Since
early December the people of Minnesota have been dealing with the largest
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in the agency’s 23-year history. Around 3,000 ICE and Border Control agents have been deployed – seemingly to, first and foremost, terrorize the immigrant community and intimidate those who protest ICE’s heavy-handed, brutal, and often indiscriminate and unconstitutional actions. Thousands have been arrested and disappeared, including U.S. citizens. And last month (January 2026)
an ICE agent shot to death
Renée Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, and two weeks later two Border Control agents working in tamdem with ICE shot to death Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse with the Department of Veteran Affairs.
I continue to appreciate CNN’s Stephen Collinson’s
analysis of what is currently happening in Minnesota, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in particular: “This is ruthless crackdown theater choreographed by the president,” says Collinson. “Minneapolis has become a petri dish for his hardline immigration policies, zeal for militarized law enforcement tactics and attempts to use immigration as a cudgel to crush progressive values in cities that reject his strongman leadership.”
I’m also continue to think about how and when I want to share my experience of Trump’s fascist occupation of Minnesota. Until then, here are an additional seven on-the-ground reports from fellow Twin Cities residents. (
NOTE: For
The Wild Reed’s first sharing of dispatches from occupied Minnesota,
click here.)
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Good morning Minneapolis. “Operation Metro Surge” started in December, 2025, so we’re entering our third month of occupation by the Department of Homeland Security. Talking to friends and family yesterday, the main take is just how hard this ICE bullshit has impacted everyone’s lives. Mental, emotional, physical health compromised, the local economy taking huge hits, etc. And above all the pain, anxiety and fear foisted upon our community members of color. I’ll say one thing, the strength of this city is amazing and is manifesting itself everyday in many different ways. It’s compassion in action, watching out and helping care for all people of Minnesota. ICE Out Now!
– David Rathman
via social media
February 7, 2026
The situation in the Twin Cities is fading from front pages and home pages around the country. As a former mainstream journalist, I can tell you that’s one of the challenges of news – when something horrible is no longer new, attention moves on. Climate change, the AIDS epidemic, Ukraine, and the 20-year Afghan war are just a few examples, and Minnesota is in danger of the same fate.
Because the massive resistance here is decentralized, there’s no single spokesperson to try to keep the spotlight on what’s happening. So, as with the resistance itself, a lot of us are doing small parts, and this post today is my small part:
• Things are still terrible here, particularly for people who are not white.
• Harassment and abductions are ongoing at homes, gas stations, schools, and hospitals, with detainees kept in inhumane conditions, locally and at for-profit concentration camps out of state. This isn’t an “immigration crackdown” or a “targeted enforcement” (only 14% of detainees in 2025 were violent criminals). It is straight-up terror, attempted ethnic cleansing, punishment of a city for being blue and diverse, and a brutal experiment that its immoral architects hope to take nationwide.
• ICE is basically Proud Boys with paychecks, and state and local officers can’t or won’t help residents (but sometimes “help” with teargas and arrests). Large businesses are silent, complicit, or wishy-washy, and most foundations don’t seem to know what to do with their billions of dollars, even with countless families on the brink of homelessness because they can’t safely go to work.
• We continue to see the worst in humanity roaming our streets in masks and rental cars. And we continue to see the absolute best in humanity pouring out mutual aid, standing watch over neighborhoods and schools, filming and thwarting abductions, speaking out, and showing up by the thousands for protests and vigils.
• Minnesotans are tired but resolute. We’re going to keep at it, because love of justice and democracy and neighbor are not optional, and because we understand the stakes. Out-of-state support, from good wishes to cash, continues to be invaluable. Thank you!
There’s plenty you can do if you don’t live here:
• Call your congresspeople of any party right now to push them on reining in ICE and blocking funding. Otherwise, all this will be coming your way. (Link to script here.)
• Send money to MN if you have it. There is staggering need for groceries and rent funds.
• Show up at local meetings to stop new detention centers in your community. The feds are buying up properties around the country to warehouse many more thousands of humans.
• Get ready: take a legal observer training, get a whistle, and connect/reconnect with your neighbors.
• Keep shining attention on this siege and authoritarianism.
