This report from MPRNews is disturbing, as much for the abduction as for the resolution. A woman is chased in her car by agents she was observing, who cut her off and box her in with their vehicles, forcing her to stop in the middle of the road, where she is forcibly pulled from her car at gunpoint by masked men:

The woman said the agents put her into one of their vehicles and started driving toward the Twin Cities, presumably to the Whipple Federal Building near MSP Airport, where ICE has an immigration detention facility. About 20 minutes into the drive, she says one of the agents got a call, apparently from an ICE supervisor.

“I couldn’t hear what was being said, but within 30 seconds after they hung up, they exited on, an exit that goes into Le Sueur… and then turned around, didn’t say anything to me, and started heading back towards St. Peter.” […]

The agents took the woman to the St. Peter police station, where she says [police] Chief [Matt] Grochow approached her, spoke with her, had her get into his squad car, and took her home.

The woman’s husband spoke with the police chief after the abduction; the husband and police chief have known each other “for years.”

The article includes video from the woman’s dashcam showing her being cut off and the purported federal agents approaching her with guns drawn, while she frantically asks someone on the phone to call 9–1–1.

The number of things wrong with this report and video is staggering, from being chased by federal agents to being cut off on a desolate road to being abducted by masked gunmen. The agents also walk directly in front of the woman’s car—the same behavior used to justify killing Renee Nicole Good.

The video is what I imagine a cartel or mob kidnapping might look like. There’s nothing to suggest this was a legitimate federal agency exercising their legal authority: no badges, no IDs, no government plates. Certainly no restraint. This woman was not a criminal, and Minnesota is not a war zone. Why is she being treated like an enemy combatant?

And then we get to this mysterious phone call and the abrupt decision not only to abort the abduction, but to inexplicably deliver the woman to the local police station. Who made that call? Why? What relationships were at play that an “agitator [whose] actions endangered law enforcement officers” would be released from federal custody without further comment?

The entire episode feels like a scene from a “prestige television” drama—not a 24-style “heroic” capture overturned by a corrupt benefactor, but of foot soldiers for a drug boss who abduct a woman for some “weekend fun,” only to be countermanded because their target turns out to be the wife of their boss’s best friend.

But this isn’t television. This is real life, with real people being abducted or killed by real masked men, under the guise of “immigration enforcement.” These agents think they’re the heroes, but they’ll one day soon learn they’ve always been the villains.