I met Will Stancil two days before he got booted from his neighborhood Signal chat. We were at the Uptown Minneapolis VFW at an event hosted by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a thank-you party for Minnesotans who fought ICE in ways big and small. There were tacos and drinks, and dancing, though I never saw Stancil dance, which is not to say it never happened. A friend of mine who knows of Stancil from his work on school desegregation was surprised I knew who he was. She had no idea he was a combative, divisive online personality. She didn’t know about his arguments with leftists on Bluesky or his fights with white supremacists on X, or about the fact that some of Stancil’s erstwhile opponents have, in light of his new proclivity for chasing and getting tear-gassed by ICE, begrudgingly accepted him as a sort of antihero.
Will Stancil, man of the people or just an annoying guy?
The internet personality has been chasing ICE on the streets of Minneapolis, but fellow locals are divided on whether he’s helping or hurting the cause.
When I approached Stancil, who is almost shockingly boyish-looking in person, he was talking to former New York City comptroller Brad Lander. He had flown to Minneapolis that day to learn about the local response to a federal occupation. Stancil offered to let Lander tag along on one of his ICE patrols — a practice locals now call “commuting” — and said I could join them if I wanted. It’s this openness to media attention that got Stancil kicked out of the Signal group, where many commuters are wary of press, hoping to not draw too much attention. Stancil has talked to, and in some cases been joined by, reporters from CNN, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Economist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Minnesota Reformer, Racket MN, Mpls.