– Jim Foti
via social media
January 10, 2026
Minnesotans’ response to the federal occupation has rightfully received much attention. Commentators have noted the ways that ordinary people have suddenly become constitutional observers, served on school patrols, and participated in mass marches in subzero temperatures. Some have also noted the quieter but still herculean efforts to check on neighbors, walk kids to school, or do laundry for those scared to leave their homes.
Nonviolence has quickly become a key part of the story here in Minnesota, too. But because it is often conflated with “peaceful protests” or overshadowed by anti-ICE “activism,” nonviolence has largely gone unnoticed in media coverage.
What’s happening cannot be reduced to an exercise of one’s First Amendment rights during a formal protest or frequent scuffles at the Whipple Building.
Nonviolence names a more subversive response to the spectacular violence unleashed by the armed, masked men in our parks, schools, places of worship, and bus stops. From clergy participating in civil disobedience to the “singing resistance” to boycotts of local corporations, the nonviolence unfolding here is better described as an embodied practice of refusal than an exercise of free speech or one-off demonstrations. Nonviolence interrupts the terror unleashed by the armed, masked men while also revealing that we can live together differently, here and now.
Nonviolence is less a protest than an opening up of another world and an unleashing of a different kind of power.
Part of the reason that nonviolence has caught on is undoubtedly due to the fact that we in Minnesota are no match for the federal government. As many Minnesotans grimly note, they have machine guns and a $175 billion budget; we have whistles and Go Fund Me. In that sense, nonviolence is not carefully chosen as much as it is our only hope. We simply do not have other options.
But I also think Minnesotans have been drawn to nonviolence because of its symbolic significance. On the one hand, it connects the efforts in Minnesota to historical struggles against authoritarianism in the United States. At the same time, an embrace of nonviolence draws a stark contrast between the armed, masked men and those who challenge them.
While they yank people from their cars with their guns drawn, pastors kneel in prayer as they are being detained; while they follow volunteers leaving food shelves, singers hold hands as they shuffle down frozen sidewalks; while they shoot constitutional observers in the back, old ladies stand – sometimes for hours – in Target checkout lines waiting to return their single container of salt.
The armed, masked men clearly communicate terror whereas those who practice nonviolence convey a sense of courage, dignity, and resolve.
Perhaps most importantly, though, nonviolence has interrupted the terror that permeates life here now. It is hard to overstate how scared most of us are. Those of us with citizenship and the skin color and accents that MAGA deems sufficiently American are scared for our brown kin, of course. But we are also scared for ourselves and our children; we do not know how this all ends – for our immigrant neighbors, for our city, for us. We do not know if and when constitutional observation or school patrols or marches will be deemed domestic terrorism. Perhaps we are being paranoid. Perhaps not.
Those who embody nonviolence through civil disobedience, singing, boycotts, and marches have found a way to channel another kind of force amidst the terror. They are able to live in the world as it might be even though they are keenly aware that that world is not yet here. They are not simply protesting peacefully because they believe in the First Amendment. Nor are they merely engaged in symbolic actions. They are saying no to mass deportations with their bodies – with their kneeling, their songs, and their feet.
I’m going to use a Minnesota metaphor to highlight the fact that ICE activity is NOT decreasing in Minneapolis – this siege is starting to feel like a POLAR PLUNGE. At first, there was the shock – alarm, an immediate response, urgent call to action as we hit the icy water.
Next came the settling in phase – our bodies and minds reacted quickly to send help to the most in-need places. We planned, we mobilized, we dug in to survive and keep our community supported. We marched, we got loud and shouted, we cried, we resisted and refused to let the pain take over.
Now, we’ve moved into the NUMB phase, when this absolute shit-show is starting to feel like the new normal. We’ve begun to grow numb to the fact that THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Other people are losing interest, but we’re still in it. Nothing has changed.
It is not normal to sneak food to our neighbors who can’t leave the house; it is not normal for kids to log into school from home or get into a car with a stranger for safe rides because they’re afraid they will be picked up by ICE on the street while trying to take the bus to their learning institution; it is not normal to be forced to skip work – work you desperately WANT to carry on with – just to keep your family safe.
I have MANY friends – doctors, teachers, service workers, and more – who have been told to keep their passport on their person while at work, just in case someone demands to see it. But carrying documentation doesn’t matter, anyway. They’re taking legally documented Americans and holding them in horrific conditions until someone fights to get them released. But we’re only seeing a tiny fragment of personal stories on the news . . . what about all the other Liams who are still missing and detained, what about all the people who don’t get media attention and need someone to fight for them, too?
