The Romance of Public Space

Democracy, Freedom, and our First Amendment Rights of Assembly and Free Speech

The Story

In June 2025, President Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem directed ICE leaders to triple the number of arrests of migrants to 3,000, even though the number of border crossings had fallen dramatically by the end of the Biden administration. Miller apparently yelled at the ICE officials during the meeting, telling them that 3,000 was the floor, not the ceiling, and some were left thinking their jobs were on the line. The quota of 3,000 appears to have no basis other than to drive an increase in the number of deportations. Indeed, according to The Guardian, this “Helter-skelter action has led to citizens caught up in the dragnet, ICE skirting due process – to the chagrin of the supreme court and lower courts – over-crowding in detention centers, arrests based on ideology and officials deporting people to third countries.”¹

On January 3, 2026, a press release from the Department of Homeland Security proudly announced a historic manpower increase: the doubling of the number of ICE agents from 10,000 to 22,000. On January 6, 2026, and in the wake of growing revelations of large-scale fraud in childcare and social service nonprofits in Minnesota, “The Trump administration has launched what officials describe as the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, preparing to deploy as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a sweeping crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.”² I agree with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s assessment that Trump and Miller thought it would be easy to round up and deport a lot of Somali immigrants who were in the country illegally. But there was a problem: Approximately 95% of the roughly 80,000 to 100,000 Somalis in the state hold citizenship, including both those born in the U.S. and the 87% of foreign-born Somalis who are naturalized citizens, making them part of a highly integrated community. So who, then, to arrest and deport?

Trump’s ICE surge into Minnesota is clearly about retribution, as Minnesota is a blue state, Minneapolis is a blue city, and Trump does not like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, whom he has insulted repeatedly. Further, Trump has already made clear what he thinks of some immigrants, declaring his preferences for those that don’t come from “shithole countries,” and, in December, calling Minnesota’s Somali citizens “garbage.” Further evidence of retribution is the President’s cancellation on January 1, 2026, of social assistance and childcare funding to Minnesota and four other blue states (blocked by a judge, pending the outcome of lawsuits brought by the states). Our governor, mayor, and state and local law enforcement officials all expressed concern about what might happen when a force of 2,000 ICE officers—three times the size of the Minneapolis Police Department—swarmed our streets.

On December 7, we all found out when an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good, an unarmed 36-year-old mother of three, and an American citizen. Good was in the driver’s seat of her car, blocking one lane of a public street where ICE officers had gathered for what Kristi Noem called an “enforcement action.” As they surrounded her car, talked to her, and yelled at her, she smiled at one ICE officer standing next to her car and said, “I’m not mad at you.” Seconds later, another ICE Agent named Jonathan Ross shot her in the face three times as she turned her wheels and tried to drive away. Ross recorded himself with his own cell phone during the confrontation (while shooting his gun), and seconds after shooting her, said, “fucking bitch,” before walking away. Within hours, members of the Trump administration had made full-throated statements defending the ICE officer, with Trump claiming he had been “ran [sic] over or injured,” Noem calling Good a “domestic terrorist who had weaponized her vehicle,” and Vice President J.D. Vance stating that the ICE officer was protected by “absolute immunity.” Contrary to the usual process, all of these comments were made before the completion of any investigation, as the administration appeared more interested in shielding the ICE agent and justifying his actions than determining if he had followed procedure or had any real justification for shooting Good. Within hours, the federal government announced that it was excluding state and local law enforcement agencies from the investigation, which would cause a reasonable person to doubt the administration’s commitment to transparency, objectivity, fairness, and the rule of law.

