Version imprimablePresident Donald Trump is at war with Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom he hates as a political rival, and at war with liberal Minneapolis, the state’s largest city. Trump has now sent 3,000 agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into Minneapolis, 1,000 more than there were before ICE murdered activist Renée Nicole Good. There are now more ICE agents in Minneapolis than there are police in the metropolitan area. The majority of the inhabitants see this as an occupation that is bringing fear and more violence into their city.
ICE agents, masked, wearing bulletproof vests, and carrying firearms and chemical sprays, appear at schools, hospitals, churches, and businesses, and without arrest warrants, grab brown and black people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, put them into cars and take them away. Some are later released; some are shipped to far away cities to make it difficult for friends and families to find and help them. Because of ICE patrols, Minneapolis and other nearby districts have closed their schools for the next few weeks, offering virtual learning instead.
President Trump and Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, claim that ICE agents enjoy “absolute immunity.” But a federal judge, Kate M. Menendez issued a temporary injunction forbidding ice agents from retaliating against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” and from using “crowd dispersal tools” in retaliation for protected speech and from stopping and detaining people in cars unless they were forcibly blocking ICE. Judges in California, Illinois and Washington, D.C. have issued similar rulings in suits brought by immigrant rights organizations.
Both ordinary people and the city’s and state’s politicians, like Governor Tim Walz and mayor Jacob Frey consider what is happening to be an illegal, violent occupation. And there is resistance. Wherever ICE agents appear, members of activist networks blow their whistles to alert their neighbors and many come into the street to shout at the ICE agents to get out. Others have used their cars to block the streets and impede ICE. Some activists have thrown snowballs at ice agents, others have slashed ICE agents’ cars’ tires, and some have fired fireworks at the agents. The confrontations often become chaotic and highly emotional as local residents filled with fear and anger take courage to challenge the armed masked men who have come into their communities.
While on the one hand the militant resistance is admirable, on the other there is fear that it may provide Trump with the excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act which allows the president to send federal troops into any city or state. The Act can be invoked “to address an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of constitutionally secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect said rights.” The people of Minneapolis would argue that it is Trump who is creating the violence and depriving people of their rights.
Trump’s Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the actions of Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, accusing them of interfering with ICE. Frey told ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
Trump hates Walz because he was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate on the ticket that opposed him and vice-president J.D. Vance in 2024. And he hates Minneapolis where a large majority vote Democratic. And he hates brown immigrants because he’s a racist.
The people of Minneapolis are standing up to Trump and around the country people are hoping they continue their impressive bottom-up peaceful protests and that they—and we—will win.
17 January 2026
