BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | JAN 28, 2026
Little 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father are back home in Minneapolis today after a judge’s order and a flight back from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Dilley, Texas.
Liam was taken from his father in the driveway of their home when he was brought home from preschool and loaded into an ICE van for what must have been a frightening flight to Texas. Any parent would get chills looking at the photos of the little tyke in his knit bunny cap. It was heartbreaking and it captured the nation’s attention.
But is not the only child to be taken into custody and shipped off to detention.
“Over the past four months, the average number of people, including children and adults, held each month in family detention has nearly tripled, from 425 in October to 1,304 in January, according to Department of Homeland Security data. An independent analysis by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization, concluded that “at least 3,800 people under 18, including 20 infants, were detained in 2025.” This is according to the Washington Post, which also reported on the detention of a 2-year-old and her father days after Liam was taken.
Watching the tragedy in Minneapolis unfold has been draining, sorrowfully so.
Liam’s abduction moved the needle of public discontent and deep anxiety in Minneapolis further into the red zone after the killing of protestor Renee Good. The further movement of the needle by the death of Alex Pretti, who was apparently shot in the back in a struggle with ICE agents days later, shattered the glass.
President Trump finally recalled the man in charge of “Operation Metro Surge.” He is ICE field leader Gregory Bovino, who was described in the Wall Street Journal as “the tip of the Trump administration’s deportation spear, a spiky-haired Border Patrol agent from the John Wayne school of law-and-order.” That passage was unfair to the memory of John Wayne.
Trump sent his border chief, Tom Homan, into Minneapolis to calm the waters. They have calmed, but the President’s retreat from his maximum force policies and defiant anti-immigration language is not near enough to right the wrongs that have occurred in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere.
It is a popular public relations distraction to say after a national tragedy we must do everything we can “to make sure this never happens again.” It is sometimes expressed in sincerity and sometimes not. I say that because too many times this does happen again and again and again, in other places to other people. The phrase regrettably has become a worn-out platitude, hollowed out by overuse and a chronic lack of execution.
“Our long cold civil war heated up somewhat in Minneapolis this week,” Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “and you’d be dreaming if you think we won’t have more such moments and tensions, and not only on immigration. We aren’t at peace with ourselves.”
That last sentence struck me because it explains the innermost core of so many of our problems. We are not at peace with ourselves or each other. It is what keeps us divided and unable to find our way to the common ground where national unity, effective governance, a social and political values system, and the better angels of our nature are buried.
It is where we should begin again to improve our condition, instead of just relying on our social and political institutions to deal with it. That is not reality.
When you examine the core of our political system and the social order, it has several elements and our relationships with one another are one of them. The fact that we are not at peace keeps us so perpetually angry, agitated, and frustrated that little gets done. Nothing changes at the source. Reaction is cosmetically applied to give the appearance, but not the substance of change, and the nation moves on.
Key to peace is our inability or stubborn refusal to communicate with each other with tolerance, reason, and an open mind. We speak to those with whom we disagree with gritted teeth and squinty eyes, wishing their sewer drains would back up on them, or worse.
There is no behavior more critical to finding commonality than calm, civil, and enlightened discourse, trusting in the motivation of those with whom we disagree, at least enough to cull the legitimacy in what they say and believe.
Look back to ancient proverbs. Columnist Cal Thomas wrote recently in the Washington Times, “One example: ‘A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger’…It means calm, patient, and kind words can de-escalate conflict, while harsh, angry responses provoke further rage.”
So true. We’ve all got to dial it down and insist that our leaders do so as well, especially our President and elected officials, whose vocabularies were formed in the gutter.
Stridency in our behavior prevents the cross-pollination of ideas. If you plant vegetables in a raised garden and encircle it with mesh so animals and bugs can’t destroy the seedlings, you also prevent bees from getting in to pollinate the seedlings. Your garden doesn’t bear fruit. If we don’t pollinate each other’s ideas and beliefs with tolerance, the opportunities for our ideas to take root won’t and don’t exist.
You can almost always find some value and legitimacy in even the most polarizing views. That is how consensus is achieved. That is how things get done. It is what is often called a commonly shared reality.
And that brings me to Frank Sisser, a friend of long standing who lives in Minneapolis. He exercised one of the obligations of citizenship; that being to engage actively in civic life, to access the institutions of government and exert influence over them.
Frank wrote on Facebook, “Yesterday, I made a total of 23 calls in about an hour to the offices of GOP Congressional leaders of the House and Senate; ranking members of the GOP Conferences in the House and Senate; and GOP members of the Homeland Security Appropriations Committees for the House and Senate asking them to tie any additional funding for ICE to fundamental changes in how its agents are recruited, trained, held accountable, disciplined, and managed. I also asked for Congressional oversight to ensure these changes are implemented. I know in isolation my voice won’t make a difference but when added to millions of others it can. That’s how our democracy works.”
It is a post you don’t often see.
Frank petitioned his government for redress of grievances, his right under the First Amendment. He lobbied Congress. If more Americans do the same, our system of government would be greatly strengthened and our Republic restored to its rightful place as a system of government for, by, and of the people. Emphasis on the “of.”
It is the sum and substance of the self-rule concept embedded in the Constitution, but it does require us to be better educated in the workings of government and engage with the right tools. Restoring trust in our institutions, restoring civility to our political process and social order, relearning how to communicate with one another, insisting on better behavior from ourselves and our civic leaders, and taking ownership of our rights and responsibilities is absolutely essential now.
Frank lobbied Congress. It is the first branch of government. It is the citizens’ first line of defense against tyranny. The House of Representative is the Peoples’ House, not the White House. That has not changed.
What has changed is the citizenry’s ability and willingness to pressure Congress fulfilling the will of what is surely a majority of Americans. Ultimately, it falls to the commitment of the American people to make things right in Washington.
These critical elements of our core hold the key to a better future. Citizens do have the power to fix what’s wrong. It was bequeathed to them 250 years ago, in the declaration of our right to govern ourselves. The institutions created by the Constitution enable us to do just that. Those institutions do not govern in our place or in spite of us; they are us. We all have a civic duty to make sure the power granted to us is exercised constantly and constructively.
You could write a book about this subject. Another friend, Jerry Climer, and I did. We wrote Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, believing that with the right tools and more knowledge, Americans can turn a platitude into a promise, and a promise into reality. I apologize if you think this column is a shameless promotion of the book. That was not the intent.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a new book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People and an earlier book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is co-founder and former Board chair of the Congressional Institute. Johnson is retired. He is married to Thalia Assuras and has five children and four grandchildren.