Trump has promised repeatedly to arrest and deport “the worst of the worst,” including the countless “dangerous criminals” — among them murderers, rapists and child predators — from around the world he says entered the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration.”³ By this definition, Renee Good does not seem to qualify. But then, in November, Trump stated that ICE agents would also be going after “domestic terrorists,” a threat that the Brennan Center for Justice interpreted as meaning that, in addition to immigrants, the administration planned to go after dissenters, signaling the administrations’ openness to violating American’s First and Fourth Amendment rights (the right of free speech and assembly, and protection against unreasonable search and seizure).⁴

What is really happening, and how do all of these policies and actions affect our collective experience of freedom in public space in America today, and in the future? Back in 2019, I was teaching a class about the public realm when an immigrant student told a story about being stopped a few days before by a security guard in one of Minneapolis’s elevated skyways, an indoor, “privately-owned public space” or “POPS.” She was a city employee doing her job—taking photos of the street below—and she was wearing a safety vest and her ID on a lanyard around her neck. I was shocked and saddened by this story because, of course, as an older white male, nothing like this had ever happened to me, and it seemed so…wrong. Poor, naive me. Today, that story seems quaint, but after class that day in 2019, my student suggested to me—diplomatically—that I learn more about the immigrant experience of public space in America, and so I did.

The Theory

The subject of how immigrants are treated in public space in America has inspired a rich vein of scholarly literature in sociology, social justice, criminology, and other disciplines. One study of migrants in Arizona offers a useful framework by emphasizing the roles played by two closely related strategies: surveillance tactics and “policing rituals.” These two “technologies of control” are used by federal and local law enforcement to “discipline and restructure migrants’ use of public space,” so as to “keep migrants in their place,” by keeping them out of public spaces.⁵

From the migrant perspective, surveillance and policing first foster a sense of fear and vulnerability among migrants, whose response is to resist and take back some power through “self-discipline.” By self-segregating and gathering only in their homes, churches, and children’s schools, migrants confine themselves to places where they feel safe. Other studies conclude that self-segregation is evidence that technologies of control,

“Operate to cleanse or purify the body politic and to ensure that public space—parks, libraries, streets, and hospitals—will be largely reserved for those privileged by citizenship, wealth and, more important, whiteness.”⁶

Yet another study concludes that,

“Nation-states are (re)drawing moral boundaries, (re)fortifying ‘assumptions about national identity,’ and defending the body politic from the foreign Other, through practices of banishment or exclusion.”⁷

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

A Better Theory

One of my all-time favorite essays about cities is “The Romance of Public Space,” by the brilliant intellectual, City College of New York professor, and self-described “Marxist-humanist,” Marshall Berman. In a beautifully written, ten-page love story about freedom in public spaces, Berman illuminates what our urban experience should and can be like, beginning with a tale from the golden age of Athens, nearly 2,500 years ago. Until that time, public spaces everywhere had been controlled and policed environments, primarily used by rulers for demonstrating control, marshaling troops, and holding military parades. Indeed, many still are today, for example, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Red Square in Moscow, and most recently, the National Mall in Washington, DC, where, on June 14, 2025, our president contrived to celebrate both the 250^th anniversary of the US Army and his 79^th birthday with a military parade. So, imagine the experience of The Old Oligarch, a visitor from another Greek city, who is “fascinated by the Athenian agora’s sloppiness,” a place where “people dress down, social distance is minimized, and one cannot even tell masters from slaves.” Berman summarizes thus:

“The Old Oligarch is amazed that any city can hold together without a strictly visible social hierarchy. He concludes that informally defined spaces like Athens’ agora, and peaceable practices like shopping and related cultural activities can make people feel comfortable with each other and nourish peaceable bonds between them, so that everybody knows both how to rule and how to obey. Pericles, Sophocles, the Old Oligarch, and various orators and philosophers, all came to see this as the formula for democratic citizenship.”⁸

What’s at stake?

