Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) is warning Democrats that the same anti-law-enforcement instincts that fueled the post-George Floyd unrest are now being repackaged as immigration policy, as violent protests erupt once again in Minneapolis.
In a Fox News op-ed published Friday, Kennedy argued that Democratic officials who once flirted with defunding the police are now applying the same playbook to immigration enforcement, dismissing federal agents as racists, undermining the rule of law, and inviting chaos in the process. “As I’ve watched the protests in Minneapolis, it seems obvious to me that America is at risk of falling face-first into another disastrous anti-law enforcement crisis,” Kennedy wrote.
The Louisiana Republican framed the unrest as a familiar pattern: leftist activists seize on a crisis, demonize law enforcement, and pressure Democratic officials to stand down rather than restore order. According to Kennedy, the results are always the same.
“There are some people in this world who enjoy hurting other people and taking other people’s stuff,” he wrote. “They’re not sick. They’re not confused. They’re not mixed up. … They’re just antisocial.”
Kennedy argued that the “defund the police” movement exploited a handful of high-profile misconduct cases to push what he called a fundamentally dishonest narrative, that law enforcement officers are worse than criminals and should be replaced with social workers.
Before Floyd died in 2020, Kennedy said, such ideas were fringe, embraced primarily by radical academics and leftist activists. But Democratic leaders in Minnesota, including Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, ultimately chose to appease what Kennedy mockingly labeled the party’s “Karen wing” rather than enforce the law. “They let rioters seek revenge on law enforcement, stood by as police precincts burned and sat in silence as activists defamed the countless good cops who kept their cities safe,” he wrote.
The consequences, Kennedy argued, were measurable and severe. In the wake of the Floyd riots, commercial burglaries surged by 43%, carjackings jumped 93%, and murders rose 44%, according to crime data cited in the op-ed.
Even years later, Kennedy noted, police departments have struggled to recover from the damage. Nationwide, departments remain understaffed compared to pre-2020 levels. In Minneapolis, the police force is still roughly one-third smaller than it was before Floyd’s death, despite ongoing recruitment efforts.
“Maintaining a strong police force is not a light switch you can flick on and off as the woke mob demands,” Kennedy wrote, arguing that years of demoralization drove officers out of the profession altogether.
Now, Kennedy says Democrats appear poised to repeat the same mistake, this time targeting immigration enforcement instead of local police. As federal agents move to enforce immigration laws in Minnesota, leftist activists and Democratic officials have accused ICE and Border Patrol agents of racism and “white supremacy,” rhetoric Kennedy argues is designed to delegitimize enforcement entirely.
“Instead of arguing that cops are a bigger problem than criminals,” Kennedy wrote, “Walz and Frey have joined the Karen wing of the Democratic Party to say that enforcing immigration laws is racist and vetting migrants is a form of White supremacy.”
Kennedy warned that activists are once again exploiting unrest in Minneapolis to pressure Congress into defunding federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE and the Border Patrol, a move he argues would repeat the same disastrous errors of the defund-the-police era.
The senator’s warning comes as Democrats increasingly frame immigration enforcement as a civil rights issue, even as violent protests and property damage accompany demonstrations against federal agents in major cities.
Democrats across the country have increasingly made immigration enforcement and reform of ICE a central part of their 2026 policy agenda, particularly in the wake of two fatal shootings of leftist protesters in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents. Party leaders in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), have tied their support for funding the Department of Homeland Security to a sweeping set of proposed changes aimed at “rein[ing] in ICE,” including requiring body cameras and visible ID for agents, restricting arrests without judicial warrants, banning enforcement near sensitive locations like schools and hospitals, and instituting uniform use-of-force standards.
Leftist members of Congress and activists have pushed even further, with some calling for abolishing the agency outright or defunding it entirely, arguing ICE has become “beyond repair,” while Democratic strategists warn that hardline abolition language could complicate efforts to build broader support for more moderate reforms.
For Kennedy, the lesson of the last five years is clear: undermining law enforcement does not produce justice or safety; it creates disorder. “If anyone should recognize the deep-dish stupidity of the defund-the-police movement,” he wrote, “it should be the officials who watched their cities burn the first time.”
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