By:Brian Martucci-
Minnesota Reformer
Federal immigration authorities intensified a weekslong operation in the Twin Cities over the weekend following the Wednesday killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
Residents pushed back, led by a growing network of rapid responders hounding U.S. ICE and Border Patrol vehicles and agents across the metro area.
Thousands marched peacefully in Minneapolis Saturday to remember Good and protest the Trump administration’s expanding immigration crackdown. Many marchers stopped to pay their respects as the procession moved from Powderhorn Park past the intersection where the fatal shooting occurred.
Saturday’s protest, the largest since Good’s killing, was more subdued than a Friday evening gathering outside downtown Minneapolis hotels where ICE agents were said to be staying.
Protesters blew whistles, banged drums and shouted taunts outside the hotels for hours before some tried to force their way into the Canopy by Hilton at 700 Third Street South, causing about $6,000 in damage, the Star Tribune reported. City and state police ordered protesters to disperse around midnight and arrested about 30 people without incident, officials said Saturday.
Near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, a smaller group braved chilly winds to maintain a near-permanent presence outside an ICE operations hub and detention center.
U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison said they were denied entry to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building shortly after arriving for what they called an oversight visit on Saturday morning.
Later in the day, Politico reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — who oversees ICE and said this weekend she’d ordered hundreds more agents to join at least 2,000 already in the Twin Cities — signed an order on Thursday requiring a week’s notice for Congressional visits to immigrant detention centers.
Multiple people released from Whipple told independent journalists that they’d been verbally or physically abused in or en route to detention there. Two said agents used demeaning language to describe Good and suggested she’d deserved her fate.
The Reformer has not independently verified the Whipple detainees’ claims. In a separate video posted on Sunday by a Minneapolis Reddit user, an ICE agent tells a driver to “[g]o home to your children…have you not learned from what just happened?”
Sunday saw more reports of federal law enforcement activity in St. Paul. One bystander video purported to show agents going “door to door” on Thomas Avenue near Victoria Street, possibly making good on Vice President JD Vance’s promise earlier this week of house-by-house immigration operations. Armed personnel questioned shoppers at a nearby Target. And a crowd heckled agents as they appeared to pull a man out of his car at a gas station on Snelling Avenue.
A multi-agency operation that at times felt like an outright occupation had many Twin Cities residents — not just hardened activists — calling for ICE to withdraw and deeper reform of federal immigration policy.
On Sunday, outgoing U.S. Sen. Tina Smith told CNN that she was listening, but stopped short of promising to lead the “abolish ICE” movement in Washington.
“It is hard for me to imagine how I could vote to support a budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security, given how the Department of Homeland Security is functioning right now in my community,” she said. “I want to see work done that would bring some serious reforms to ICE.”