For many people in America, including many American citizens, the experience of public space is one of constant surveillance and policing, rather than freedom. But what if it were not just dark-skinned Americans and immigrants, but merely people who disagreed with the current political leadership? What if an elected official were to order the police or the military to suppress peaceful demonstrations in public places? More specifically, what can we expect of a president who, during his first term, when angered by overwhelmingly peaceful protests in public places in cities all around the country, asked his senior military leaders, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”⁹ And now, after the shooting of Renee Good, how confident are you that an interaction with an ICE agent in a public place will not lead to the infringement of your rights under the Constitution, or worse: bodily harm, seizure, imprisonment, deportation, or death?

This makes me think of the story and famous photo of “Tank-Man.” After six weeks of student-led, pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989, the Chinese government, its patience exhausted, ruthlessly cleared the square of protesters, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people. The next day, a column of tanks was driving along Chang’an Avenue, near the square, when a regular citizen walking home with shopping bags started crossing the street. He stopped and stood in front of the first tank, and the tank driver stopped, stopping the whole column. Like that tank driver—who disobeyed orders in communist China—that ICE agent did not have to pull the trigger. But he did.

The Lesson

Freedom in public spaces is central to and a symbol of our democracy, our rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution, and, specifically, the rights of assembly and free speech. When we lose freedom in our public places, we will surely have lost our democracy. Personally, I prefer Marshall Berman’s romantic vision of messy but happy public spaces over Trump’s fictionalized and nonexistent urban hellscape. Unfortunately, the Trump administration appears to have something very different in mind for us all because now, you do not have to be one of the worst of the worst; you just have to be a “dissenter,” very broadly defined, and therefore a “domestic terrorist.” So, if you value your freedom and what it means to live in a free democracy, then do something: protest, observe, and film ICE actions; patronize small businesses and boycott the big businesses that have remained silent; and help your neighbors when they need it; and keep showing up and being seen by people all around America. Because, as Donald Trump himself said on January 6, 2020, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”

- Abraham Lincoln

“I’m sorry if I offended their Disney princess ears, but no, it’s not the F-bomb that inflames matters, it’s the killing of a person that’s inflammatory. Obviously, right?”

- Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, on learning that some Republicans were offended when he said, “ICE, get the f*** out of Minneapolis.”

Many thanks to my former student—now colleague and friend—for allowing me to tell her story and for reading and commenting on several early drafts of this essay.

1. “Trump administration sets quota to arrest 3,000 people a day in anti-immigration agenda,” The Guardian, 29 May 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-ice-arrest-quota

2. “The Trump administration has launched what officials describe as the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, preparing to deploy as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a sweeping crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents,” AP, 6 January, 2026.

3. Goldin, Melissa, “Trump says he wants to deport ‘the worst of the worst.’ Government data tells another story,” AP, 12 July 2025. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-immigration-crime-ice-criminal-dangerous-violent-99557d9d68642004193a9f4b7668162e

4. Patel, Faiza and Matthew Ruppert, “ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants: The Trump administration is being open about its plans to violate Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights.” Brennan Center for Justice, 21 November 2025. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/ice-wants-go-after-dissenters-well-immigrants

5. McDowell, Meghan G., and Nancy A. Wonders, “Keeping Migrants in Their Place: Technologies of Control and Racialized Public Space in Arizona,” in Social Justice, 36(2): 2009-2010, 54-72; DeGenova, Nicholas, Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and Illegality in Mexican Chicago, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

6. Romero, Mary, “Racial Profiling and Immigrant Law Enforcement: Rounding up of the Usual Suspects in the Latino Community,” in Critical Sociology, 32: 448-472, 2006; Amster, Randall, Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and the Urban Ecology of Homelessness, New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2008.

7. Aas, Katja Franko, “Analysing a World in Motion: Global Flows Meet “Criminology of the Other,” in Theoretical Criminology, 11(2), 2007, 283-303.

8. Berman, Marshall, “The Romance of Public Space, in Modernism in the Street: A Life and Times in Essays, Brooklyn: Verso, 2017, 339-349.

9. Martin, Michel and Tinbete Ermyas, “Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters,” NPR, All Things Considered, 9 May 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-defense-secretary