Forget about immigration policy for a second. Like it or not, President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 came in no small part because most Americans preferred his approach to border security generally and deportation specifically. Let’s even say, for the sake of argument, that Trump came in with a mandate for a restrictionist immigration stance.
You can say all that and still say this: What the federal government is doing in Minnesota is intolerable. It is chaotic, reckless, and overbearing. It is a misuse of authority, an incompetent and authoritarian means even insofar as it pursues a democratically invited end.
The Trump administration should be able to enforce immigration law without tear-gassing infants, arresting peaceful clergy, smashing the windows of open cars, and pepper-spraying protesters in the face from four inches away. It should be able to do it without using cheap AI edits to callously lie about Americans. It should be able to do it without making a sick joke—and I do hope it was a joke—about putting citizens in databases for the mere expression of dissent.
It should be able to do it without what looks to be large-scale, phone-based, and untrustworthy biometric surveillance. It should be able to do it without undermining Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms. It should be able to do it without sidestepping the judicial branch in defiance of the Fourth Amendment.
And most of all, the Trump administration should be able to execute on its immigration mandate without executing people like Alex Pretti in the streets.
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Several officials’ defenses of Pretti’s killing have rested on implicit assertions of authority. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a meme suggesting that anyone could avoid ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) simply by being in the US legally, not “attack[ing]” agents, and obeying the law. “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you,” claimed assistant US attorney Bill Essayli. Trump posted that everyone should just “LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!”
Maybe most telling, though, were comments from US Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who has been onsite in Minnesota. “If you obstruct a law enforcement officer or assault a law enforcement officer, you are in violation of the law and will be arrested,” he said of Pretti. “Our law enforcement officers take an oath to protect the public.”
But that’s just it: Even though Pretti doesn’t appear to have assaulted anyone and was on the ground, outnumbered by agents at least five to one, and apparently disarmed, he wasn’t arrested. There seems to be no moment in the many videos of his death in which the officers speak of arrest. Though he was a member of the public, he wasn’t protected. He was shot by the feds, over and over and over, including—per the sworn testimony of a doctor who examined his body on the scene—three times in the back.
Now it’s true, as these officials indicate, that ICE has authority to enforce immigration law. The appeal to authority, in that sense, is not wrong. What’s wrong is the understanding of its import: Authority is a responsibility, not an excuse.
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It requires higher standards, not slapdash work and slipshod ethics. Authority is a duty, not a license. ICE has authority to act in Minnesota: That does not justify the way its agents are acting. Their authority makes this heavy-handed bedlam all the more intolerable.
The inextricable link between authority and responsibility is a fundamental principle of good governance, an assumption of our constitutional order. But more than that, it is a note that echoes through Scripture. God is pleased when Solomon asks for “a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong,” recognizing the weighty task of “govern[ing] this great people of yours” (1 Kings 3:9–10).
God warns Ezekiel that he will be culpable for others’ wickedness if he fails to rightly prophesy (33:1–9). Then, through Ezekiel, God speaks woe to the shepherds of Israel who care for themselves instead of their flock: “I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves” (34:10).
Jesus teaches that the “servant who knows the master’s will and … does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows,” for “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” (Luke 12:47–48). Paul observes that “it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). James cautions that “not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (3:1).
So too those who govern. So too those who police. To demand far better of ICE than what we’ve seen in Minnesota neither ignores real hazards they face, nor debases their authority, nor even necessarily questions the politics that now direct them. It merely demands they wield their power with justice and restraint—and requires an accounting when they fail.
Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.
The post Authority Is a Responsibility, Not an Excuse appeared first on Christianity Today.
