PHILADELPHIA — Amidst the crowd of protesters gathered outside Philadelphia City Hall, a group of figures—clad in black jackets, wearing berets, and slinging semi-automatic rifles over their shoulders—captured everyone’s attention. They identified themselves as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense" and declared: Had they been in Minneapolis that day, they would have been there.

"That wouldn't have happened," said Paul Birdsong, the organization's national chairman. "No one would have been hurt."

The "thing" he referred to was the January 7 incident in Minneapolis, in which agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed Leneá Roxanne Good, a 37-year-old Black mother. Authorities initially claimed that Good had "driven her vehicle at agents"—an act they characterized as "domestic terrorism"—but local police and the city mayor publicly refuted this claim as "garbage" after reviewing video footage of the scene.

Good’s death was not an isolated incident. On January 24, Alex Pretiz, an intensive care unit nurse in the same city, was also shot and killed by federal law enforcement officers. In the span of just one week, two American citizens died at the hands of ICE. Prior to this, a 21-year-old protester was struck in the right eye by a projectile and permanently blinded, while a 26-year-old woman’s infant required emergency medical treatment after being exposed to tear gas inside a vehicle.

This series of violent events has conjured the specter of an organization that, half a century ago, was labeled by the FBI as the "greatest threat to internal security in the United States."

A "Resurgence" Between Reality and Fiction

Images of a "comeback" by the Black Panther Party began circulating rapidly across social media platforms. However, the fact-checking organization Snopes discovered that most of these images were problematic: some were generated by artificial intelligence, others were taken in Georgia in 2020 rather than in Minnesota, and still others depicted groups entirely unrelated to the original organization.

The group that appeared on the streets of Philadelphia, however, is indeed real. Yet, according to *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, this organization—which numbers fewer than 100 members—is not an official revival of the historical Black Panther Party, but rather a "continuation" formed in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests, under the guidance of some of the original members. The original Black Panther Party officially disbanded in 1982, and members of its founders' families have publicly condemned these new groups for misappropriating the name.

The Power of Symbols

However, the resurgence of the symbol is, in itself, a signal.

Founded in Oakland in 1966 with the aim of combating police brutality, the original Black Panther Party rapidly expanded to 28 states while simultaneously establishing community mutual-aid networks—such as free breakfast programs and medical clinics. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover characterized the group as the "greatest threat" and utilized the COINTELPRO program to infiltrate and suppress it.

The reappearance of the Black Panther symbol today coincides with a massive escalation in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. ICE agents have been accused of employing tactics such as chokeholds, flashbang grenades, and forced entry—and have even been reported to enter private homes without judicial warrants. White House advisor Stephen Miller went so far as to claim that ICE agents enjoy "federal immunity."

As of March 2026, at least 13 individuals have died while in ICE custody, including a 19-year-old Mexican national. The death toll within the federal immigration detention system has now reached 46.

Birdsong’s organization distributes free food weekly in the impoverished neighborhoods of North Philadelphia while simultaneously conducting armed patrols. He has declared that his objective is to "abolish ICE" and to hold the Trump administration "accountable." One resident told *The Philadelphia Inquirer* that the group's armed presence has caused "drug dealing and petty crime to vanish."

Echoes of History

This is not a reenactment of 1968, but rather a projection of 2026.

The Black Panther Party’s "Rainbow Coalition" concept—uniting Black people, Latinos, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples on a single front—has been invoked by Birdsong as the theoretical framework for his struggle against ICE. Organizer Jenny Luna told Axios: "This is no different from how young people back then pushed their elders; they were saying, 'This is who we are *now*.'"

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has partially shut down due to a budgetary impasse, leaving Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees without pay for five weeks. Trump has threatened to deploy ICE agents to airport security checkpoints, vowing to "arrest all illegal immigrants"—a move that has drawn strong condemnation from the ACLU: "Never in American history has a president sent armed agents to airports to intimidate families."

As an ICE van rolls through the streets of North Philadelphia, children may catch sight of a group of armed figures standing on a street corner. This scene feels like a superimposed negative from half a century ago—for when institutional fissures remain unbridgeable, history executes a kind of cyclical return in this tension-laden manner.Editor/Cao Tianyi