MINNEAPOLIS — The federal agents arrived weeks ago. But since the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, their numbers have swelled — and people here say the weight of it all is inescapable. Agents are flooding the sidewalks of their neighborhoods, honks and whistles sound when they are near and, occasionally, the smell of chemical agents wafts by.
The scale, the sustained intensity and the aggression demonstrated by law enforcement deployed here appears to be greater than immigration enforcement operations that took place in other blue cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina, all of which are larger than Minneapolis in land mass and population.
The officers are in unmarked cars idling on neighborhood streets. They are going door to door, residents said. They are seen inside of stores and in retail parking lots, including at the Target in Richfield, south of Minneapolis, the day after Good was killed.
Videos from residents are proliferating on social media of violent arrests, including a woman dragged from her car. Some videos provided to NBC News by activists show agents smashing car windows or spraying chemicals point blank into the faces of residents.
“It feels like an invasion,” said a woman who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. She was protesting at the Whipple federal detention facility at 7 a.m. on a frigid, 12-degree morning. The woman, a restaurant owner, said she closed her business temporarily because she was trying to protect her employees who were immigrants. “It feels very much like a Nazi Germany situation to me. It needs to stop, and people need to know what’s going on.”
The focus of Operation Metro Surge, as the Trump administration has branded this latest immigration effort, appears to have broadened beyond mass deportations and has included confrontations with anti-ICE protesters. The shooting of Good and the scope of the deployment has heightened the tense mood in a nation already bitterly divided over immigration issues and the Trump administration’s tactics. Interviews with neighbors, community leaders and organized protesters reveal a sense of being under invasion.
On Wednesday night, a man was shot in the leg after DHS said he attacked an agent with a snow shovel aor broom handle. “Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life,” the department said.
Mayor Jacob Frey said at a news conference after Wednesday’s shooting that the city was being put in an “impossible situation.”
“We are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to protect order,” Frey said, while also warning protesters against “taking the bait.” He added that the city has 600 police officers compared to the 3,000 federal immigration agents present. Of that number, more than 2,000 are ICE officers and agents, hundreds are Border Patrol agents and others are from Justice Department agencies, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News.
A group of area residents visiting Good’s memorial site on Tuesday described masked immigration officers wearing camouflage going door to door, saying they were looking for non-U.S. citizens. They, and others interviewed, described it taking place around Lake Street, Uptown and the Powderhorn neighborhoods.
Those actions reflect what Vice President J.D. Vance said agents would be doing.
“I think we’re going to see those deportation numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online, working for ICE, going door-to-door and making sure that if you’re an illegal alien, you’ve got to get out of this country and if you want to come back, apply through the proper channels,” Vance said on Fox News last week. He had also suggested earlier that the ICE officer who shot Good would have “absolute immunity.”
Good’s killing has shaken a Midwestern city already carrying deep wounds from the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In the days since Good’s fateful encounter with an armed ICE officer, there was no letup by law enforcement. In interviews, neighbors who live near the street where the 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen was killed say the community has had no time to recover.
One resident who spoke with NBC News described their own arrest hours after Good was killed, providing video evidence of the encounter. They said they were monitoring an immigration operation when agents said their vehicle was in the way. They believed the agents had space to go around their car, which was seen in the video as being positioned horizontally on the street.
The video showed agents breaking the windows of the person’s car, before reaching in to pepper spray both the passenger and the driver. The person, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said they were punched in the face after pulling down an agent’s mask who was dragging them out of the vehicle.
“I was just so angry. I said: ‘Show yourself, coward!’” they said.
The person said that after being thrown to the ground and arrested, they were taken to an ICE facility at the Whipple Building, which they described as bursting at the seams with more than 20 people crammed into each cell that, in this person’s experience, could reasonably feel too crowded with five people.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment about their account.
In the days that have followed, intensive arrest operations have continued close to the Good memorial site, with one taking place just a block and a half and another three blocks away. Confrontations between law enforcement and protesters are playing out almost in real time, with both sides revved up.
In one video, an officer reaches out of his passenger’s side window to shoot a stream of red chemicals point-blank into a woman’s face as she stands in front of his car while he tries to drive away.
Where federal officers are present, there are usually also protesters, activists and residents blowing whistles, honking their horns — and invariably filming.
Those videos are then quickly disseminated from Minneapolis across the internet, showing agents asking drivers at an electric vehicle station whether they are citizens or dragging a screaming woman out of her car.
As the videos inflame divisions online, the pushback has intensified on the ground.
Drive along a neighborhood street and one can hear the honking break out in traffic, warning that immigration agents are nearby. At busy intersections, like near Karmel Mall, where a diverse mix of residents walk and shop, community members can at times be seen posted up, warning whistles slung around their necks.
Mark, another resident of the Bryant Central neighborhood, the diverse area of the city where some of the operations are playing out, said he felt as if the swarms of fatigue-laden officers he was seeing across his city was punishment for not voting for the president.
He visited the site of Good’s memorial for four consecutive days, he said, for a simple reason.
“This is wrong,” Mark said. He asked that his last name not be used because of fear of retaliation. “I truly feel Minnesota is being targeted because of who we voted for.”
Mark, who is African American, was inside his car when he saw an ICE operation taking place nearby. He heard loud noises, he said, and tried turning around to return to his home and check on his family.
He described immigration officers surrounding his car and accusing him of trying to obstruct their operation. They took his phone, he said. Mark then explained to them he was simply trying to walk to his home. After keeping his phone for about 15 minutes, they returned it, he said.
“The City of Minneapolis again demands that ICE leave the city and state immediately,” the city posted on X Wednesday night. “We stand by our immigrant and refugee communities — know that you have our full support.”
Matt Lavietes and Joy Y. Wang contributed.
