ICE and FAES: Why Venezuela's despot is 'terrific' and Minnesota's dead are 'terrorists'
By Tim Padgett
January 29, 2026 at 6:00 AM EST
COMMENTARY It makes sense President Trump considers Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez "terrific." Both exalt the sort of lying and cruelty he does.
It all makes sense now.
For days I’d been racking my brain to figure out why President Donald Trump would call acting Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez “a terrific person” — when she heads a regime responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history, brutality the U.N. has labeled crimes against humanity and the brazen theft of a 2024 presidential election.
Many have suggested it’s simply because Trump is sucking up to Rodríguez, to ensure she hands over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves after the U.S. hauled the despot she’s replaced, Nicolás Maduro, to a New York jail cell this month to face drug-trafficking charges.
But that didn’t really explain it. This is, I reminded myself, Trump — a man who harbors an affectionate envy for, and a bromance bond with, the iron-fisted Putins and Bolsonaros and Xis and Orbáns of the world.
READ MORE: On Greenland and the Americas, Trump is following the Animal House Doctrine
Then, last weekend, I listened to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem robotically disgorge one disgraceful lie after another about Alex Pretti, the protester her Customs and Border Protection agents had just executed on a Minneapolis street with 10 shots to the back as he was pinned down.
Noem branded Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” — the same tag she’d slapped on another Minneapolis protester, Renee Good, who was killed with a bullet to the head earlier this month by an officer of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, that Noem oversees.
In both cases, Noem defended if not praised the trigger-happy cops in her charge, even as video evidence demolished her hair-trigger claims that Good and Pretti were would-be “assassins.”
I thought: where before have I heard that kind of knee-jerk demonization of security-force victims? Where have I heard this sort of reflexive celebration of law-enforcement thuggery?
Oh yeah, I remembered: it was in Venezuela, back when Rodríguez herself was in charge of national police bodies like the Special Action Forces, or FAES — which rhymes with ICE — which the U.N. accused of rampant extrajudicial killings and human rights violations.
Where before had I heard the knee-jerk demonization of security-force victims Noem was disgorging in Minnesota? Oh yeah — from Rodríguez in Venezuela.
In a pre-programmed chorus that would make even Noem sound credible, Rodríguez and then President Maduro’s regime had called the FAES’ victims "terrorists," the U.N.’s reports "biased" and the police commandos "heroes."
“Long live the FAES!” the dictatorship howled as the murder accusations poured in.
And it hit me: Trump has often called Noem “terrific,” too.
So of course he thinks Rodríguez is terrific.
Mafioso revolution
Rodríguez and Noem, in fact, share two qualities Trump adores: lying and cruelty.
Members of the now disbanded National Police Special Action Force, or FAES, patrol the Antimano neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 29, 2019. (5760x3840, AR: 1.5)
Granted, Rodríguez uses them in service of a left-wing cause — the mafioso socialist revolution she now leads — while in Noem’s case they further the reactionary nativist ends of Trump’s MAGAgenda.
No matter. Trump sees in Rodríguez and instruments like the FAES what he admires in Noem and today's ICE: the utter — meaning utterly dishonest and ruthless — domination of anyone and anything that opposes you.
It’s the toxic trait Trump learned from his father, and it’s the one Rodríguez acquired while seeking vengeance for the death of her own dad, a Venezuelan socialist who died under prison torture 50 years ago.
It’s why Trump can call Rodríguez, who herself has been complicit in the sinister torture of hundreds of Venezuelan political prisoners, “a terrific person.”
And it's why he disparages María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s democratic opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, as a marginal player, even after she gave him her Nobel medal as thanks for removing Maduro.
But it’s also a reminder that just as even Rodríguez and Maduro had to bow to international pressure and disband the FAES in 2022, a growing number of Americans want to dissolve ICE after the Good and Pretti killings — not to mention the immigration arrest of a 5-year-old boy.
Last year, before ICE agents started acting like Cossacks instead of a constabulary, I criticized calls for abolishing the agency as another impractical “defund the police” movement.
And I would still remind folks that the federal government has the discretionary right to humanely — humanely — detain and deport undocumented migrants, as every federal government in the world does.
But no one could defend the ICE, or the larger immigration enforcement monstrosity, that we’re seeing right now.