Every single day, my Signal chats alert me to increased – no, NOT DECREASED, no matter what you’re seeing reported – ICE presence in my neighborhood. Agents are following school buses home, waiting outside ERs, conducting random traffic stops with massive guns in tow, blocking our roadways, attacking peaceful observers, and acting like they own this city because our government continues to give them total control.
Let’s keep showing up, Minnesota. We are resilient, peaceful, caring, and strong people and we can handle more, if we must. We shouldn’t have to, but we CAN. I hope this MADNESS ends soon, but until it does we'll continue to show up. We’ll keep afloat in this ICY hell and be the frozen best, for our country’s future and for our neighbors.
– Erin Soderberg Downing
via social media
February 3, 2026
The pressure is working. ICE is being pushed back by neighbors watching, documenting, and defending their communities. This isn’t just another protest tactic. It’s an old, hard-won strategy of community self-defense and oversight that harks back to “cop-watch” activism from the 1990s and 2000s.
Such actions are descendants of police patrols pioneered by the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement in the 1960s, when Black and Indigenous organizers first walked their blocks with eyes wide open and cameras ready to deter state violence.
In Minneapolis, that tactic has become literal street muscle: ordinary people tracking the movements of ICE and CBP agents during Operation Metro Surge.
They’ve shared real-time alerts on encrypted apps, sounded whistles to warn communities, and streamed footage — forcing the federal government to justify itself, frame by frame, in front of the public eye.
That pressure worked. On February 4, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced that 700 federal officers would be pulled out of Minnesota immediately – though thousands still remain and the so-called surge will grind on. This isn’t some friendly concession; it’s a partial retreat under unbearable public scrutiny.
Labor unions, faith leaders, community groups, and small businesses even planned a “Day of Truth and Freedom” general strike in Minnesota to interrupt daily life and force political accountability – a reminder that resistance isn’t just about being on camera but about hurting the engine of normalcy that allows state violence to flourish.
The courts have long recognized that recording law enforcement is a First Amendment right, and the uproar in Minneapolis shows why those protections matter now more than ever.
So if you’ve wondered why a bunch of neighborhood watchers chasing ICE agents matters, here’s your answer: it’s the kind of grounded, direct, community-based resistance that forces power into the light where it once operated in obscurity.
It’s not a substitute for systemic change, but it is a living, breathing example of ordinary people refusing to be passive subjects of state violence. And in doing so, we are witnessing not just protest, but accountability in action.
This morning, White House Border Czar Tom Homan held a press conference on DHS operations in Minnesota and announced what he called a “drawdown,” claiming roughly 700 agents would leave. More than 2,000 federal agents remain embedded across Minnesota under what DHS is now calling “prioritized” or “targeted” enforcement. This still leaves thousands of agents in the state tearing apart families while attacks on peaceful observers continue unabated.
Today’s announcement is simply a political stunt as debate rages about funding and accountability for DHS. There are still thousands of masked, unaccountable agents terrorizing our communities, attacking peaceful observers, and undermining Minnesotans’ constitutional and civil rights. Throughout this ‘surge,’ Minnesotans across the state have made our demands as clear as possible: ICE needs to leave our state.
This sudden shift in language is not accidental. It comes as federal agencies face budget negotiations and mounting public scrutiny. Rebranding mass enforcement as “prioritized” enforcement is an attempt to preserve funding, not to protect communities.
This announcement makes clear that the groundswell of everyday Minnesotans standing up to these atrocities is starting to work, but this is not a victory. Until families can leave their homes without fear of being profiled and children can go to school without worrying about being used as bait, Minnesotans will remain insistent on our demand for ICE to leave our state and will continue to peacefully push to make this a reality.
Additionally, comments in regards to federal forces not leaving until our state stops standing up for our neighbors is a non-starter. The First Amendment exists whether this administration likes it or not, and demanding we stop peacefully standing up to attacks on our neighbors and communities is not even remotely a possibility. Until our state is safe for all of us, Minnesotans will not give up the fight.
TIME magazine just released a new cover focused on Minneapolis, calling it “The Siege of an American City,” as more than 3,000 federal agents have been deployed here in what’s being described as the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.
The story details how the operation has brought fear and disruption to immigrant communities, shut down business corridors, sparked mass protests, and led to the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.
