People gather with signs during a protest at a Target store in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. Weeks of federal immigration enforcement actions within the city and the deaths of two citizens at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have emboldened protesters seeking to have ICE agents removed from their city. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
PART 2
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I decided to visit the place where Renée Good was killed. The day was bright and clear in that brilliant way you get when it is very cold. I had warming packets in my gloves and a pair of snow boots that took half of the usable space in my suitcase. I was very proud that I thought to get the sort of gloves that have fingers that let you work your phone without degloving, albeit in an awkward and clumsy fashion that spewed misspellings. I had not however had the foresight to bring Kleenex, a serious oversight because the cold made my nose leak.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
At Local News Matters our mission is to provide our readers with news of, and from, the Bay Area. There are times, however, when national events have such relevance to our readers that we venture further afield. In 2024 we covered both the Republican and Democratic Conventions, with the goal of giving our readers a feel for what was happening on the ground in Milwaukee and Chicago. In this story we take the same approach to current events in Minneapolis. Many of the same issues are playing out in the Bay Area and in cities across the country — including, very much, the matter of a free and independent news media. Part 1 of the series can be found here.
Good was killed in a quiet neighborhood in South Minneapolis. There were four or five police vehicles flashing lights in the roadway just before the site, but all was peaceful, all was respectful. Like at Alex Pretti’s site, there were cordons with police tape, but the scene was dominated by the gifts and remembrances left in the four weeks since she was shot. Flowers everywhere and teddy bears and homemade signs. There were drawings of Good and American flags.
One sign paraphrased the spiritual “Amazing Grace” and closed with the line, “Amazing Good, how sweet the sound that saved a life like mine.”
Another said, “She was a Mother NOT a Target.”
There were a few people giving out free coffee and tending to the site as if it was a shrine, which of course it was. A man in an army jacket lit incense in a small bucket and told another that it was to keep away evil spirits.
A large pink placard, surrounded by candles, was styled as a memo: “From: A Mom Traumitized by ICE In the Suburbs. To: Renee GOOD and all Peaceful Protesters.”
The message: “Thank you for Being Brave.”
***
A memorial shrine for Renée Good on Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. The display is located near where Good was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer as she tried to drive away after being ordered to exit her car that had blocked the street, preventing police vehicles from passing. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
A joyful display of rage
I headed to Whipple, a six- or seven-story government-issue structure formally named the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. Whipple was built in 1969 and named after an Episcopalian bishop who advocated for Indigenous people. Ironically, the building today houses ICE and it is where a majority of detainees are sent to be held as they are processed.
The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at 1 Federal Drive in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Used to hold ICE detainees while they are being processed, the building has been the target of protests over federal immigration policies. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Whipple has been the scene of many clashes between protesters and ICE. The protesters are across the street from the facility, behind a jersey barrier and wire fence installed to keep them at bay.
When I arrived there were more than a hundred protesters spread out along the length of the fence, yelling and swearing at cars that entered the Whipple parking area. Supporters of the protesters drove by honking horns and leaning out the windows with fist pumps and waving banners. Organizers with bullhorns loudly cursed at ICE and sent messages of solidarity to the supporters. Many of the protesters were wearing protest-appropriate attire. The scene was high chaos, but at least while I was there it was a largely joyful mix of anger, energy and enthusiasm.
Left: A protester dressed as a fly holds and anti-ICE sign across the street from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. Right: Two people in costume pose for a photo during anti-ICE protests outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
***
Richi Mead is maybe 40, bearded and grizzled. He had a blue jacket and hood and, when I approached him, he was hooting and shouting at ICE cars as they passed. I asked what he was doing at Whipple.
He said, “I am a flower farmer from Nantucket. I can’t farm in the winter, so I got some free time, so came out here to fight fascism.”
He has been coming to Whipple every day since he arrived in Minneapolis from Nantucket 12 days ago. He came to join the protesters at the site, where he has found a community. He says, “it is all love on this site.”
That may be so on the side of the street where the protesters are. On the ICE side it is a different story.
