Immigration enforcement and its fallout continued to roil Minneapolis on Tuesday, with immigration officers arresting activists who were tailing their vehicles and Minnesota school leaders describing what they said was intensifying fear in classrooms. The Associated Press reported that officers with guns drawn detained activists as they followed the officers’ cars in Minneapolis, and that at least one person wearing an anti-ICE message on clothing was handcuffed face-down on the ground while an AP photographer witnessed the arrests.
Gov. Tim Walz, speaking about the change in tactics, said there was “less smoke on the ground” because tear gas and other irritants had been reduced, but added that the situation felt “more chilling than it was last week” due to a shift toward schools and children. Walz’s comments came as Minnesota education leaders held a news conference about anxiety and fear they said school communities were experiencing from federal sweeps.
The arrests reflected broader momentum in the Minneapolis area after the departure of Greg Bovino, who had been leading immigration enforcement locally, and the arrival of Tom Homan to succeed him, AP reported. The reporting also tied the renewed tension to the fatal shooting of protester Alex Pretti earlier this year and to the fallout from other confrontations between protesters and federal officers.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said agents detained the activists because they hindered efforts to arrest a man who is in the country illegally. AP reported that the federal agents recently had conducted more targeted arrests in homes and neighborhoods rather than staging in parking lots, and that alerts in activist group chats had been more about sightings than about detainments.
According to AP, after reports that agents were knocking at homes, several cars followed officers through south Minneapolis. Officers stopped their vehicles and ordered activists out at gunpoint, and agents then told reporters to stay back and threatened to use pepper spray, the AP reported.
The cluster’s reporting also described a dispute over rules governing vehicle stops. A federal judge last month put limits on how officers treat motorists who are following them but not obstructing operations, writing that safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop.” An appeals court, however, set the order aside, AP reported.
At the same time, Minneapolis and Minnesota officials faced legal scrutiny connected to the Trump administration’s crackdown. Tuesday was the deadline for Minneapolis to produce information for a federal grand jury, part of a U.S. Justice Department request for records related to any effort to stifle the administration’s immigration enforcement, AP said. Mayor Jacob Frey’s spokesperson, Ally Peters, said the city had done nothing wrong and that officials viewed the request as a bullying tactic.
Education leaders said the enforcement concern had moved into school life. Brenda Lewis, superintendent of Fridley Public Schools in suburban Minneapolis, told reporters she had been followed twice by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents since she spoke publicly on Jan. 27 and that school board members had said ICE vehicles were outside their homes. Lewis, who is a U.S. citizen, said she had seen SUVs with tinted windows, masked people, and out-of-state license plates.
Lewis said Fridley has Somali and Ecuadorian families and responded by adding security, adjusting drop-off procedures, and increasing mental health support. Tracy Xiong, a social worker in the Columbia Heights district, said she had coordinated grocery deliveries to school families and found volunteers to drive children.
The AP report said there was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE about the educators’ concerns.
Elsewhere in the wider legal fights tied to the crackdown, a man charged with squirting apple cider vinegar on Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar remained in jail. A U.S. magistrate judge, David Schultz, granted a federal prosecutor’s request to keep Anthony Kazmierczak in custody, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar said prosecutors could not have protesters and people—“whatever side of the aisle they’re on”—running up to representatives conducting official business. Defense attorney John Fossum said the vinegar posed low risk to Omar and argued that Kazmierczak’s health problems were not being properly addressed in jail.
In another case, two Venezuelan men accused of assaulting an ICE officer were ordered released by a judge, but ICE officials quickly took them back into custody. AP reported that Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa-Celis were accused of assaulting an officer on the night of Jan. 14, when Sosa-Celis was shot in the thigh, triggering protests in Minneapolis. AP reported the officer said he was struck with a broom and snow shovel during the encounter, while Aljorna and Sosa-Celis denied assaulting the officer, and that the officer’s account was not supported by video evidence or three eyewitnesses.
AP said U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson held a hearing Tuesday rejecting the government’s appeal of a magistrate judge’s order for release, ruling that the men could go free. The report said that later, according to an attorney for Sosa-Celis, staff told her ICE had taken him even though he had been in U.S. Marshals custody.
Meanwhile, Aljorna’s attorney said he did not know why ICE took his client or what the next steps would be, AP reported.