The United States Pirate Party has formally condemned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a “domestic terrorist organization,” with its national leadership voting to designate the agency as such following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by agents in Minneapolis over the weekend.
In a January 26 statement, Captain Jolly Mitch Davilo reported the Pirate National Committee had met the previous day, where members voted to condemn ICE, its conduct, and the Trump administration for its role in directing immigration enforcement operations. The unanimous vote followed the recent killing of 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse who was shot by federal immigration enforcement agents as part of Operation Metro Surge.
Davilo referenced a November 2025 article published in the party’s Through the Spyglass opinion series, which he said the party sought to elevate in light of recent events, arguing that ICE operations have since intensified and become increasingly violent and deadly. In that earlier piece, Davilo argued that the agency’s tactics meet commonly accepted definitions of terrorism by relying on violence or the threat of violence as a means of intimidation or coercion.
In its statement, the party explicitly cited the killings of Pretti and Renee Good, both of whom were shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this month. The statement also referenced deaths in California and Illinois that Pirate Party leadership attributed to either ICE detention or enforcement actions, including farmworker Jaime Alanis, who died after falling while fleeing federal agents during a raid in Camarillo, and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, who was shot and killed by officers last September during an enforcement action near Chicago.
“We, not only as members of the United States Pirate Party, but as citizens of the United States of America, cannot sit by idly and watch state-sponsored domestic terrorists continue to violate our neighbors,” the statement reads. “You could not pay us to hate our fellow man for seeking a better life through hard work.”
Throughout the statement, Davilo reiterated themes from the earlier Through the Spyglass article, urging Americans not to allow legal status or federal rhetoric to supersede basic human empathy toward neighbors and community members. He directly criticized President Donald Trump and multiple senior administration officials responsible for immigration enforcement, all of whom were named in the motion adopted by the national committee, accusing them of enabling or directing what the party characterized as acts of domestic terror.
The statement also said individuals who support ICE’s actions are unwelcome within the Pirate Party, with Davilo stating there exists “no seat waiting for you on our ship nor in this party.”
Davilo further compared ICE operations to the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, a series of mass arrests conducted under the Woodrow Wilson administration that targeted Americans suspected of being socialists, anarchists, and communists for detention and deportation. He urged supporters to oppose ICE at the local level and to reject any narratives that frame immigration enforcement as a moral or security necessity.
“This is what terrorists would do,” Davilo wrote. “ICE, each and every one of your enlisted officers, and the administration enabling them: history will remember your names for the terror you caused. People will remember you for being terrorists to our countrymen. Go fuck yourselves.”
@Aiden: No, managed borders is also a foundation of individual property rights.
Come back later when you understand how this works. You’re at least 15 years behind the curve.
Aiden, conflating the trade of products and people crossing borders is not a valid arguement. Products are inanimate object, people are not. Products do not use taxpayer funded resources. Products fo not commit crimes. Products do not become citizens and vote in elections or run for political office. Products do not bring a culture with them. Products do not cause shifts in the demographics of a country. Since products are inanimate objects the American peoole do not have to interact with them like they do with foreign migrants.
Sometimes it is preferable to trade with afar with some people than to have them immigrate to the country where one lives.
@Andy… “The notion that this country had open borders and accepted and welcomed immigrants from everywhere in the world and made anyone who showed up or popped out a citizen is a myth.” …. True, but nobody is saying that. You’re conflating residency with citizenship. (Although birthright citizenship is more up in the air). You’re correct, migrants are not citizens, they’re residents. And someone can – and should be able to – freely migrate and reside in a country without restrictions. Citizenship is a completely separate subject from immigration/migration.
This statement is true: “This country had open borders and accepted and welcomed immigrants from everywhere in the world”. That statement is historical fact, and only changed after the 1920s.
Seebeck, I know that the Naturalization Act of 1790 was replaced by other Naturaluzation Acts, most of which were more restricyive than the 1790 act. This was for the most part the case up until after the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed.
My bringing up the Naturalization Act of 1790 was to illustrate that shortly after the US Constitution was passed a Naturalization Act was passed which was discriminatory and selective.
I am also aware of the fact that one of the Alien Acts of 1798 was repealed, but the other Alien Act is still in place. I brought this up to show that deporting foreign nationals was an issue in early American history.