“We get a lot of vitriol from the ICE agents. They’ll pass by and flip us off.”
“We had a gun pulled on us right here. We got pepper sprayed right here. I still got pepper spray residue all over the side of me here. That happened right here,” he said, showing me stains on his clothing.
A person wears a yellow safety vest with a message to law enforcement across the street from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. While many come to voice their displeasure with the federal government’s immigration policies, some come to record and document the protests. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
He takes some comfort in the fact that it is no picnic for the ICE personnel. He said, “most of them don’t want to be here. It’s Minnesota in the winter; who wants to come to Minnesota in the winter?”
He said they were given “47 days of training …, a gun and an aggression outlet, and they came here to Minnesota to find out they were freezing their asses.”
On that last point he knows what he is talking about. He told me that he took the train to Minneapolis from the East Coast, so he doesn’t have a car. For the first 10 days he was staying in an Airbnb in town and coming out to Whipple to protest. But his budget ran out, and for the last two days he has been camping near the site.
I said, “Wait a minute, you are camping here in a tent?”
He said he didn’t have a tent; he was just in his sleeping bag.
I was incredulous. “You’re sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground?”
“Yup, right outside of Whipple… Last night wasn’t bad, but the night before was pretty bad.”
I was processing the idea of sleeping on the ground in the freezing January night when he launched into an explanation of why being at Whipple at night made sense.
He said that sometimes ICE releases detainees in the middle of the night. “(T)hey don’t have a cell phone, they don’t have a ride home, they’re in the clothes that they were arrested in. It’s the kind of things that they’re doing to us (that) are inhumane.”
He gave praise to Safe Haven, a group among the protesters that provides care for releasees in that situation. They get them into a warm car and take care of them.
He said, “There is always someone around.”
He told me that people were coming to Minneapolis from other parts of the country, like he did, to stand up to the administration.
He said, “Show up, Americans, show up. We have to show people what is going on here.”
‘Just a dumb show of force’
A Minnesota nonprofit legal organization called The Advocates for Human Rights represents hundreds of immigration clients in Minneapolis. On Jan. 27, it filed a class action in federal court against the Trump administration. The suit alleged that — in violation of ICE’s own national protocols (as well as the U.S. Constitution) — ICE officials have stopped allowing lawyers to get into Whipple to see and talk with their clients.
On Jan. 28, the organization asked for a temporary restraining order to restore legal access for detainees in the building.
A protester displays a patriotic slogan through a wire fence across the street from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
In their court filings they said that “Federal agents standing outside the Whipple Building have threatened, intimidated, or otherwise rebuffed multiple attorneys attempting to reach clients detained there.”
One affidavit submitted with the motion said an attorney went to see a client at Whipple who was still being held three days there after a federal judge had granted his habeus corpus petition. The lawyer said she confronted “two lines of heavily armed DHS Personnel” and was told she would be arrested if she went further.
On Jan 29, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel converted the hearing on a TRO to a hearing on a preliminary injunction, setting an expedited briefing schedule with a hearing this Friday, Feb. 6.
In the meantime, she directed that “the parties shall work in good faith to reach an agreement on potential class members’ access to counsel, to remain in place for the duration of this litigation.” She directed them to a Feb. 5 mediation session with a federal magistrate judge and required that the mediation “must be attended by representatives of the Defendants with authority to bind Defendants’ actions in Minnesota.”
In other words, the government couldn’t send a lackey with no authority.
***
Carol, a 28-year-old woman who has lived in the area her whole life, was standing at the fence as I walked by. She was clearly agitated. I asked her what was going on.
She said that she had been watching the entrance to the Whipple parking lot for several hours and had seen four cars with Lyft or Uber stickers go in. She thought they were driven by ICE personnel because, “most of them have their face covered with the usual dress of the ICE agents that have been around.”
She didn’t know what they were doing and said that she had no direct line of sight after they entered the lot, but she was very concerned.
She said the federal agents were using various tactics to surveil members of the community.
