‘ICE Fishing’ in Minneapolis

In January, photojournalist Wali Khan documented ICE’s assault on the Twin Cities.

by

Magazine

For a couple of weeks in early January, several of my reporter colleagues and I drove around in the frigid temperatures of Minneapolis, Minnesota, documenting what had become the latest front in the Trump Administration’s campaign against immigrants. Federal agents made their presence clear: Armed agents swarmed neighborhoods, folding federal force into local streets.

With our car heaters blasting, we chased tip lines in an activity we called “ICE fishing.” We tracked unmarked cars, usually SUVs, through the Twin Cities that were suspected of having U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents inside. We were guided by alert messages from a community-led rapid response network on Signal, an encrypted messaging app.

On more than one occasion, we found federal agents idling in their cars near strips of mercados, cages bolted into the backs of their vans. When we asked if they were with ICE, the drivers cursed at us and told us to move on; we then followed them as they drove slowly out of the city and we were soon tailed by a police car.

One of those times, the vehicle with federal agents inside crept twenty miles north of the city, driving forty miles per hour on a fifty-five-mile-per-hour highway, their hazard lights blinking to muddy their turns. We soon learned that agents had been leading rapid responders and journalists out of the city, into counties with sympathetic sheriffs. The movement was slow and deliberate—it was meant to be seen and to intimidate.

At one protest, a white nationalist waved a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and shouted that “we executed one of you yesterday,” referring to Renée Good, who was killed by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026. ICE agents stood by and nodded. Later, in St. Paul, an ICE vehicle forced a civilian car off the road. Airbags hung from the dashboard. The driver was still crying when I arrived—a scene that became familiar in the Twin Cities during the days I was there.

An anti-deportation protester screams at an ICE agent sitting inside a vehicle outside the Whipple Federal Building in Hennepin County, Minnesota, on January 11, 2026.

A person detained by ICE looks out the front window of an ICE vehicle driving toward the Whipple Federal Building as protesters scream at agents on January 15, 2026.