From high school students to elected leaders, Minnesotans are increasingly pushing back against the growing presence of federal immigration officers in their neighborhoods, after days of confrontations and protests.
Neph Sudduth, a resident, paused in tears as she watched officers move through her neighborhood—just blocks from where an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good last week and later clashed with protesters.
“They will hurt you for real! They will hurt you for real!” she yelled to anti-ICE demonstrators, urging people to move away from officers’ vehicles. Moments later, an officer rolled down a window, reached out, and sprayed a protester in the face with a chemical agent at close range.
“How dare they come back to this neighborhood,” Sudduth told NBC News. “How forgone you have to be morally to come back here and stand up and do that with your faces covered?”
On Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she planned to send more agents to Minnesota this week, citing the need to respond to protests while continuing immigration enforcement. President Donald Trump defended the operation Tuesday, saying, “we have taken out killers, rapists and drug dealers, people from mental institutions that came in illegally.” ICE has also posted on social media about arrests of people accused of sex crimes and who they allege are in the country illegally.
Cary Wang, a medic with 50/51, a nonpartisan grassroots group, said he provided medical assistance Tuesday to several people affected by chemical agents.
“I think it’s part of their strategy to intimidate and show that they’re immune to any type of repercussions,” Wang said. “The fact that they’re ramping up their enforcement officers — that they’re bringing more here when they already know it’s a volatile situation. It just doesn’t seem that they’re looking for things to cool down. It looks like they’re actually trying to escalate things.”
Social media posts have captured several of the most tense moments, including clips that appear to show agents questioning people at an electric-vehicle charging station about citizenship, and another in which protesters shout as an agent appears to kneel on a man’s neck during an arrest.
Taken together, the videos and accounts reflect a broader pattern of resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in multiple cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.
In Minneapolis on Tuesday, residents described a neighborhood still heavy with the smell of tear gas following a clash between community members and officers conducting an operation in the area.
Witnesses told NBC News that some residents used whistles to alert others and tried to act as observers as the situation unfolded. They said the confrontation escalated when officers began deploying pepper spray and throwing tear gas canisters—some of which were still on the ground Tuesday afternoon.
Sam Luhmann said he saw numerous armed officers in the area “pounding on doors” and arresting several people. He said the scene quickly turned chaotic.
Then, “they started tackling protesters” and deployed what he believed to be tear gas and pepper balls, Luhmann told NBC News. “It seemed like a war.”
Luhmann, 16, traveled from Chicago with his older brother after Good was killed. He said they wanted to help residents monitor immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis, similar to efforts they participated in when officers were deployed to Chicago last year under “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Many of the clashes, residents say, have unfolded just blocks from where Good was killed.
Tensions rose again after Christian Molina, 40, said officers rear-ended his car and questioned him about his legal status. Molina told NBC News that officers asked whether he was in the country legally.
“Luckily, they didn’t hurt me or shoot at me. But what if they did?” said Molina, a U.S. citizen and father of four. He said he wasn’t doing anything wrong when officers approached him.
“There’s no reason for them to just look at you and try to just chase you.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not comment on Molina’s account.
A crowd that formed around Molina was later hit with tear gas and pepper spray, according to witnesses.
South of Minneapolis in Richfield, Minnesota, two employees at a Target store were arrested Thursday by Border Patrol agents, according to Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Michael Howard.
“Yesterday in Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both who are U.S. citizens. Madness,” Howard said in a Friday news release.
Angela Oberfoell, who said she witnessed the arrests of her co-workers, described the experience to NBC News as “traumatic.”
Oberfoell also shared a video she recorded that shows workers reacting in shock and customers confronting Bovino and other agents.
Another video of the second arrest shows Border Patrol agents following an employee as he filmed them and yelled “f— you” before an agent tackled him to the ground near the store’s entrance.
DHS said the person seen in that video was arrested for “assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.”
Howard said both employees have since been released, but “sustained injuries and untold trauma,” adding that their rights were violated “for no reason whatsoever.”
“We continue to call on ICE to GET OUT of Minnesota,” Howard said.
On Monday, Minnesota officials sued the federal government in an effort to halt the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to the state.