“It makes me very nervous … because they could be using (the rideshare services) to infiltrate our community and get inside information. Or they could just be using (them) to stay more undercover.”
She said she had been coming to Whipple since before Pretti’s killing when the fences and jersey barriers were not yet in place. She said, “the ICE agents would come marching out at us and gas us with pepper balls and tear gas and just a dumb show of force.”
She said now the local police had taken over enforcement at the site and they have all had “de-escalation training” and “It’s not perfect, but there’s been a lot less violence out here since then.”
‘It’s coming for you’
A man who identified himself as Trinity Ray waves a “RESIST” flag at an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
I noticed that there was a large drone in the sky over the Whipple parking area. I asked one of the protesters about it. He was standing on a mound of snow holding, and frequently waving, a large black flag/banner that said “RESIST” in white letters.
He told me the drone had been there on Thursday and Friday as well. He said it was being used for surveillance of the protesters.
He said his name was Trinity Ray and he drove up to Minneapolis from Iowa City three days ago. He had wanted to go before but “didn’t want to just come to get in the way, I guess. But more and more I felt so helpless.”
He talked with his wife who discouraged the trip. She told him, “God’s going to come here eventually. You don’t have to go there.”
But the feeling he should be in Minneapolis wouldn’t go away. “it kept coming. … first Renee and then Alex. And then, you know, more empty words from the White House.”
He talked to his 16-year-old son about making the trip. “My son is my only real hope for the future. He’s empathetic, he’s emotionally developed, he cares. …
His son said, “take lots of video and tell me what you see, because I don’t know if I can trust what I’m seeing online.”
In the end Ray decided to go. “It’s important to show up in real life from time to time when you have the ability to do that and see for yourself, figure out what the truth is.”
He is glad he came. “I’ve had nothing but love from all of these people.”
He said, “When I got here, an older woman came up to me and she said, thank you for being here and gave me a hug. The tears froze to my face.”
He thinks that President Trump wants to attack and destroy Minnesota so he can say to the rest of the country, “See, see what they did? That doesn’t work. Progressivism doesn’t, caring for your neighbor doesn’t. You end up getting shot in the street. Don’t do that. It’s dangerous.”
He added, “Nobody out here is dangerous. We’re Americans defending our First Amendment rights, defending our other liberties.”
In his view Minnesota “is a blueprint for the rest of the nation because I don’t think it’s going to end in Minnesota.”
He added, “Wherever you live, San Francisco, LA, Dallas, it’s coming for you.”
***
Mason, a four-year resident of Minneapolis, thinks it is a great place to live. He said he moved from California, attracted by the cheaper cost of living and the welcoming, care-for-your-neighbor, lifestyle.
He is angry about the way that the administration has depicted his community. He said that when he moved here, he lived in an apartment with lots of people from Somalia. He is white and had not had many experiences with Somalis before and he wondered how that would go.
He had great interactions. He remembered walking on the street when he first arrived and meeting a group of Somalian teenagers. They wished him a Happy Fourth of July.
He said, “every Somali that I’ve interacted with has been a really good person.”
He despises the administration’s narrative that “they’re all here to steal from you or scheme or something like that.”
“On a typical day in my neighborhood, summer, winter, people are out walking their dogs,” he said. “Everyone’s outside. It is nothing like that anymore. … Everyone is scared. I have never seen so many houses with the blinds shut. It’s terrifying.”
I asked Mason if he thought that Minneapolis’ response to the Trump administration was special. He said, “We’ve come out a lot because we care for our neighbors. I think that any city can do it. I don’t think this is something that we’re doing that nobody else can do. And I’m very proud of our city for coming out and standing up. …”
Fresh wounds and old scars
At George Floyd Square I found the third shrine of what now seemed to be my pilgrimage to Minneapolis.
A memorial stands at the center of George Floyd Square in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. Floyd died while being restrained by police on May 25, 2020, sparking months of civil rights protests. His death was ruled a homicide. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, more than five years ago. His memorial was no less intense than those of Pretti and Good, but even the cold can’t preserve cut flowers forever. Here there was a feeling of greater permanence — signs and billboards and carved messages on the surrounding shops and street furniture.
