For the past two months, people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, have mobilized to protect their neighbors from the immigration crackdown that has become infamous for the brutal violence of the federal agents involved. As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have attacked and detained community members, protesters have whistled, marched, and set up mutual aid for their neighbors. Though White House “border czar” Tom Homan announced the withdrawal of federal agents from the city, the mass movement of the people of Minnesota is still growing.
Zach D. Roberts
An observer documents a parked, unmarked ICE vehicle on a quiet street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on February 6, 2026.
While the recent rapid response networks can be traced to the George Floyd protests in 2020, locals tell me that it’s also just Minnesota. The cold climate and a long history of labor organizing means that people in the Midwestern state tend to take care of each other: if your car breaks down in the cold, people stop and help you simply because they don’t want you to freeze. Minnesota’s long history of organizing goes back to the 1850s in St. Paul, when tailors carried out the first known strike in the state and printers organized the first union. The radical labor movement emerged in Minneapolis in the early 1900s, and in 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in the city. More recently, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Minneapolis residents built networks of mutual aid to help out people whom government structures were not helping—by doing simple things like food delivery.
Zach D. Roberts
A rapid responder talks with a federal agent in a vehicle on February 9, 2026. The conversation went from jovial mocking to yelling “ICE out” as the officer tried to claim that he was helping the community.
Community members patrol their neighborhoods on foot, watching for ICE presence (known as patrollers) and in cars (known as commuters) using the cellphone app Signal, an encrypted messaging tool, to communicate with neighbors about what they see. They pay special attention to suspicious vehicles, reporting to their Signal chatgroup the license plates and descriptions of the cars, usually SUVs with tinted windows and drivers who are masked. People responding from their homes use decentralized, crowdsourced databases created by organizers that list ICE license plates to help identify the vehicles in which ICE agents are riding. They then disseminate a warning to other responders on the street, who in turn use their whistles to warn the neighborhood that ICE agents are patrolling. Nearby drivers often start honking their car horns as well.
The agents usually stay in their cars with the windows rolled up—but they will occasionally roll down the window to antagonize the responders. But they usually don’t last long against these whistling Minnesotans.
Zach D. Roberts
Hot Plate, a small breakfast restaurant in the Nokomis neighborhood of Minneapolis, is one of many local businesses throughout the city that have placed signs on their doors warning federal agents they are not allowed inside, pictured here on February 6, 2026.
Zach D. Roberts
Throughout the city, signs have been posted protesting the presence of ICE and demanding that federal agents leave the city, as pictured here on February 6, 2026. Some of these are homemade while others are printed by local designers and artists.
Zach D. Roberts
Residents of Minneapolis use shopping carts, chairs, and other found items to block the passage of ICE vehicles through their neighborhood on February 7, 2026.
Protesters have attempted to restrict the movements of federal agents throughout their city with filter blockades. Often by lining up wooden pallets, trash cans, protest signs, shopping carts, and traffic cones, while congregating in between these barricades. The idea is to avoid blocking off an entire neighborhood or even a main thoroughfare, but to slow down all traffic in an effort to see who is traveling through the community. Most cars are allowed to pass through similar to a normal roundabout, but if it’s a confirmed ICE vehicle they are blocked with chairs and other assorted items placed in front of their vehicles. It doesn’t stop them completely, but it does slow them down and it makes them spend time when they could otherwise have been harassing residents. The car I was traveling in fit that description—we weren’t stopped after we simply rolled down our windows to show that we were not federal agents.
Zach D. Roberts
Minneapolis police officers have consistently dismantled the filter blockades, as pictured here on February 7, 2026.
Zach D. Roberts
Militarized and masked, ICE and CPB agents menace a neighborhoods in Minneapolis on January 14, 2026.
Though hundreds of the federal agents are now leaving Minneapolis (leaving hundreds more still in the city), they aren’t heading home—they’re going to other cities. The next wave of Donald Trump’s deportation blitz likely will not look like hundreds of troops mobilizing in one major city, but rather dozens of agents in multiple smaller cities and towns around the country. Since the announcement of the drawdown, organizers in Minneapolis have been reaching out to other communities across the country, inviting them to learn from and replicate their tactics.