MN ICE Watch Jan. 12-16: Daily Updates on Trump’s Invading Troops

Having trouble keeping up with the fascist Trump administration's "largest ever" wave of immigration stormtroopers that continues to terrorize Minnesota? You're not alone. The rolling updates below will provide nugget-sized intel/links/embeds amid this dizzyingly depressing news cycle, hopefully making you feel a little better-informed and/or connected to your community. Feel free to contribute in the comments!

TUESDAY 1.13

Does locally headquartered Target Corp. give a shit about anything outside of its stock ticker? Recent history suggests: no. And now the mega-retailer finds itself in yet another "tough political spot" as immigration agents rampage through its store, the Wall Street Journal reports. (On Monday the reliably unhelpful Target PR apparatus declined to comment to the Star Tribune.)

Six federal prosecutors, including prominent Minnesota fraud investigation lead Joseph H. Thompson, quit Tuesday, the New York Times has learned. Their reason? "The Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter," reports locally based Times man Ernesto Londoño.

A little after 10 this morning, immigration forces showed up on Park Avenue and 34th Street in south Minneapolis, just down the street from where ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Brown last Wednesday. Agents reportedly attempted to snatch a woman from her car and were chased off by protestors. As has become customary, agents poisoned the neighborhood with teargas before retreating.

Oh, hell yeah: Meet the badass north Minneapolis security worker who dismissed ICE agents from the McDonald's on West Broadway Avenue. “You can’t come back here, bro,” Wooten says in video of the altercation. “I’m talking to your manager,” the agent shot back, to which Wooten responded: “No, you’re talking to security, I’m in charge.” ICE bailed after Wooten stood guard with “10 toes down,” as he tells North News.

“I was doing my job like I’m supposed to,’’ Wooten, 49, tells reporters David Pierini and Azhae’la Hanson. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. I just want to make my family safe because I’ve been here three years.”

Privacy advocates say federal agents are stealing data to track and intimidate Minnesota protesters, Jon Collins reports for MPR News.

The Minnesota Reformer's Madison McVan goes on a ridealong with the community patrollers determined to undermine ICE and Border Patrol agents. “If they know that somebody is watching, they’re significantly less likely to stop somebody,” Elle Neubauer tells McVan. “Often when they pull over and people hop on a whistle or on their horn, they’ll just leave.”

Christina Rank, a 25-year-old special education teacher in Inver Grove Heights, was detained at ICE's Fort Snelling detention facility for almost 12 hours, Kristi Miller reports for the Pioneer Press.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained a trove of leaked documents showing immigration agents are "terrified" of the backlash their actions may create. “There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around," one high-level Department of Homeland Security official tells Klippenstein.

Oh, great: Right-wing influencers are flooding the Twin Cities to spew misinformation, WIRED reports.

Asks the New Yorker's Jay Caspian Kang in his latest "Fault Lines" column...

Do Americans still believe in mass protest? Or do we just not know of any other possible mechanism, outside voting, for achieving social change? When we take to the streets—which we still do, in great numbers—do we expect something to come of it, or are we out there simply because our understanding of American history tells us that this is what we are supposed to do next?

New York Times photographer David Guttenfelder filed this video essay about what they saw on the ground in Minneapolis.

ProPublica uncovered 40+ cases of immigration officials using banned chokeholds and other potentially deadly maneuvers. The policing tactics that led to George Floyd's murder six years ago "are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign," Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk report.

"Operation Metro Surge" is spiderwebbing into Greater Minnesota as Rochester, Mankato, and Duluth deal with invasions of federal immigration agents, Brian Arola reports for MinnPost.

Now that's journalism:

Union postal workers will rally to demand "ICE Out Of Minnesota!" this Sunday at 11 a.m. at Minneapolis's Lake Street post office (110 E. 31st St.), followed by a march to the site of Renee Nicole Good's killing at 34th & Portland.

Writes National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 9 Executive VP Chris Pennock via press release...