In the center of the “square” there was a large fist of solidarity holding a Pan-African or Black Liberation flag.
Floyd’s shrine was particularly moving, but it gave off a different vibe than the shrines for Pretti and Good. Those were fresh wounds and the community was treating those losses with the delicacy of reverence and respect. Those losses were still being processed.
Floyd’s shrine was older and perhaps because of its longevity, gave off deeper, angrier, vibrations. This was a memorial to struggle and suffering and most of all to the strength to fight back. There were many carvings and drawings of the clenched fist, and the word “breathe” was used in many of the signs, a reminder of how Floyd had his life slowly choked from him.
A memorial to George Floyd near the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue South, in the Powderhorn neighborhood of south Minneapolis, an area now commonly known as George Floyd Square. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
While I was there, a weathered Black man with a two-forked gray beard was giving a tour to a gaggle of white tourists. I couldn’t tell if they were from other countries or just other places in the U.S., but they seemed be listening intently as he explained what had happened to Floyd.
If they were from other countries, I wondered what they thought of a place where a police officer choked a man to death with a crowd watching.
And what would they think about the fact that five years later — in the same town — the federal government killed two individuals while they were exercising their First Amendment right to protest?
A mural near George Floyd Plaza in Minneapolis, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
***
At day’s end Saturday, there was word of a preliminary decision in a lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by the State of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
This was no routine federal lawsuit. The suit alleged that Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of troops to Minneapolis to arrest and deport “illegal aliens,” was an excessive and extreme use of the federal law enforcement power, so excessive and so extreme as to be an unconstitutional interference with the sovereignty of the state of Minnesota. The state and the cities asked the federal district court to issue a preliminary injunction to halt the enforcement operation.
The plaintiffs filed dozens and dozens of sworn declarations that documented — at a granular level — abuses of power by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. To give a sense, here are a few of the allegations of a declaration that I chose at random.
The declarant identified himself as Troy Carrillo, “a 40-year-old-resident of Richfield, where I’ve lived for about 15 years with my wife. I sell health insurance.”
Carrillo said he and his wife heard there was ICE activity at Target on Bloomington Boulevard, and went out “to support our neighbors.”
Carrillo tried to record ICE “agents talking to an elderly woman … (who was) trying to show them papers she had in her hand.”
It felt cold when it hit my eyeballs and then it burned. My nose started running, my eyes watered. I hunched over, trying to wipe my eyes. When I looked up again, someone sprayed me again right in the eyes.
Troy Carrillo, pepper-sprayed while attending ICE protest
In his sworn declaration Carrillo said, “An agent jumped out and said, ‘Back the f*ck up, you’re impeding’ or something like that. I’m pretty sure I said something like, ‘No, you back the f*ck up I’m walking away.’ Then he just sprayed me in the eyes with pepper spray or some other chemical irritant.”
Carrillo described the feeling, “It felt cold when it hit my eyeballs and then it burned. My nose started running, my eyes watered. I hunched over, trying to wipe my eyes. When I looked up again, someone sprayed me again right in the eyes.”
In her 30-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine M. Menendez, a Joe Biden appointee, found, “Plaintiffs have made a strong showing that Operation Metro Surge has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans.
She added, “Since Operation Metro Surge began, there have been multiple shootings of Minnesota residents by federal immigration enforcement agents. Additionally, there is evidence that ICE and CBP agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions.”
Nevertheless, she denied the preliminary injunction, citing the high barrier to such relief at the beginning of the case, the difficulty of managing an injunction against the federal government’s enforcement of federal law, and the fact that the appeals court had recently rejected a narrower injunction focused on the way immigration officers interacted with protesters.
So, while there will likely be an appeal and other lawsuits are pending, it appears at least as of this moment, that the federal courts will not swoop in to put an end to the heavy-handed tactics in ICE’s playbook.
If that is so, it will be the community of protesters — speaking their truth out the freezing cold of a Minnesota winter — who will have to carry the ball.