For Mayor Jacob Frey, now in his third term, the crisis has put the city at the center of a national political fight, caught between federal pressure and residents demanding stronger resistance.
TIME says Minneapolis has become the clearest example yet of what mass deportation looks like on the ground.
Related Off-site Links:
“These Are People’s Livelihoods”: Minnesota’s Economy in Crisis Amid ICE Surge – Lauren Aratani (The Guardian, February 10, 2026).
Grassroots Group Haven Watch Grows to Support Released Detainees from Whipple Building – Nina Moini and Ellen Finn (MPR News, February 10, 2026).
Humanization as Sacred Duty: Stone Circle Wicca Lessons on Defending Dignity in Minneapolis – Manny Moreno (The Wild Hunt, February 9, 2026).
Hungry Families, ICE and Secret Grocery Networks in Minneapolis – Brett Anderson (The New York Times, February 9, 2026).
Filter Blockades: A Tactic from the Twin Cities to Fight ICE and Defend Your Neighborhood – Crimethinc.com (February 6, 2026).
“As Bad As It's Ever Been”: Twin Cities Residents See Few Signs of ICE “Drawdown” – Adam Uwen (Bring Me the News, February 6, 2026).
How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Changed Minneapolis – Julia Terruso (TIME, February 5, 2026).
Shot, Harassed and Threatened: U.S. Citizens Describe Surviving Violent Attacks by Immigration Agents – Democracy Now! (February 5, 2026).
The People of Minneapolis Will Simply Not Let the ICE Thugs Prevail – Dan Simmons (The New Republic, February 5, 2026).
Anti-ICE Organizing Is Creating Counter-Institutions Based on Care – Rashida James-Saadiya (Truthout, February 4, 2026).
Inside the Resistance with Will Stancil – Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson (Public Notice, February 4, 2026).
Nonviolent Movements Not Only Win – They Win Faster – Stockholm University Communications Office (Films for Action, February 3, 2026).
“Backing Down Isn’t an Option”: Minnesota ICE Shootings Mobilize Americans to Join ICE Observer Groups – Lex McMenamin (The Guardian, January 31, 2026).
Letter From Minnesota: Details From an Occupation – Angela Pelster (Literary Hub, January 29, 2026).
The Corporate Enablers of the ICE Crackdown – Judd Legum (Popular Information, January 26, 2026).
Meet the Minneapolis Parents Patrolling Their Schools Amid ICE Operations – Elizabeth Shockman (MPR News, January 16, 2026).
Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities: A Guide to an Updated Model – Crimethinc.com (January 15, 2026).
From Palestine to Minneapolis, ICE and Israel Use the Same Violent Playbook – Ahmad Ibsais (Mondoweiss, January 9, 2026).
After Years Spent Documenting State Terror, I Know It When I See It. And I See It Now in the U.S. and Israel – Janine di Giovanni (The Guardian, January 8, 2026).
The Women Holding Minneapolis Together – Anna Moeslein Glamor, January 7, 2026).
UPDATES: ICE Is What We Are Not – Marianne Williamson (Transform, February 11, 2026).
The Rise of the Rebel Loon Logos – The Nerd of The Rings (February 13, 2026).
Trump’s Cruelty Is the Point: Making America Vicious and Unwelcoming Whether You Live Here or Not – Rebecca Gordon (Common Dreams, February 15, 2026).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• Why Minnesota?
• Knowing Our Rights
• A “Red Alert Moment for American Democracy”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”
• Mike Figueredo on Why Trump Might Be Pushing the U.S. to the Brink of Collapse
• “Most Revolutions Succeed Not Through Violence But Through National Strikes”
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Brent Molnar on the MAGA Cult and Its Intentions
• Garrett Graff: “America Tips Into Fascism”
Image 1: Photographer unknown.
Image 2: A variation on the “Rebel Loon” or “Minnesota Rebel Alliance” symbol. It combines Polaris (the North Star), the common loon, the state bird of Minnesota, and the Star Wars Rebel Alliance logo. It was first created by Reddit user u/feral_user_, who released it into the public domain in early January 2026 for free use as a symbol of resistance against injustice and, specifically, against ICE.
Image 3: Getty Images / Angelina Katsanis.
Image 4: Getty Images / Brandon Bell.