We don’t want postal workers to be associated with ICE operations. We deliver to every house, every day, and we want to maintain trust in the communities we serve. On top of that, we don’t want masked men in our streets acting with impunity, and quite literally killing people. We demand "ICE Out of Minnesota!"

MONDAY 1.12

In a lawsuit filed Monday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul accuse the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge," which has flooded the state with 2,000+ Department of Homeland Security agents, of being "unconstitutional and unlawful." “This has to stop; it just has to stop,” Ellison said at a press conference Monday. You can read the full lawsuit here; you can read a DHS PR hack's pissy response here. The state of Illinois filed a separate, similar lawsuit Monday as well.

Please (please!) enjoy this viral clip of an ICE agent sprinting toward a Twin Cities snow drift and slipping, cartoon-banana-peel style, on some ice, landing hard on his stupid ass, and then jogging, real-life-loser style, straight into the shameful cabin of a Chevy Suburban as protesters laugh at and mock him.

We're big fans of independent journalist Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day publication around these parts, and, as such, we recommend reading his on-the-ground report from ICE-infested Minneapolis.

Observes Broderick...

ICE agents are, simply put, fucking clowns. According to The Atlantic, they receive 47 days of training—in honor of Trump, the 47th president, naturally. Many of them, also, can barely read or write, apparently. The ones I spent the weekend following around didn’t even have proper uniforms, with some wearing sneakers. In Minnesota. In January. These dipshits are also wearing camo in the snow.

The New York Times chronicles how Somali refugees settled in Minnesota, and how the community they built here became villainized by the right. “Once I saw the video,” Minneapolis-based Somali writer Ahmed Ismail Yusuf tells the Times, referencing this lil shit’s propaganda schlock, “I was actually punched in the gut. I just knew something terrible was just on the horizon.”

The Wall Street Journal examines how Minneapolis residents are forming organized networks of “neighbors armed with whistles and cameras” to track ICE agents. 

In this nifty thread, local author Naomi Kritzer outlines ways you can help fight the fascist army in your backyard. 

The Athletic's Jon Krawczynski documents how Tim Phillips, a Minneapolis civil rights/criminal defense lawyer, was hassled Sunday night by Target Center security over his "ICE OUT" T-shirt.

Here, via Fox 9, are the scant details available on an apparently violent ICE raid at a St. Paul Speedway station. Wedge LIVE! posted video of the altercation, writing: “This is gruesome. That man is unconscious, needs medical attention, as they carry him off.”

“Did you not learn from what just happened?” a menacing ICE agent asks a driver in this video, which seems to depict a murderous threat. (This apparently isn’t the first cavalier threat of that nature.) Over in Rosemount, a TikToker captures video of an ICE agent (aka “one dumbfuck cosplaying Grand Theft Auto”) wagging his gun sideways at a motorist. 

American Indians, survivors of our federal government’s genocide on the native population, can’t catch a break in 2026, with the Star Tribune’s Susan Du reporting that four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were recently detained by ICE.

In this clip, Napoleonic ICE commander Gregory Bovino receives a full armed escort out of a Twin Cities Target bathroom as community members taunt him. Bovino's chud army was busy pushing over peaceful protesters earlier today.

Appearing on the mega-popular New York Times podcast The Daily, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara called the killing of Good “predictable” and “entirely preventable.” “The number one is: You don’t place yourself in the path of the vehicle,” O'Hara explains to "HMM!"-spouting host Michael Barbaro. “That’s like traffic stop 101. You don’t do that.”

Two crowdfunding campaigns have been launched in support of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good last week in Minneapolis. One initially referred to “anti-American traitor” “Mayor Frey (who is Jewish).” Hmm! The “Stand With Our Brave ICE Hero” GiveSendGo campaign, which is being promoted by Alpha News’ Liz Collin, has raised more than $200,000 of its $300,000 goal.

On Monday afternoon, Border Patrol agents rampaged through Minneapolis's Lyn-Lake neighborhood with tear gas, reports Ford Fischer of News2Share.