(Illustration by Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Joe Dworetzky is a second career journalist. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He covers Legal Affairs and writes long form Investigative stories. His occasional cartooning can be seen in Bay Area Sketchbook. Joe encourages readers to email him story ideas and leads at joe.dworetzky@baycitynews.com.
Thawing ICE: Minneapolis protesters defy the cold and federal forces in ongoing solidarity
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PART 2
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I decided to visit the place where Renée Good was killed. The day was bright and clear in that brilliant way you get when it is very cold. I had warming packets in my gloves and a pair of snow boots that took half of the usable space in my suitcase. I was very proud that I thought to get the sort of gloves that have fingers that let you work your phone without degloving, albeit in an awkward and clumsy fashion that spewed misspellings. I had not however had the foresight to bring Kleenex, a serious oversight because the cold made my nose leak.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
At Local News Matters our mission is to provide our readers with news of, and from, the Bay Area. There are times, however, when national events have such relevance to our readers that we venture further afield. In 2024 we covered both the Republican and Democratic Conventions, with the goal of giving our readers a feel for what was happening on the ground in Milwaukee and Chicago. In this story we take the same approach to current events in Minneapolis. Many of the same issues are playing out in the Bay Area and in cities across the country — including, very much, the matter of a free and independent news media. Part 1 of the series can be found here.
Good was killed in a quiet neighborhood in South Minneapolis. There were four or five police vehicles flashing lights in the roadway just before the site, but all was peaceful, all was respectful. Like at Alex Pretti’s site, there were cordons with police tape, but the scene was dominated by the gifts and remembrances left in the four weeks since she was shot. Flowers everywhere and teddy bears and homemade signs. There were drawings of Good and American flags.
One sign paraphrased the spiritual “Amazing Grace” and closed with the line, “Amazing Good, how sweet the sound that saved a life like mine.”
Another said, “She was a Mother NOT a Target.”
There were a few people giving out free coffee and tending to the site as if it was a shrine, which of course it was. A man in an army jacket lit incense in a small bucket and told another that it was to keep away evil spirits.
A large pink placard, surrounded by candles, was styled as a memo: “From: A Mom Traumitized by ICE In the Suburbs. To: Renee GOOD and all Peaceful Protesters.”
The message: “Thank you for Being Brave.”
***
A memorial shrine for Renée Good on Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. The display is located near where Good was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer as she tried to drive away after being ordered to exit her car that had blocked the street, preventing police vehicles from passing. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
A joyful display of rage
I headed to Whipple, a six- or seven-story government-issue structure formally named the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. Whipple was built in 1969 and named after an Episcopalian bishop who advocated for Indigenous people. Ironically, the building today houses ICE and it is where a majority of detainees are sent to be held as they are processed.
The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at 1 Federal Drive in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Used to hold ICE detainees while they are being processed, the building has been the target of protests over federal immigration policies. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Whipple has been the scene of many clashes between protesters and ICE. The protesters are across the street from the facility, behind a jersey barrier and wire fence installed to keep them at bay.
When I arrived there were more than a hundred protesters spread out along the length of the fence, yelling and swearing at cars that entered the Whipple parking area. Supporters of the protesters drove by honking horns and leaning out the windows with fist pumps and waving banners. Organizers with bullhorns loudly cursed at ICE and sent messages of solidarity to the supporters. Many of the protesters were wearing protest-appropriate attire. The scene was high chaos, but at least while I was there it was a largely joyful mix of anger, energy and enthusiasm.
Left: A protester dressed as a fly holds and anti-ICE sign across the street from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. Right: Two people in costume pose for a photo during anti-ICE protests outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
***
Richi Mead is maybe 40, bearded and grizzled. He had a blue jacket and hood and, when I approached him, he was hooting and shouting at ICE cars as they passed. I asked what he was doing at Whipple.
He said, “I am a flower farmer from Nantucket. I can’t farm in the winter, so I got some free time, so came out here to fight fascism.”
