What Lies Beneath the ICE (February 1, 2026)
By chance, on a snowy Sunday afternoon, I had my first three experiences with the neighborhood watch groups on alert to warn people about the presence of ICE agents. These “modern-day Minutemen” are like the colonists who mobilized at a moment’s notice to repel British military threats. The watch groups honk horns, blow whistles and call into megaphones, “ICE is in the neighborhood; keep your neighbors safe!” I was heaving the last shovelfuls of snow off a friend’s driveway when I hear the car horns and whistles. I wanted to witness grassroots civic resistance to ICE activities, so I went to the scenes and spoke with the clusters of neighbors who joined the protests. My assumption was that people on the Northside of Minneapolis would be happy to have the warnings and grateful to have witnesses to any misdeeds. I was mistaken, and what I experienced shattered any illusions about monolithic solidarity in the land of lakes.
At the first scene, residents of the house under surveillance were grateful for their neighbor’s presence. They opened their windows to 23-degree weather and shouted their thanks and support. At the second site, however, there was no gratitude nor support. While watching the patrols talk to ICE agents and listening to persistent and shrill whistles, a woman with a phone approached me and demanded that I “get the hell out of here.” She took a picture of my car’s license plate, and shouted, “We don’t want you here.” I was confused and said I was not ICE. That did not matter. I asked her why she wanted the patrol to leave. In anger she screamed that she had kids and that the confrontation was disruptive and made everyone in the house nervous. I thanked her for telling me why she was upset. I stood on the public sidewalk and continued to watch quietly, but that was not what she wanted.
Her husband then came out of the house and reiterated the demand for everyone to leave. Everyone was standing on the sidewalk or in the street and not on private property, so there was no legal obligation to leave. I asked a neighbor near me if there was another way to handle the intervention without the noise. She said the noise alerts residents to ICE presence and for some that means that they should get indoors immediately and not go outside until they know it is safe. The angry woman’s husband walked in front of me and glaring into my eyes he shouted, “get the fuck out — you white people don’t care about us blacks — fucking white liberals — you are all just doing this for yourselves — fuck you!” The man’s rage was forceful and felt like a prelude to physical assault. I headed for my car while a teenage boy appeared in the door way of the angry man’s house, and with his middle finger held high, hollered to me one last “fuck you!” As I drove away and as others dispersed, the man stood on his snow-covered lawn with his fist in the air, the familiar salute of Black Power.
Shaken by the encounter, I wondered what just happened. I wondered what would happen if ICE targeted the angry man and his family. I know that noisy confrontations and crowds gathering in front of one’s home can be frightful and disturbing. I also understand that Minneapolis is still nursing open wounds inflicted by police officers who harass, batter, and kill blacks. Yes, Minneapolis suffers from institutional racism that that takes the form of deplorable public education, income gaps, and local tolerance for negligent and exploitative landlords preying on the poor. Yes, in Minneapolis — a liberal city where the percentage of individuals with bachelor’s and advanced degrees is higher than the rest of the state, people still stereotype each other and practice various forms of separatism.
There is truth to the assertion that some white liberals take their activism against injustice to neighborhoods that are already distressed and weary from constant confrontation. Sometimes protesters across all demographics forget that the people who live in the neighborhoods that are the backdrops of demonstrations are filled with people who will bear the consequences of those demonstrations long after protesters are gone.
I believe that the man who threw his anger in my face needed his rage more than he needed dialogue. A man who needs rage more than he needs dialogue tells others that he needs mercy and empathy and that he might not know the way to dialogue. A nation that needs rage more than it needs dialogue tells the world that its people do not value mercy and empathy and that its leaders do not find dialogue compatible with their agendas.
What lies beneath the ICE is a divided Minneapolis. Some who want to protest injustice every chance they get, and some who want protesters to “shut-up and let ‘em do their job;” some who want a pathway for undocumented immigrants to earn their citizenship, and some want undocumented immigrants forced out of the U.S. regardless of their good behavior and respect for the law. What lies beneath the ICE is the reality that Minneapolis residents can be fierce in their commitment to help those who are persecuted and can also be reflexively hostile to perceived threats to their security.
Minneapolis is a city of renegade poets, religious dissenters, radical artists, repressive nationalists, duplicitous politicians, prophetic academics, corrupt school administrators, haughty and humble millionaires, fraudsters of all colors, hopeful refugees, innovators, pioneering medics, scions of mill, lumber, and railroad barons, fourth-generation socialists from Finland, closet Nazis, porn addicts, hateful evangelists, elders with healing hands, shop-keepers who know their customers’ names, homeless veterans, soccer moms, dads who work two jobs, teens who drink too much, resilient Dakota and Ojibwe, children who are wise, tree-hugging conservationists, industrial executives pitching defense contracts , out-of-state landlords, 56,600 students at the U of M, athletes who make $30 million a year, teachers who make $50 thousand a year, people who throw rocks through church windows, people who say grace before every meal, people who over-estimate their goodness, people who under-estimate their goodness, people who compulsively blame others for their failures, people who always clean up their messes, blue collar bullies who never tell the truth, and working class philanthropists who never give up. Minneapolis is America.
References
Educational Statistics on Educational Attainment in the Minneapolis Area. September 14, 2018. The Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States – Statistical Atlas.