The notion that this country had open borders and accepted and welcomed immigrants from everywhere in the world and made anyone who showed up or popped out a citizen is a myth.
(Sorry for three posts, but as I soon as I hit submit I think of additional things to add).
Also, if you have watched or associated with any futurists you would know that the technology that is coming down the pipeline in the next 15 – 25 years will make it entirely impractical to enforce border restrictions or an income tax for that matter. We will see means of transportation that will allow the travel of individuals throughout the world so they can live in London, physically work in New York City with a lunch break in Toronto, and have dinner in Paris before they return to London to sleep.
@Seebeck… Managed borders is the same mentality as managed trade. Both infringe upon the rights of the individual’s bodily autonomy and freedom of association.
@Seebeck… “We need sovereign borders as a nation” This is inconsistent with individualism…. nation states by their very nature are collectivist and thus tyrannical by their very existence. Sovereignty rests with the individual not with the government. You cannot have both individual sovereignty and sovereignty of a nation state. No self respecting libertarian/classical liberal would associate with any group (government) without voluntarily doing so. This is why you would have open borders; people are able to freely associate with whatever government they deem appropriate for their personal desires by moving to an alternative locale. Putting up border restrictions directly inflicts on the sovereignty of the individual to freely associate with whom (this includes groups/governments/individuals) they desire.
Public land cannot be trespassed upon, as by definition of being public, it is accessible to all free from restriction. Public land that has its access restricted is not public at all. Public land by its nature of communal ownership (that what public land and the government is communal ownership) cannot be controlled justly without consent of all the governed; a rule by majority is the reason the founders hated democracy and favored a republic). In other words, public land is inconsistent with libertarianism in any capacity. Property rights are only reserved for the individual, not the collective; and especially not a collective that is made up of members which did not consent to being a part of that collective in the first place.
All of this, not to mention, distracts from the fact that the United States is not supposed to be a nation state, but rather a collection of individual states that each have full autonomy. The states have borders the federal government does not.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 was repealed in part on 1-29-1795 (231 years ago tomorrow!) and the rest on 4-14-1802, so while it’s instructive, it’s not binding. The only part of the Aliens Act of 1798 left is the Alien Enemies Act, 50 USC 21-24 these days, but that requires a country to be at war with the U.S. (the same law Trump is erroneously citing). The rest of that law expired 6-25-1800 (Alien Friends Act) and 3-3-1801 (Sedition Act). Again, instructive, but not completely binding.
The issue isn’t “ICE rounding up and deport(ing) illegal aliens,” but HOW they’re doing it. How they’re doing it is akin to street kidnapping, breaking and entering, assault, and murder, not proper arrest and due process. They’re supposed to be dealing with criminal illegals, not kidnapping 5-year-old kids from kindergarten and people entering their naturalization swearing-in ceremony, and certainly not based on their ethnicity. It’s only a matter of time before one of these goon squads arrogantly walk into a planned ambush and get slaughtered by people fed up with their antics. (I don’t advocate that, but it is inevitable all the same.)
We say ICE needs to be abolished because like its bastard cousin the ATF, they’re American versions of the German Gestapo/SS or Russian GRU/NKVD/MGB/KGB. They’re a disgrace to the nation and a disgrace to everything that is Liberty and freedom. They’re just as bad as the FBI at Waco, minus the tanks and firebombs, and don’t give them any ideas.
We need sovereign borders as a nation, just as we need sovereign borders as individuals. Respect for rights includes respect for boundaries. See also what I said about this 16 years ago at https://muddythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/04/for-libertarians-on-borders.html: “In simple terms, for a person to transit a political border and be considered peaceable, where it involves moving between properties, there must first be permission obtained from the property owner to be present on a property at first, and then to transit onto a property. The absence of such consent constitutes a violation of the property rights of the property owners who did not give such consent and is considered trespass, and as such being considered peaceable cannot be resumed—in fact, the presumption must be the opposite, that of hostility. In the case of such a trespass, the property owner is justified in defending his property from intrusion, even to the point of lethal self-defense. This principle has been applied under the law for both private property and public property, and in fact is the underlying basis of most immigration laws. In a state of war, the principle is used to justify repelling invasions. “ and “While it is correct to state that peaceable persons should be allowed to cross borders freely, those persons cease to be peaceable once they violate the rights of others. This is rarely emphasized in the argument, and in fact is commonly ignored, when it should not be.” In short, managed borders, not fully open or fully closed.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that Fusionism is dead, and we are undergoing a political realignment where you will find progressives, nationalists, paleo-cons and other populists in coalition against classical liberals, social democrats, and other liberals of various persuasions.