He has been coming to Whipple every day since he arrived in Minneapolis from Nantucket 12 days ago. He came to join the protesters at the site, where he has found a community. He says, “it is all love on this site.”
That may be so on the side of the street where the protesters are. On the ICE side it is a different story.
“We get a lot of vitriol from the ICE agents. They’ll pass by and flip us off.”
“We had a gun pulled on us right here. We got pepper sprayed right here. I still got pepper spray residue all over the side of me here. That happened right here,” he said, showing me stains on his clothing.
A person wears a yellow safety vest with a message to law enforcement across the street from the Whipple Building in Minneapolis on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. While many come to voice their displeasure with the federal government’s immigration policies, some come to record and document the protests. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
He takes some comfort in the fact that it is no picnic for the ICE personnel. He said, “most of them don’t want to be here. It’s Minnesota in the winter; who wants to come to Minnesota in the winter?”
He said they were given “47 days of training …, a gun and an aggression outlet, and they came here to Minnesota to find out they were freezing their asses.”
On that last point he knows what he is talking about. He told me that he took the train to Minneapolis from the East Coast, so he doesn’t have a car. For the first 10 days he was staying in an Airbnb in town and coming out to Whipple to protest. But his budget ran out, and for the last two days he has been camping near the site.
I said, “Wait a minute, you are camping here in a tent?”
He said he didn’t have a tent; he was just in his sleeping bag.
I was incredulous. “You’re sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground?”
“Yup, right outside of Whipple… Last night wasn’t bad, but the night before was pretty bad.”
I was processing the idea of sleeping on the ground in the freezing January night when he launched into an explanation of why being at Whipple at night made sense.
He said that sometimes ICE releases detainees in the middle of the night. “(T)hey don’t have a cell phone, they don’t have a ride home, they’re in the clothes that they were arrested in. It’s the kind of things that they’re doing to us (that) are inhumane.”
He gave praise to Safe Haven, a group among the protesters that provides care for releasees in that situation. They get them into a warm car and take care of them.
He said, “There is always someone around.”
He told me that people were coming to Minneapolis from other parts of the country, like he did, to stand up to the administration.
He said, “Show up, Americans, show up. We have to show people what is going on here.”
‘Just a dumb show of force’
A Minnesota nonprofit legal organization called The Advocates for Human Rights represents hundreds of immigration clients in Minneapolis. On Jan. 27, it filed a class action in federal court against the Trump administration. The suit alleged that — in violation of ICE’s own national protocols (as well as the U.S. Constitution) — ICE officials have stopped allowing lawyers to get into Whipple to see and talk with their clients.
On Jan. 28, the organization asked for a temporary restraining order to restore legal access for detainees in the building.
In their court filings they said that “Federal agents standing outside the Whipple Building have threatened, intimidated, or otherwise rebuffed multiple attorneys attempting to reach clients detained there.”
One affidavit submitted with the motion said an attorney went to see a client at Whipple who was still being held three days there after a federal judge had granted his habeus corpus petition. The lawyer said she confronted “two lines of heavily armed DHS Personnel” and was told she would be arrested if she went further.
On Jan 29, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel converted the hearing on a TRO to a hearing on a preliminary injunction, setting an expedited briefing schedule with a hearing this Friday, Feb. 6.
In the meantime, she directed that “the parties shall work in good faith to reach an agreement on potential class members’ access to counsel, to remain in place for the duration of this litigation.” She directed them to a Feb. 5 mediation session with a federal magistrate judge and required that the mediation “must be attended by representatives of the Defendants with authority to bind Defendants’ actions in Minnesota.”
In other words, the government couldn’t send a lackey with no authority.
***
Carol, a 28-year-old woman who has lived in the area her whole life, was standing at the fence as I walked by. She was clearly agitated. I asked her what was going on.
She said that she had been watching the entrance to the Whipple parking lot for several hours and had seen four cars with Lyft or Uber stickers go in. She thought they were driven by ICE personnel because, “most of them have their face covered with the usual dress of the ICE agents that have been around.”
She didn’t know what they were doing and said that she had no direct line of sight after they entered the lot, but she was very concerned.
