I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third week — with no clear end in sight — I’ve received a steady string of messages from increasingly concerned friends across the country. They all start the same way: Uh… is this really as bad as it looks from the outside?
My answer to that question is easy: no, it’s worse. Not since the pandemic has my daily life been ruptured in such a frightening and surreal fashion. Then, at least, there was a semblance of the country being united. Morons who rallied against masks and vaccines aside, most Americans could at least agree that the world would be a better place if Covid-19 didn’t exist.
There’s no such comfort with ICE, which is quite literally a hostile, heavily armed, masked police force violently occupying Minneapolis. No one — certainly not the ICE agents themselves — is even really bothering with the pretext that they’re here to make the city safer. This is Donald Trump’s revenge campaign, and they’re the foot soldiers.
Demonstrators protest outside of the Whipple federal building on January 17, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Protests have ramped up around the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration enforcement agent during an incident in south Minneapolis on January 7
Unfortunately, their obvious incompetence and buffoonery does not make them less dangerous. The killing of Renee Good was bad enough, but the blatant lies DHS Secretary Kristi Noem spun about the incident — and the FBI’s refusal to share evidence that would allow the state of Minnesota to investigate the death of one of its own citizens — made it clear, to both sides, that ICE would face no consequences for anything they did, at least not while Trump is in the White House.
In the days since, ICE agents have acted accordingly. We know they are often under-trained, wear masks to avoid being identified, and have the unquestioning support of an administration almost openly pushing for violence in the streets of Minneapolis. At the time I’m writing this, Trump is still toying with invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying 1,500 paratroopers to the city. How worried am I about what ICE will do to those who oppose its tactics? Enough that I considered whether I should publish this story anonymously.
And so the second question people are texting me — Are YOU okay? — is harder to answer. I guess that’s because the answer is no. Call me naïve, but despite plenty of evidence for the ghoulishness and cynicism of the Trump administration and its operatives, I was not prepared for them to unleash this level of chaos and violence on my city.
Demonstrators protest toward exiting vehicles outside of the Whipple federal building. Spray-painted signage.
Federal officers line up outside. Protestors acknowledged indigenous land.
Protestors continued to show up in numbers.
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