City at unease

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—Before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations began in Minneapolis, Luke DeBoer didn’t consider himself an activist.

“I guess I would say I’m politically aware and, you know, obviously interested in keeping in touch with what’s happening politically,” DeBoer, a Minneapolis resident, told me over the phone. “But I certainly wouldn’t consider myself an activist.”

Operation Metro Surge—the name of the ICE and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection operation that began in Minnesota’s Twin Cities late last year—hit home for DeBoer, he said, because it affected his friends and others in his community.

What also hit home: the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two protesters killed in recent weeks by immigration enforcement agents. The shootings, captured on video by bystanders, have drawn national attention and galvanized local opposition to the federal operation in Minneapolis.

“I guess I would say I related to Renee Good and Alex in a way because they’re both in their 30s—which I am as well,” DeBoer said. “And I believe, with both of them, they were trying to look out for their community and trying to, at the very least, document what was happening in their very own neighborhood.”

Many others in Minneapolis feel similarly. DeBoer joined roughly 50,000 people who took to the streets of downtown Minneapolis last week in a sprawling march to protest ICE activities. This week, thousands have gathered again, and more protests were planned for Saturday. Also on Saturday, a federal judge in Minnesota declined to halt the immigration enforcement operation following a lawsuit from the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Amid the conflict over the operation, many demonstrators claimed they had protested little or never before in the past, but the Trump administration’s activities in their city have motivated them to brave the frigid temperatures—at least for a few hours.

After about 5 p.m. local time on Friday, the crowd standing in the shadow of the city’s U.S. Bank Stadium had dwindled to just a few dozen people. One of them was Rebecca Wandrel, a bus driver for a Head Start program in nearby St. Paul.

“ICE just came to one of our Head Start centers at McDonough Community Center on Monday, and the programs have been closed since Monday,” Wandrel said. “We’ve heard about kids’ parents being taken, and one of the kids on my route, the weekend after Renee Good was killed, his whole family up and left the state because they were scared.”

Another woman, Naxhielly, declined to give her last name. She said friends and loved ones of hers had been arrested by ICE and taken to detention facilities in Texas.

“They’re taking kids,” Naxhielly said, referencing the case of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained with his father, an asylum-seeker, and transferred to a Texas facility earlier this month. “They’re saying that they’re going after criminals and terrorists, but what has a 5-year-old done?”

DeBoer claimed ICE agents detained a friend of his for 10 hours then released her once they learned she was a U.S. citizen. Other friends have begun carrying their passports with them at all times, he said.

Still, the anti-ICE demonstrations haven’t brought the city to a standstill. Protesters across the country and in Minneapolis attempted a coordinated economic shutdown on Friday, encouraging employees not to show up for work, students not to show up to school, and consumers not to do any shopping. Yet a local Target and shops and cafes downtown still bustled with business. ICE agents were nowhere to be seen. Were it not for news and social media, a casual observer in some parts of town might not know ICE operations or protests were even occurring.

Shawn Holster, chair emeritus of the Minneapolis Republican Party, said in an interview at the party’s downtown offices that he passed by the massive protest downtown last week yet had little trouble commuting through traffic—as long as he avoided the street that marchers were occupying.

“These protests are happening in very isolated areas, very isolated spots. It’s business as usual in 95% of the city, if not more,” he said. “I think I got caught up in a little bit of a horn-honking and whistle-blowing thing going on yesterday. … [But] it’s not the disruption being displayed nationally and internationally.”

Certainly, though, the nation is noticing. President Donald Trump has praised the Minneapolis operation as a success, and administration officials have claimed the surge of federal agents in the city is focused on removing violent criminals from the streets. But Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has castigated the operation—with many videos circulating online showing masked agents making targeted arrests—as an “invasion,” and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called it a “threat to public safety.”

As that conflict has played out in news headlines, the deaths of Good and Pretti seem to have produced a more conciliatory posture from the president. Trump this week promised a “very honorable and honest investigation” of the Pretti incident, and he reassigned Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, who’d been overseeing the Minneapolis operation, to a post in California. Trump instead sent White House border czar Tom Homan, who promptly announced there would be a plan for a “drawdown” in Minneapolis and that he was working to make the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book.”

“The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation,” Homan said on Thursday, referring to cooperation from local officials. “I’m staying till the problem’s gone. But we’ve made a lot of progress, a lot of progress in the past few days. You’re going to see massive changes here in the city.”

Still, opponents in the city are making their voices heard. Many of the city’s crowd-gathering protests have taken place down by the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis’ Southeastern corner, where authorities are holding some detainees.

On Thursday, roughly 20 protesters gathered outside the federal building in temperatures well below freezing to hurl insults at vehicles driving in and out of the parking lot.

“This is my first time ever coming out to a protest,” said Chris Gale, a military veteran. “I don’t think American lives are an acceptable amount of collateral damage for immigration enforcement. … I never wore masks when I was overseas. … I joined the military to fight this kind of thing.”

Another demonstrator who only gave his name as Justin also said he was new to protesting. He was particularly concerned about the Trump administration’s initial defense of the Good and Pretti shootings, in spite of video evidence that contradicted or called into question officials’ claims.

“We … instantly watched them come to conclusions and … call them domestic terrorists,” he said. “The video evidence doesn’t show any of that.”

Outside of protests, some city residents have used group chats to organize meals to bring to people afraid to leave their homes for fear of being detained by ICE. Other residents have walked around their neighborhoods looking out for cars with tinted windows, out-of-state plates, and multiple males in the front seats, possible indicators of a federal presence. They’ve taken photos of those vehicles, circulated them, and carried whistles to warn neighbors of the vehicles’ presence.

While Luke DeBoer hasn’t gotten involved in those neighborhood watch groups, he said he has tried to help pay for rent and groceries for people affected by ICE’s activities. While he agreed much of city life in Minneapolis has remained normal, he believes there’s an undercurrent of opposition among his neighbors.

“It is resonating with people in a way that doesn’t feel like a political thing,” he said. “I would say even compared to the George Floyd protests … this feels like it’s breaking through on a different level with people.”