She said the federal agents were using various tactics to surveil members of the community.
“It makes me very nervous … because they could be using (the rideshare services) to infiltrate our community and get inside information. Or they could just be using (them) to stay more undercover.”
She said she had been coming to Whipple since before Pretti’s killing when the fences and jersey barriers were not yet in place. She said, “the ICE agents would come marching out at us and gas us with pepper balls and tear gas and just a dumb show of force.”
She said now the local police had taken over enforcement at the site and they have all had “de-escalation training” and “It’s not perfect, but there’s been a lot less violence out here since then.”
‘It’s coming for you’
I noticed that there was a large drone in the sky over the Whipple parking area. I asked one of the protesters about it. He was standing on a mound of snow holding, and frequently waving, a large black flag/banner that said “RESIST” in white letters.
He told me the drone had been there on Thursday and Friday as well. He said it was being used for surveillance of the protesters.
He said his name was Trinity Ray and he drove up to Minneapolis from Iowa City three days ago. He had wanted to go before but “didn’t want to just come to get in the way, I guess. But more and more I felt so helpless.”
He talked with his wife who discouraged the trip. She told him, “God’s going to come here eventually. You don’t have to go there.”
But the feeling he should be in Minneapolis wouldn’t go away. “it kept coming. … first Renee and then Alex. And then, you know, more empty words from the White House.”
He talked to his 16-year-old son about making the trip. “My son is my only real hope for the future. He’s empathetic, he’s emotionally developed, he cares. …
His son said, “take lots of video and tell me what you see, because I don’t know if I can trust what I’m seeing online.”
In the end Ray decided to go. “It’s important to show up in real life from time to time when you have the ability to do that and see for yourself, figure out what the truth is.”
He is glad he came. “I’ve had nothing but love from all of these people.”
He said, “When I got here, an older woman came up to me and she said, thank you for being here and gave me a hug. The tears froze to my face.”
He thinks that President Trump wants to attack and destroy Minnesota so he can say to the rest of the country, “See, see what they did? That doesn’t work. Progressivism doesn’t, caring for your neighbor doesn’t. You end up getting shot in the street. Don’t do that. It’s dangerous.”
He added, “Nobody out here is dangerous. We’re Americans defending our First Amendment rights, defending our other liberties.”
In his view Minnesota “is a blueprint for the rest of the nation because I don’t think it’s going to end in Minnesota.”
He added, “Wherever you live, San Francisco, LA, Dallas, it’s coming for you.”
***
Mason, a four-year resident of Minneapolis, thinks it is a great place to live. He said he moved from California, attracted by the cheaper cost of living and the welcoming, care-for-your-neighbor, lifestyle.
He is angry about the way that the administration has depicted his community. He said that when he moved here, he lived in an apartment with lots of people from Somalia. He is white and had not had many experiences with Somalis before and he wondered how that would go.
He had great interactions. He remembered walking on the street when he first arrived and meeting a group of Somalian teenagers. They wished him a Happy Fourth of July.
He said, “every Somali that I’ve interacted with has been a really good person.”
He despises the administration’s narrative that “they’re all here to steal from you or scheme or something like that.”
“On a typical day in my neighborhood, summer, winter, people are out walking their dogs,” he said. “Everyone’s outside. It is nothing like that anymore. … Everyone is scared. I have never seen so many houses with the blinds shut. It’s terrifying.”
I asked Mason if he thought that Minneapolis’ response to the Trump administration was special. He said, “We’ve come out a lot because we care for our neighbors. I think that any city can do it. I don’t think this is something that we’re doing that nobody else can do. And I’m very proud of our city for coming out and standing up. …”
Fresh wounds and old scars
At George Floyd Square I found the third shrine of what now seemed to be my pilgrimage to Minneapolis.
Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, more than five years ago. His memorial was no less intense than those of Pretti and Good, but even the cold can’t preserve cut flowers forever. Here there was a feeling of greater permanence — signs and billboards and carved messages on the surrounding shops and street furniture.
