Do These Homemade Parking Signs Hold Any Real Power?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. 

Your Amazon-Purchased Parking Sign Has No Power Here

Not since Racket asked aloud whether you should huck dog shit in rollout dumpsters has a civic Q intrigued everyday Twin Citians like this one: "Should you obey homemade no parking signs?" To find out, Axios Twin Cities reporter Nick Halter embarked on some literal street-level reporting while exploring this "Nextdoor-type issue that makes neighbors squabble."

Unsurprisingly, neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul have rules or laws on the books about parking in front of walkways, so DIY signage isn't reflective of anything enforceable. (Surprisingly, Halter notes, the lovable weirdos over in St. Paul call walkways "outwalks"—huh!)

St. Paul Public Works considers some signs, like the one pictured above, to be harmless pleas from homeowners. But official-seeming signs that attempt to prohibit parking get removed by the city, Axios found. "We hope that neighbors are being respectful and not blocking outwalks where possible, but also recognize the challenge that some neighborhoods have very limited on-street parking capacity and blocking the outwalks happens," a spokesperson says.

Wow, they really do say "outwalks."

Feds Now Harassing Immigrants With Catch-Release-Catch Tactic

Ivan, 27, came from Guatemala to Minnesota in 2019 to support his family by working construction jobs. Outside of some traffic violations, he has no criminal record.

Last month federal immigration agents spotted, followed, and eventually arrested Ivan at a Menards parking lot in Columbia Heights. And last week, after weeks of detainment, Ivan signed papers that would free him from Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. With his habeas petition granted by a judge, he was ready to seek out a church, thank god, and then see his wife.

“I didn’t even make it to see the sun,” Ivan told MPR News reporter Cait Kelley on Saturday from inside Freeborn County Jail. “Five federal agents were waiting for me.”

The agents cuffed and detained him yet again, this time in the Albert Lea jail. Operation Metro Surge may be over, but lawyers saw the feds have pivoted to a new, quieter strategy of nabbing non-white people to fulfill their quotas: arresting immigrants the moment they exit detention facilities.

“We certainly didn't expect that they would have this kind of farce thing of sending him to Whipple, giving him his possessions back and then walking him right into the hands of some other ICE agents before he could even leave the building,” one of Ivan's lawyers, John Barham, tells MPR.

Racket contributor Dan Suitor, an attorney who has become a habeas-filing machine in 2026, has also seen this stunt pulled on his clients. His take on this: “It's bullshit."

Adds Barham, “ICE never left. Things became less public, became less of a spectacle, but immigrants are still being targeted and persecuted."

These catch-release-catch tactics reflect the new, seemingly illegal ways the federal government is justifying nabbing people off the street. Last week the Trump-friendly Supreme Court agreed to review President Donald Trump's "mandatory detention" policy.

Crime Watch: Strib Publishes Annual Trend Breakdown

If you've seen the 2014 Jake Gyllenhaal vehicle Nightcrawler, you've got a pretty clear picture of the media's relationship to crime. But what if, instead of mainlining short-form video clips shared by your Anoka County uncle, we looked at the actual data?

Funny you should ask, because that's exactly what the Strib does each year, and on Monday reporters Louis Krauss and Jeff Hargarten returned with a pipin' hot batch of year-over-year Minneapolis crime figures (gift link). Big takeaway: Carjackings (-32%), homicides (-29%), shootings (-22%), and robberies (-20%) are all way down, but thefts of vehicle parts and accessories (+49%) are way up. Vehicle thefts, building thefts, and the always terrifying "other" thefts all ticked up by about 8%. Hug your catalytic converters tight, people.

Overall gun violence in Minneapolis has plummeted to around pre-pandemic levels. That mirrors what happened across 36 large American cities through the first six months of 2026; homicide rates have fallen in those places by 31%, according to a study from the Council on Criminal Justice. “Our neighbors are very tight, and we look out for one another, and that helps with safety quite a bit, at least on this block,” Near North resident Sue Tincher tells the Strib.

Gophs Got the Jug

For the first time since 1977, your University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team beat the University of Michigan at home, thus securing ownership of the vaunted Little Brown Jug rivalry trophy. (The Gophs last secured the Jug after beating the Wolverines in Ann Arbor 12 years ago.) After Saturday's 20-14 Big 10 victory over No. 24-ranked Michigan, insane head coach PJ Fleck, last seen smearing the blood of his players over his own face, celebrated his 100th career win with characteristic restraint.

"Besides my marriage and my kids being born, this might be the best day of my life. Row the Bow, Ski-U-Mah, Go Gophers!” Fleck told sideline reporter Jenny Taft.