Welcome to the latest installment of “I Saw a Viral Video and Now I’m a Constitutional Scholar,” where we dissect the latest sensationalist fever dream masquerading as reporting from The Verge. Today’s target: a summary that claims ICE agents are essentially treating the streets of Minneapolis like a high-stakes game of *Grand Theft Auto*.

First, let’s address the central claim: that federal agents are roaming Minneapolis, punching people into the dirt, and executing them in broad daylight. While it makes for a fantastic screenplay for a dystopian Netflix original, it ignores a pesky little thing called reality. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is an administrative agency focused on civil immigration violations. They aren’t exactly known for street-side MMA matches followed by immediate executions. In the real world, federal agents generally prefer a mountain of paperwork and a slow legal process over a public shootout that would generate enough lawsuits to bankrupt the Department of Homeland Security by Tuesday.

Then we have the “increasingly frequent” claim. The summary suggests that ICE has turned Minneapolis into a recurring set for *The Purge*. Statistical data from the actual government shows that ICE’s enforcement actions have actually fluctuated based on policy shifts, but “unprovoked street murders” have yet to appear as a measurable metric in any non-fictional database. Claiming something is “frequent” just because you saw two blurry videos on X (formerly Twitter) is the kind of logical leap that would make an Olympic long jumper weep with envy.

Now, let’s talk about the mysterious Renée Good. The article mentions her as if she’s a household name, claiming she was “murdered” on January 7th. Here is a fun fact: there is zero public record of an ICE agent being charged with the murder of a “Renée Good” on that date in Minneapolis. It’s almost as if the author is pulling names out of a hat or perhaps confusing a dream they had with actual investigative journalism. If an ICE agent actually “murdered” a civilian in public less than three weeks ago, it wouldn’t just be a footnote in a blog post; it would be the lead story on every major news network for a month. Instead, the only place Renée Good seems to exist is in the creative writing exercises of the terminally online.

The assumption that “video circulating online” equals “undisputable proof of a crime” is the crown jewel of this nonsense. We are urged to “use judgment” before clicking, which is a clever way of saying, “Please don’t look too closely at the pixels or notice that the context is missing.” In an era of deepfakes, out-of-context clips, and 144p resolution, a video of a “killing” could just as easily be a training exercise, a completely different agency, or a scene from a movie being filmed. Relying on “circulating video” without a confirmed police report or a medical examiner’s statement is like diagnosing yourself with a rare disease based on a TikTok dance.

Finally, the logic that these events are “just the latest incident” is a classic “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. Just because two things happen in the same city doesn’t mean the federal government has launched a secret war on its citizens. It’s impressive how the summary manages to be so confident while being so factually hollow. If you’re going to roast a federal agency, at least pick something they actually do—like losing track of paperwork—rather than inventing a tactical death squad that apparently only exists in Minneapolis and the dark corners of the internet.