The British aren’t coming — but unaccountable power is

Americans like to remember Paul Revere as the rider who sounded the alarm about an approaching threat. The specifics of that night are more complex than the legend, but the function of the warning was unmistakable: distant power was on the move, and ordinary people had a right to know. Two hundred and fifty years later, as the United States prepares to mark the semiquincentennial of its founding, the country is again confronting a debate about how power arrives on our streets — and who is accountable for it.

The American Revolution was not triggered solely by taxes or parliamentary speeches. It was triggered by how power was exercised: through general search warrants, standing armies deployed in populated areas, and punitive acts enforced without the consent of the governed. The colonists did not object to law or order as such. They objected to the use of force by a distant authority that was unaccountable to them.

The founders distilled those grievances into a constitutional philosophy: liberty requires constraints on centralized power, transparency in how force is deployed, and meaningful autonomy for local institutions. The Revolution settled the matter of representation, but it did not eliminate the tension between federal authority and local consent. That tension has resurfaced at various points in American history — from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the civil-rights era — and it has reemerged today in federal immigration enforcement inside U.S. cities.

Earlier this month, a U.S. citizen was fatally shot by an immigration enforcement agent in Minneapolis during a neighborhood stop, an incident that was captured on video and widely circulated. Multiple Justice Department lawyers resigned later that week after senior officials declined to open a civil-rights investigation, citing concerns about transparency and professional standards. A January Quinnipiac University poll found that a majority of voters who had seen footage of the shooting disapproved of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, and states including Minnesota and Illinois have moved to sue the federal government to restrict certain immigration operations.

Those lawsuits are not framed as ideological disputes over immigration policy. They are framed as constitutional and governance disputes over how federal authority may be exercised within state and municipal jurisdictions. State officials argue that federal operations conducted without coordination undermine both public safety and state sovereignty. Federal officials, for their part, argue that such operations are necessary to enforce immigration laws uniformly and uphold public safety, especially in jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal authorities. That debate sits squarely at the intersection of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which grants primacy to federal law, and the Tenth Amendment, which reserves police powers to the states. It is a live constitutional fault line, not a rhetorical one.

The scale of enforcement highlights the stakes. In Minnesota, federal officials described recent deployments of immigration agents as one of the largest interior enforcement operations in the state’s history, with personnel drawn from multiple Department of Homeland Security components. Those are not abstract numbers; they represent federal force deployed inside domestic jurisdictions where local governments bear the secondary effects.

Municipal leaders have raised a practical dimension. Uncoordinated federal actions can impose downstream liabilities on cities — ranging from legal settlements and police overtime to erosion of public confidence in local government. Those outcomes have economic consequences. Insurers and bond markets price risk based on incident patterns and litigation exposure, and businesses respond to shifts in public safety and the perceived reliability of local institutions. When federal enforcement disregards local coordination, the costs do not disappear; they are redistributed to taxpayers, insurers, and employers.

None of this implies that the United States is reliving 1775, nor that immigration enforcement is illegitimate. Nations have borders, and borders require administration. But border enforcement on U.S. soil is not the same as border enforcement at ports of entry. One operates under a national-security frame; the other operates in neighborhoods, workplaces, and traffic stops — places where the line between noncitizen and citizen is not always obvious to the agents empowered to act. When those actions involve lethal force, lack of transparency, or refusal to coordinate with local governments, the constitutional stakes become clear.

The deeper issue is whether the constitutional guardrails the founders designed are functioning as intended. Should federal agencies operating inside cities be required to coordinate with local governments? Should they be mandated to use body cameras or publish after-action reports? Should citizens wrongly detained have clear legal recourse? These are not partisan questions. They are structural questions about how a continental republic governs itself.

The timing is notable. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, states, cities, and federal agencies are litigating the limits of federal power in courtrooms and statehouses across the country. If federal enforcement operations continue to collide with state and municipal priorities, the courts will eventually be forced to clarify how far federal authority extends and when local sovereignty may assert itself. That determination will shape not only immigration policy but the mechanics of federalism for decades.

The founders did not design a government that would never wield power; they designed one that would wield power in ways that could be seen, contested, and ultimately consented to. That standard is not met by rhetoric about “law and order,” nor by calls to abolish agencies outright. It is met by ensuring that federal authority — however justified its mission — remains accountable to the people it governs.

Paul Revere’s ride endures not because of the words he may or may not have spoken, but because of what it symbolized: power on the move, and the public’s right to know. The British aren’t coming. But unaccountable power is a warning worth heeding in 2026.

Dr. Christopher R. Crossett, DNP, MBA, MSN, RN, CRRN, is a board-certified rehabilitation nurse and health systems leader based in Iowa, who writes on public policy, governance, and community health.