The View from Minneapolis
Our City stands up for more than our neighbors, but for the America that never has been yet.
This article first appeared in The Indypendent, February 6, 2026
By Cara Letofsky
MINNEAPOLIS—The first visible sign that Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrived in my community was last November, when just before Thanksgiving, ICE agents raided Bro-Tek, a small manufacturing company in St Paul. They nabbed 14 people, most of whom lacked any criminal record.
The response from residents, advocates, and political leaders was swift. A couple of hundred people showed up on one of the first cold days of the season to declare their commitment to protecting the community from unjustifiable detainment and deportations.
But it wasn’t the first time we gathered to stand against attacks on our community.
Preparing for the Worst
Ever since voters sent Donald Trump back to the White House, people across this progressive bastion have been meeting to build ways to stand up to Trump and the MAGA Republicans, seeking ways to buttress against attacks on marginalized communities. Some groups met weekly to hold signs on street corners; others practiced “community is resistance” by holding monthly potlucks to meet others concerned about Trump’s penchant for authoritarianism; and still others hosted immigrant rights legal observer trainings in their living rooms. We were showing up to create the world we wanted to live in, even as Trump was dismantling it.
We were also watching what federal agents from the various agencies collectively referred to as “ICE” were doing in other cities. And we were taking note of how people organized themselves in response. We learned about whistles, the networks that provided rides, food deliveries, and the importance of capturing ICE’s kidnappings and attacks on peaceful protestors on video.
Even though we knew Trump would inevitably turn his personal army on Minneapolis, it still sounded ridiculous when, after several days of insulting our Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and calling Somalis “garbage”, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Minneapolis would be the next target in what they dubbed “Operation Metro Surge”.
Throughout December, more ICE agents showed up on our streets, while members of the Somali and Latino communities – whether citizens, legal residents, or not – were staying away from their traditional destinations.
In the midst of the traditional holiday hubbub, the community connections ignited in preparation. One of the weekly street corner vigilers started handing out whistles. The group chats and local business and neighborhood organizations encouraged people to visit immigrant-run businesses up and down Lake Street – the main street across South Minneapolis that has always been home to new immigrants. Legal observer and Know Your Rights trainings moved from living rooms to auditoriums and church sanctuaries. And thousands of people faced bitterly cold temperatures to march the almost two miles from Mercado Central – a hub of small Latino entrepreneurs – to Karmel Mall – a hub for small Somali entrepreneurs in support of immigrant communities.
The hyper-local groups of neighbors that had formed to protect members of our community had grown into full-on human networks with an intentional anti-authoritarian ethos. With Operation Metro Surge underway, signups swelled. Not just in our corner of Minneapolis, but throughout this city of 430,000 people.
As December drew to a close, an influencer with ties to MAGA and Republicans released a video of himself visiting Somali-run childcare centers that received state support, demanding to see the children in their care, and accusing them of fraud. The video got millions of views and was amplified by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, further targeting the Somali community.
Then, just days into the new year, veteran ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed community observer Renee Good while she was trying to hightail it away from him. Once again, the eyes of the country turned to Minneapolis, and the tension in the city turned up to 11.
ICE’s Performative Aggression
After Good’s murder, ICE agents’ performative aggressive tactics ramped up. Minneapolis and St Paul began to feel like a war zone. Lawless troops were roving the city streets, nearby suburbs, and some smaller communities outside the metro area with immigrant populations.
Testimonies captured on video and witnessed in person flooded in. Friends shared firsthand accounts of neighbors being taken from their homes, their cars, while exiting a store, while at work. Stories emerged of construction workers being trapped on rooftops, of ICE having lunch at a Mexican restaurant, then returning afterwards to detain the staff who had just prepared their meal. They nabbed an observer from the street in front of my sister’s house, leaving their car with the bashed-in window on the street. (“Those ASSHOLES!!!,” she texted. “They were just outside my front door. Then gone”.) That was also the morning that the Rapid Response Signal channel reported Gregory Bovino, the Trump administration’s “commander at large” for Operation Metro Surge, just a few blocks down the street.
It is surreal to see such unmitigated attacks by federal agents on humans happening on the streets that I know so well.
Yet, we’ve also seen Minneapolis showing up so amazingly in defense of each other.
It is so clear that what Trump’s ICE is doing in Minnesota is not moral, just, or legal. One judge recently called their actions “bereft of humanity”. Anyone with a heart open enough to let the truth in can see this.
Minneapolis is standing up for all progressive communities across the nation that believe in protecting their neighbors. For the past decade – ever since Trump rode down the golden escalator – we’ve been watching Trump and his Republican MAGA movement tear down the structures of decency that we thought our country was based upon. We’ve marched, and we’ve voted – to some effect, but not enough – to protect the goodness we thought our country was about, that we hope our country can be about: welcoming, based on the pursuit of justice, valuing the inherent dignity of each person. Many of us in Blue America welcome opening the circle wide.
The Legacy of the George Floyd Protests
When Trump began his second term by actively tearing down the ties that bind us, many of us were ready to lean in to protect not just our individual friends and family and neighbors, but also the larger us.
In Minneapolis, we’ve been here before. In late May 2020, in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, blocks – especially those near Lake Street and other main corridors that were most impacted by the civil unrest – got connected. We used new communication platforms and met almost every day to share news about what we were seeing and hearing on the street. We established patrol watches through the night to make sure our bodies, our homes, and our neighborhood businesses remained intact. Those very connections that were established in the wake of George Floyd’s murder are the foundation of what we see in Minneapolis today.
Now, the networks established in those chaotic days in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death have expanded, as has our charge. Yet the work is still the same. Then, we stood in defense of each other block by block. Today, we are standing in defense of what Adam Serwer calls “neighborism”: “a commitment to protecting the people around you no matter who they are or where they come from.”
ICE supporters might think we are just protesting ICE and Donald Trump. Instead, Minneapolitans are standing in defense of the America we want to be: the America, as Langston Hughes wrote, that never has been yet. We believe that the idea of America is still worth fighting for.
On January 24, two Border Patrol agents shot and killed a second community observer, Alex Pretti, at point-blank range while he was pinned to the ground. Trump changed the on-site leadership of Operation Metro Surge, which has vowed to be less confrontational.. But it doesn’t look like that on the ground. Agents are still picking up law-abiding residents who have a legal right to be in this country. Friends continue to have their neighbors nabbed, cars are still abandoned on the streets after ICE agents pull the drivers out, and neighborhood patrollers are still patrolling, especially in sensitive areas around schools and places of worship, and another month’s rent is due for numerous families who haven’t had an income for two months.
ICE out now.
Excellent work! Thanks!
Thank you so much! Keep up the good work!