In the center of the “square” there was a large fist of solidarity holding a Pan-African or Black Liberation flag.
Floyd’s shrine was particularly moving, but it gave off a different vibe than the shrines for Pretti and Good. Those were fresh wounds and the community was treating those losses with the delicacy of reverence and respect. Those losses were still being processed.
Floyd’s shrine was older and perhaps because of its longevity, gave off deeper, angrier, vibrations. This was a memorial to struggle and suffering and most of all to the strength to fight back. There were many carvings and drawings of the clenched fist, and the word “breathe” was used in many of the signs, a reminder of how Floyd had his life slowly choked from him.
A memorial to George Floyd near the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue South, in the Powderhorn neighborhood of south Minneapolis, an area now commonly known as George Floyd Square. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
While I was there, a weathered Black man with a two-forked gray beard was giving a tour to a gaggle of white tourists. I couldn’t tell if they were from other countries or just other places in the U.S., but they seemed be listening intently as he explained what had happened to Floyd.
If they were from other countries, I wondered what they thought of a place where a police officer choked a man to death with a crowd watching.
And what would they think about the fact that five years later — in the same town — the federal government killed two individuals while they were exercising their First Amendment right to protest?
A mural near George Floyd Plaza in Minneapolis, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
***
At day’s end Saturday, there was word of a preliminary decision in a lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by the State of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
This was no routine federal lawsuit. The suit alleged that Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of troops to Minneapolis to arrest and deport “illegal aliens,” was an excessive and extreme use of the federal law enforcement power, so excessive and so extreme as to be an unconstitutional interference with the sovereignty of the state of Minnesota. The state and the cities asked the federal district court to issue a preliminary injunction to halt the enforcement operation.
The plaintiffs filed dozens and dozens of sworn declarations that documented — at a granular level — abuses of power by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. To give a sense, here are a few of the allegations of a declaration that I chose at random.
The declarant identified himself as Troy Carrillo, “a 40-year-old-resident of Richfield, where I’ve lived for about 15 years with my wife. I sell health insurance.”
Carrillo said he and his wife heard there was ICE activity at Target on Bloomington Boulevard, and went out “to support our neighbors.”
Carrillo tried to record ICE “agents talking to an elderly woman … (who was) trying to show them papers she had in her hand.”
In his sworn declaration Carrillo said, “An agent jumped out and said, ‘Back the f*ck up, you’re impeding’ or something like that. I’m pretty sure I said something like, ‘No, you back the f*ck up I’m walking away.’ Then he just sprayed me in the eyes with pepper spray or some other chemical irritant.”
Carrillo described the feeling, “It felt cold when it hit my eyeballs and then it burned. My nose started running, my eyes watered. I hunched over, trying to wipe my eyes. When I looked up again, someone sprayed me again right in the eyes.”
In her 30-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine M. Menendez, a Joe Biden appointee, found, “Plaintiffs have made a strong showing that Operation Metro Surge has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans.
She added, “Since Operation Metro Surge began, there have been multiple shootings of Minnesota residents by federal immigration enforcement agents. Additionally, there is evidence that ICE and CBP agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions.”
Nevertheless, she denied the preliminary injunction, citing the high barrier to such relief at the beginning of the case, the difficulty of managing an injunction against the federal government’s enforcement of federal law, and the fact that the appeals court had recently rejected a narrower injunction focused on the way immigration officers interacted with protesters.
So, while there will likely be an appeal and other lawsuits are pending, it appears at least as of this moment, that the federal courts will not swoop in to put an end to the heavy-handed tactics in ICE’s playbook.
If that is so, it will be the community of protesters — speaking their truth out the freezing cold of a Minnesota winter — who will have to carry the ball.
(Illustration by Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Joe Dworetzky, Bay City News
Joe Dworetzky is a second career journalist. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He covers Legal Affairs and writes long form Investigative stories. His occasional cartooning can be seen in Bay Area Sketchbook. Joe encourages readers to email him story ideas and leads at joe.dworetzky@baycitynews.com.
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