In the pre–Trump 2.0 era, it was a relatively simple matter to determine which federal law enforcement agency (LEA) had which mission. Some focused exclusively on firearms, another on the “drug war,” and another on a wide range of federal crimes. Today, it’s clear that LEAs within the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have a very different mission: overt political repression.
As my colleagues David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh have done yeoman’s work highlighting the rights abuses being perpetrated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel against not only illegal migrants but also legal permanent residents and even US citizens, I won’t revisit their findings here. What has my attention and what should have yours is the apparent agreement by FBI Director Kash Patel to honor Sen. John Cornyn’s (R‑TX) completely unconstitutional request that FBI agents be used to hunt down and arrest Democratic Texas state lawmakers who have left the state in an attempt to derail a very public gerrymandering effort by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.
The decision by Democrats in the Texas state legislature to take this step is strictly a state matter, not a federal one. The FBI has no legal basis to be involved in this political conflict, but apparently—as of midafternoon on August 7, 2025—that is irrelevant to Patel and presumably his boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The Trump regime has, over the past several months, repeatedly targeted elected Democratic officials for harassment by federal LEAs, and even prosecution in the case of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D‑NJ) in connection with the administration’s out-of-control anti-immigrant crusade. Should Patel actually honor Cornyn’s request and order FBI agents in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York—three states where Texas House Democrats have fled—to track down and attempt to arrest those legislators, it would represent the most radical, unconstitutional misuse of FBI personnel since the Bureau’s founding in 1908.
It might also lead to an exchange of gunfire between Illinois state troopers and FBI agents.
On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, made it clear that he would not tolerate agents of the Trump regime coming after the Texas lawmakers, noting that
And so, whether it’s federal agents coming to Illinois or state rangers from Texas, if [someone hasn’t] broken federal law, you’re basically unwelcome and there’s no way that our state legislators here—the Texas state legislators—can be arrested.
If officials from either the Trump regime or Texas refuse to deescalate this conflict, they will bear full responsibility for what follows.