GOP’s Appalachian Pivot: The Vance Effect – https://youtu.be/14q43_X2l3s
Right vs Left: How Politics is Radically Changing – https://youtu.be/SF8zUKBBt40
The Rise of Right Wing Authoritarianism – https://youtu.be/jJWrafM6wtk
@Andy… Sorry Andy but you (and this paleo-conservative masquerading as libertarian organization) are wrong. The federal governments powers are fully enumerated (aka limited to) those powers listed in the enumerated powers of congress. No enumerated power grants congress the authority to limit or control flows across the border. The United States, as with all nations (except the Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire), had open borders until restrictions were imposed as temporary war time measures during World War 1 (https://youtu.be/jWaR5JRG0lo?t=553). This was during the height of the Progressive era when progressives started crapping on the constitution by nominating activist justices who purposefully re-wrote the constitution from the bench (with one big maneuver being to fold in the General Welfare preamble (https://youtu.be/bf14XEs_bPQ) of the enumerated powers to being an enumerated power itself, to make Social Security legal; Steward Machine Co. v. Davis).
Just admit you’re MAGA and move on.
The level of ignorance of the US Constitution is pretty astounding. Under the “Define and Punish Offenses against the Law of Nations” phrase regulating borders and immigration is a constitutional function of the national/federal government. The Law of Nations is a book that was popular in the 1700’s of which the founders of this country were familiar with and actually had copies of at the convention when the US Constitution was drafted. Under the Law of Nations unauthorized border crossings are an offense for which the punishment is expulsion. The US Congress can set the terms for the entrance of foreign migrants and the punishment for the violation of those terms is expulsion. The US Congress also sets the terms for the naturalization of foreigners and they are under zero obligation to grant citizenship to everyone who shows up (see the Naturalization Act of 1790 for evidence of this). The original and correct definition of Natural Born citizen is that it applies to people who were born to American citizen parents. 14th amendment citizenship did not change this as it only applied to former black slaves. Native American Indians were not American citizens until a 1924 act of the US Congress granted them American citizenship.
The world has over 8.2 billion people. There are currently around 340.1 million people in the USA (not including illegal aliens). This means that there are around 7.8599 billion people outside the USA, a large percentage of which are from third world alien cultures. It is not desirable for everyone in the world who wants to come here to come here. The problem is further complicated by the fact that we live in a de facto democratic welfare state with forced association laws and lots of taxpayer funded property and programs.
There has to be a mechanism for kicking people out. If we lived in a private property anarcho-capitalist society this function would be handled by private property owners, either acting individually or in voluntary groups, who could hire private security guards to engage in this function. We don’t live in a private property anarcho-capitalist society, we live in a society with a state and the state, or more specifically in the society in which we live, the US federal government, has a monopoly on regulating this function, and the situation is the same in every other country in the world.
There was just a massive welfare fraud scam exposed in Minnesota where Somalian migrants, 81% of whom are on welfare, were engaged in welfare fraud where they defrauded the taxpayers out of over $9 billion in various fraudulent welfare claims. How is this good immigration? This is just one example of how immigration in this country has been screwed up for decades and tens of millions of people who never should have been accepted as immigrants have been let in the country. This was done intentionally by the globalists and far left Marxists.
When ICE rounds up and deports illegal aliens, they are fulfilling a constitutional function of the federal government. Once again, see the “Define and Punish Offenses against the Law of Nations” phrase, the “Defend each State from invasion,” phrase and the “repel invasions” phrase of the US Constitution, and also see the “Naturalization” phrase and then look up the Naturalization Act of 1790 (which clearly shows that there was never an intention to grant American citizenship to everyone who pops up). Also, see the Alien Acts of 1798 which authorized the deportation of foreign nationals deemed a threat to the American public or who were from countries engaged in hostilities against the USA.
Click the link and read the following article.
https://i2i.org/understanding-the-constitution-the-power-to-restrict-immigration/