After weeks of immigration enforcement activity, life in parts of Minneapolis has taken on the character of a moving alert system, with residents using car horns and whistles to warn that ICE agents and Border Patrol officers are operating nearby, according to the Associated Press. The enforcement push has also been met with demonstrations that can form behind agent convoys, sometimes escalating into confrontations where protesters say they are responding to detentions and arrests.
The AP report describes the enforcement effort as tied to Operation Metro Surge, which it says began with scattered arrests in December and escalated sharply in early January after a top ICE official announced the “largest immigration operation ever.” In the same reporting, ICE said that by the time of the article more than 3,400 people had been arrested, and the report said at least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Border Patrol officers were on the ground.
The report also says that administration officials have insisted they are focusing on criminals in the U.S. illegally, while residents and area officials describe a more aggressive pattern on the street. Those accounts include agents stopping people and asking for citizenship papers, including off-duty Latino and Black police officers and city workers, and detaining people during operations residents describe as irregular.
The AP story further describes incidents that immigrants and witnesses say occurred during raids, including a claim that agents smashed through the front door of a Liberian man and detained him without a proper warrant even though he had been checking in regularly with immigration officials. It also describes detentions involving children traveling with parents and says agents used tear gas outside a high school during an altercation with protesters after detaining someone.
The AP report describes effects beyond the arrests themselves, saying that people avoided life-saving medical care, doctors said, and that thousands of immigrant children stayed home. It also says immigrant businesses shut down, cut their hours or kept their doors locked to everyone but regular customers, reflecting how enforcement activity can ripple through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.
In response, activists organized volunteer efforts across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, including organizing food deliveries to immigrants afraid to leave their homes and driving people to work while standing watch outside schools. The AP report describes interlocking, decentralized rapid-response networks—often anonymous, and in many cases using encrypted apps such as Signal—to track agents’ movements and warn others.
The report says tracking sometimes looks quiet, such as reporting the location of convoys to dispatchers and recording license plates of possible federal vehicles. At other times, it says, protest caravans form behind immigration convoys, creating mobile demonstrations that weave through city streets, with protesters filming and calling legal advice while volunteers alert people where agents are stopping to arrest or question someone.
A central element of the AP report is a perceived shift in enforcement messaging at the federal level alongside continued activity on the ground. It says the White House struck a more conciliatory tone after the weekend killing of Alex Pretti, and that the administration transferred Gregory Bovino—described in the report as the senior Border Patrol official who had been the public face of the immigration crackdown.
Andrew Fahlstrom, who helps run Defend the 612, a hub for volunteer networks, said Bovino’s removal did not change what activists saw as the broader threat. “I think that everyone slept a little better knowing that Bovino had been kicked out of Minneapolis,” Fahlstrom said, according to the AP report. He added, “But I don’t think the threat that we’re under will change because they change out the local puppets.”
Despite that federal personnel change, the AP report says activists and protesters are still preparing for confrontation. It quotes Tom Homan, the administration’s border czar, warning Thursday that activists will continue to “be held accountable” and saying “Justice is coming,” as protests continue in response to enforcement operations.
For some local officials, the confrontation framing is contested. The report describes Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez as reacting to a recent clash in south Minneapolis where protesters used gas masks and protesters and agents confronted each other, throwing snowballs and trying to block vehicles, while agents responded with shoving, pepper spray, pepper balls and tear gas grenades before driving away. Chavez said he did not see a confrontation in the way critics described it. “I didn’t see anybody ‘confronting,’” he said, according to the AP report. “I saw people alerting neighbors that ICE was in their neighborhood. And that’s what neighbors should continue to do.”
The AP report also offers a look at how rapid-response networks operate through individuals who keep their identities private. It describes a woman known in the networks only by her nickname, Sunshine, who asked that her real name not be used out of fear of retaliation. She said she drives through an immigrant neighborhood looking for signs of federal agents and weighs choices such as whether to report a vehicle to a dispatcher or honk to warn others.
Sunshine said she sometimes worries about the wider impact of warnings and about what her observations mean in practice. “Sometimes people just want to pick up their kid and walk their dog and go to work. And I get that. I get that desire,” she told the AP, adding, “I just don’t know if that’s the world we live in anymore.” The report says she avoids confrontation but also described anger among people facing raids and detentions.
Not all activists agree on how warnings should be delivered. The AP report describes how, nationally, some groups avoid protest strategies that could lead to clashes. It includes a social media post from a group in a heavily immigrant Maryland county that says “Loud does not equal effective,” explaining why volunteers there do not use whistles. The post, it says, includes a caution from the Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective that whistling can “escalate already volatile ICE agents who don’t respect our rights” and can “increase the likelihood of aggression toward bystanders or the detained person,” adding, “This is not an action movie.”