share
download .zip
report bug or abuse
Buy me a coffee
MINNEAPOLIS—Will Stancil, a 40-year-old lawyer, whipped his blue Honda Fit through an ice-covered parking lot, down an alley then back onto a main strip on the south side of Minneapolis. Outside the car, whistles screamed and horns blared. Inside, voices crackled over the dispatch.
“OK,” said one woman on the call — essentially an open access, audio group chat on the Signal app. “I’m on a Wagoneer, license F-X-K 7-7-5. Looks like four men inside, tactical gear.”
The woman’s voice was calm but halting, like she wanted to make sure she got everything right. “There’s a car in front of it. They’re trying to lose us. They’re willing to sacrifice the second car.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Stancil turned right onto Lake Street, a major commercial strip not far from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent had shot and killed Renee Good last Wednesday, sparking national outrage and something akin to a local revolt.
Stancil knew he was close. The whistles outside the car were almost in sync now with the ones coming in over the radio.
“I should start honking,” he said to me, sitting in the passenger seat.
And then he saw it, up the block, on the other side of the road, the second truck in the ICE convoy: a white Ford Expedition with tinted windows and Utah plates.
A team of activists on foot sprinted past on the sidewalk. Whistles blared. Stancil accelerated, whipping across traffic in a U-turn. The engine puttered; the inside of his 15-year-old hatchback was starting to smell like burning oil.
Within seconds Stancil was on the Expedition’s tail, no more than a few metres off the white bumper. He laid into his horn. “Meep-Meep-Meep!” It sounded like the Roadrunner. “Meep-Meep-Meep!”
Ahead, the SUV slowed. Before it stopped entirely, a camouflaged ICE agent, weapon clearly visible, leapt out from the passenger side.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
I spent most of last week in Minneapolis, watching the aftermath of Good’s shooting play out on the ground. On Monday, I spent several hours riding along with Stancil as he tracked ICE agents near his home southwest of downtown.
What I saw felt like the natural endgame of the Trump project. For more than a decade Trump and his followers have been spreading a dark fantasy of America: one where every major city is overrun by illegal immigrants causing chaos and committing violent crimes.
Now, in Minneapolis, that fantasy — spread through Trump’s own ceaseless screeds and online through YouTube and TikTok videos, Facebook posts and racist diatribes on X — is boomeranging back into the real world. Having imagined a violent war for the future of America, Trump and his minions seem set on creating one in Minnesota.
A family member reacts after a federal immigration officer used a battering ram to break down a door before making an arrest Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis.
John Locher/The Associated Press
Over five days in Minneapolis, I witnessed a city on the edge of a nervous breakdown. It genuinely felt like an invasion — a hostile national force confronting furious locals equipped mostly with whistles, snowballs and funny signs.
In parts of the city, normal life continues undisturbed. Coffee shops are open. The bars were busy Friday night. In others, signs of the siege are everywhere: immigrant businesses are closed; schools are half full; convoys packed with ICE agents haunt the streets.
“What’s happening in Minnesota defies belief,” Gov. Tim Walz said in a televised address Wednesday night. “News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos, disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Beginning in December, the Trump administration sent thousands of heavily armed and poorly trained ICE and border patrol agents to Minnesota ostensibly to investigate fraud and sweep up illegal immigrants. But up close, what they’re doing looks more like mass racial profiling and violent counter-insurgency than it does policing.
“If you want to investigate fraud, bring an accountant,” Stancil, a Democratic activist and education policy adviser told me as we drove around his neighbourhood Monday. The ICE agents in Minnesota don’t look like accountants. They look like soldiers. And you don’t bring soldiers unless you want to fight a war.
What I saw in Minnesota — both in person and on videos captured by bystanders, reporters and volunteers like Stancil — was agents patrolling the state, gassing crowds, and detaining people, often violently. Those scooped up have included U.S. citizens, Native Americans, pregnant women, teenagers and dozens of Minnesota residents with active refugee claims. On Wednesday night, ICE agents allegedly attacked a car carrying six children with flash bangs and smoke grenades.
After the ICE agent leapt out of the truck Stancil was tailing Monday, he went sprinting around the corner. The truck followed him, with Stancil no more than a few metres behind, hammering on his horn.
At the turn off to an alley, two more officers jumped out. It was clear suddenly they were chasing someone. With Stancil right behind they ripped down the alley. They passed an old man standing by himself. “F—- ICE,” he said, giving the truck the finger.
Near the end of the alley, one of the officers caught a young, Hispanic-looking man. Without appearing to read him his rights or formally arrest him, he threw him into the back of the SUV and went screaming off.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“There’s a detainee in the car!” Stancil yelled into the open Signal call. “They’ve abducted someone!”
Stancil kept chasing. At the next intersection, with bystanders screaming and whistling and honking horns, Stancil jammed his car into park, jumped out and ran, shouting at the truck.
