kind of obstruction is playing out in the streets of Minnesota, Portland and elsewhere. Instead of being critiqued on an endless loop on mainstream news coverage, “journalists” are ignoring Democrat applause for the violence.
In Minnesota, ICE’s “Operation Metro Surge” has brought more than 400 arrests of illegal immigrants, including convicted pedophiles, rapists and other violent offenders, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That is the work of federal law enforcement: removing dangerous individuals who became criminals, if they weren’t already, the minute they stepped over the border illegally.
Yet rather than support that effort, activist groups like “Minnesota ICE Watch,” whose member Renee Nicole Good was recently killed, organize to track agents in real time and “resist” their operations. Reporting on the group’s own materials shows it has shared “de-arrest” tactics — physically pulling people away from police or pressuring officers to release detainees — even if some of that content has since been scrubbed. That’s not “know your rights”; that’s organized interference with law enforcement.
Portland police chief cries while admitting DHS was right about Tren de Aragua ties in CBP shooting
After the Minneapolis shooting and a related ICE shooting in Portland, national networks like Indivisible quickly rolled out “ICE Out for Good” protests in all 50 states. Many demonstrators are peaceful. But authorities have also documented blockades of federal facilities, aggressive confrontations at airports and hotels where agents are staying, and efforts to drive ICE out of entire cities. In Portland, DHS has publicly called out anarchist and Antifa-aligned groups for doxxing ICE officers and vandalizing federal property around the local ICE office.
If storming a secure building, disrupting a lawful proceeding and threatening federal officers is an “insurrection” in Washington, D.C., why isn’t surrounding an ICE hotel, attempting “de-arrests,” and publishing agents’ personal information treated with equal seriousness in Minneapolis or Portland?
On January 6, about a quarter of defendants were charged under 18 U.S.C. §1512(c)(2), the “obstruction of an official proceeding” statute — the same theory the special counsel has aimed at Trump himself. Yet in 2024 the Supreme Court’s Fischer decision sharply narrowed that law, holding that it was written for evidence-tampering, not for every protester who disrupts government business.
That ruling underscored what many conservatives have argued from the start: prosecutors turned an accounting-fraud statute into a political bludgeon for one set of defendants, while looking the other way when left-wing activists “obstruct” immigration enforcement and other federal duties in far more systematic ways.
This is the double standard that erodes trust in our institutions. Federal agents enforcing immigration law are not rogue militias; they are executing statutes duly passed by Congress. Citizens have every right to protest those policies, demand investigations into shootings and vote to change the law. But when activists cross the line into physically blocking arrests, swarming federal facilities, or publishing agents’ private information to invite harassment, they are obstructing official proceedings every bit as surely as the rioters who halted the Electoral College count.
Equal justice under law means exactly that: equal. If the left and the mainstream media insists on branding January 6 as “insurrection,” then it cannot keep excusing coordinated efforts to cripple immigration enforcement as “community defense.” Either obstruction of lawful federal business is a crime for everyone, or it’s a political label reserved only for Trump supporters. America can’t afford the latter.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