Except, that is, “terrific” people like Kristi Noem.
And Delcy Rodríguez.
(1509x275, AR: 5.487272727272727)
It all makes sense now.
For days I’d been racking my brain to figure out why President Donald Trump would call acting Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez “a terrific person” — when she heads a regime responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history, brutality the U.N. has labeled crimes against humanity and the brazen theft of a 2024 presidential election.
Many have suggested it’s simply because Trump is sucking up to Rodríguez, to ensure she hands over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves after the U.S. hauled the despot she’s replaced, Nicolás Maduro, to a New York jail cell this month to face drug-trafficking charges.
But that didn’t really explain it. This is, I reminded myself, Trump — a man who harbors an affectionate envy for, and a bromance bond with, the iron-fisted Putins and Bolsonaros and Xis and Orbáns of the world.
READ MORE: On Greenland and the Americas, Trump is following the Animal House Doctrine
Then, last weekend, I listened to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem robotically disgorge one disgraceful lie after another about Alex Pretti, the protester her Customs and Border Protection agents had just executed on a Minneapolis street with 10 shots to the back as he was pinned down.
Noem branded Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” — the same tag she’d slapped on another Minneapolis protester, Renee Good, who was killed with a bullet to the head earlier this month by an officer of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, that Noem oversees.
In both cases, Noem defended if not praised the trigger-happy cops in her charge, even as video evidence demolished her hair-trigger claims that Good and Pretti were would-be “assassins.”
I thought: where before have I heard that kind of knee-jerk demonization of security-force victims? Where have I heard this sort of reflexive celebration of law-enforcement thuggery?
Oh yeah, I remembered: it was in Venezuela, back when Rodríguez herself was in charge of national police bodies like the Special Action Forces, or FAES — which rhymes with ICE — which the U.N. accused of rampant extrajudicial killings and human rights violations.
Where before had I heard the knee-jerk demonization of security-force victims Noem was disgorging in Minnesota? Oh yeah — from Rodríguez in Venezuela.
In a pre-programmed chorus that would make even Noem sound credible, Rodríguez and then President Maduro’s regime had called the FAES’ victims "terrorists," the U.N.’s reports "biased" and the police commandos "heroes."
“Long live the FAES!” the dictatorship howled as the murder accusations poured in.
And it hit me: Trump has often called Noem “terrific,” too.
So of course he thinks Rodríguez is terrific.
Mafioso revolution
Rodríguez and Noem, in fact, share two qualities Trump adores: lying and cruelty.
Members of the now disbanded National Police Special Action Force, or FAES, patrol the Antimano neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 29, 2019. (5760x3840, AR: 1.5)
Granted, Rodríguez uses them in service of a left-wing cause — the mafioso socialist revolution she now leads — while in Noem’s case they further the reactionary nativist ends of Trump’s MAGAgenda.
No matter. Trump sees in Rodríguez and instruments like the FAES what he admires in Noem and today's ICE: the utter — meaning utterly dishonest and ruthless — domination of anyone and anything that opposes you.
It’s the toxic trait Trump learned from his father, and it’s the one Rodríguez acquired while seeking vengeance for the death of her own dad, a Venezuelan socialist who died under prison torture 50 years ago.
It’s why Trump can call Rodríguez, who herself has been complicit in the sinister torture of hundreds of Venezuelan political prisoners, “a terrific person.”
And it's why he disparages María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s democratic opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, as a marginal player, even after she gave him her Nobel medal as thanks for removing Maduro.
But it’s also a reminder that just as even Rodríguez and Maduro had to bow to international pressure and disband the FAES in 2022, a growing number of Americans want to dissolve ICE after the Good and Pretti killings — not to mention the immigration arrest of a 5-year-old boy.
Last year, before ICE agents started acting like Cossacks instead of a constabulary, I criticized calls for abolishing the agency as another impractical “defund the police” movement.
And I would still remind folks that the federal government has the discretionary right to humanely — humanely — detain and deport undocumented migrants, as every federal government in the world does.
But no one could defend the ICE, or the larger immigration enforcement monstrosity, that we’re seeing right now.
Except, that is, “terrific” people like Kristi Noem.
And Delcy Rodríguez.
(1509x275, AR: 5.487272727272727)