He later told me he was trying to get the detainee’s name. “If I got his name … someone could check in on him,” he said. “Because I didn’t get his name, because I screwed that up, and that’s on me, he’s just gone. … He could be in El Paso. He could be in El Salvador. No one knows.”
Federal law enforcement agents confront anti-ICE protesters during a demonstration outside the Bishop Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 15, 2026.
Octavia Jones/AFP via Getty Images
It’s not that no criminals are being arrested in Minnesota. One Hmong man I spoke to said a member of his community, who had been in the U.S. for at least 25 years, had recently been detained and deported by ICE for having committed “a little crime.” The “little crime,” he later told me, was sexually abusing his seven-year-old niece.
But the evidence is clear that that kind of case is the exception. According to documents leaked to the Cato Institute last November, just five per cent of those detained by ICE so far that fiscal year had criminal convictions. Much of the police work ICE agents are doing instead, not just in Minnesota but around the country, amounts to harassing anyone who looks brown or Black or anyone who speaks with an accent, demanding they prove their citizenship.
Jenny Macua, a mother of six who was born in and has spent her entire life in Minnesota, told me she was stopped by ICE on her way to work last week. “They asked if I was a U.S. citizen. They wanted my ID,” Macua, whose parents are Mexican, said.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
I asked her if there was any plausible explanation for the stop. Was she speeding? Was her tail light out? The only reason, she said, was “my skin colour.”
None of this is hidden. ICE agents are openly going door-to-door demanding Asian, Hispanic and Black residents show their papers. They’re trawling local businesses, stopping drivers and harassing residents on the street.
They’re also playing a volatile game of cat-and-mouse with activists like Stancil. Since last week, Stancil has been spending hours every day driving around the southside in his aging hatchback listening to his neighbourhood Signal chat, trying to intercept ICE vehicles.
“The way I see it, you keep them busy, it helps keep people safe,” he said. “I mean, obviously, we can’t do anything illegal. All we can do is follow them, make noise, report back where they are. But they can’t really do their job when you’re doing that, right?”
Stancil said he’s careful to never break the law. “You can’t antagonize them. You can’t escalate. You can’t threaten them. You certainly can’t make an aggressive move toward them and can’t physically obstruct them,” he said. At the same time, he admits chasing armed federal agents isn’t necessarily the safest way to spend his time.
“It’s a chaotic situation,” he said. “I think what everyone agrees is just that the alternative is worse.”
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
On Monday, Stancil lost the white SUV after a couple of blocks. As he was turning back toward his neighbourhood, he picked up a new target. “I’m behind a Black Wagoneer, 3-3-2-2-4-1,” he said into the Signal chat.
As soon as Stancil started tailing the Wagoneer, the truck’s driver started trying to shake him. He sped up, slowed suddenly and pulled into a street parking spot. When Stancil braked in turn, the truck veered back into traffic and sped away.
“They’re trying to juke us!” Stancil said. “They know it’s us!”
The truck signalled a left turn then went straight through an intersection. It ran a red light — with Stancil right behind — pulled onto the highway, darted between lanes, then pulled off again at the next exit. At one point, Stancil was following so close behind that if the agent driving had tapped his brakes the two would almost certainly have collided.
Tributes are left at a makeshift memorial for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis.
Adam Gray/The Associated Press
I believe the protesters I saw in Minneapolis are on the right side of history. At the same time, spending time with Stancil and watching demonstrations all week, I came away almost certain that if something doesn’t change, more people — just like Good — are going to die.
The responsibility should be on the federal government to back down. You can investigate fraud and execute immigration warrants without violence and repression. You can certainly do it in a city where for decades the most famous battle was a feud between food co-ops in 1975.
I just don’t think there’s any chance that’s going to happen. The Trump movement has been preaching blood in the streets since 2016. Why would they stop now when it’s finally beginning to flow?
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
As Stancil was driving me back to my car Monday, another call went out on the Signal chat. Soon, we could hear whistles and horns in the distance. When Stancil turned back onto Lyndale Avenue, a plume of gas was visible in the intersection at the end of the block. Stancil pulled over, jumped out and went running toward the chaos.
I don’t know exactly what happened in that intersection. I only saw the aftermath. But bystanders told me a truck full of ICE agents had stopped, thrown gas canisters and driven away. In one local’s video, you can see a young mother sprinting away from the chemical fumes with a toddler on her hip.
“Let’s be very, very clear,” Walz said Wednesday night, “this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
They went to the Midwest to fight a phantom war against imaginary enemies. They ended up, within days, as an occupying force. In his first address as president, in 2017, Trump spoke of “American carnage.” In Minnesota, in 2026, the carnage is finally here.
Opinion Headlines Newsletter
Take a stand with this regular roundup of the best from our columnists.
You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply.
Conversation
Top Comments
Comment by Kate.
Comment by Lisa.
Comment by Beatriz.
Comment by Lesley.
All Comments
Comment by Norm.
Comment by Marnie.
Comment by Lisa.
Comment by Kate.
Comment by Alex.
Active Conversations