To call the widespread public resistance to the mass immigration sweeps in Minnesota a “protest movement” is linguistically accurate, but “protester” is not an elastic enough term to describe the everyday people who never considered themselves “activists” but are resisting an authoritarian assault on their neighbors, their safety and their way of life.
Since President Donald Trump’s administration launched Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota in December, a sprawling ecosystem of volunteer networks has taken root, especially in the Twin Cities. There have been tense standoffs with tear gas and flash bangs but the massive mosaic of lower-key resistance is less confrontational and has largely outside the the news headlines and heated social media videos.
“Protester” is not an elastic enough term to describe the everyday people who are resisting an authoritarian assault on their neighbors, their safety and their way of life.
That ecosystem includes a patchwork of geographically specific monitoring groups who call themselves “constitutional observers.” They videotape immigration agents’ activity, document their vehicles in a database and use whistles and horns to warn neighbors when federal agents show up.
Though Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse shot dead by an immigration agent Saturday morning, has been described by U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem both as a “protestor” and someone who intended to “massacre” federal agents, it is not at all clear that Pretti went to a bustling stretch of restaurants and markets along Nicollet Avenue known as Eat Street to join an organized demonstration.
The practice of documenting or sending out warnings about immigration activity is now so commonplace that everyday commuters or pedestrians or people just out running errands regularly pull out their phones if they come upon an active deportation attempt. To that point, Stella Carlson, the woman in the pink coat who saw federal agents shoot Pretti, said in her sworn affidavit that she was “getting ready to go to work when I heard whistles outside. I knew the whistlers meant that ICE agents were in the area, so I decided to check it out on my way to work.”
Protests are usually fixed events that happen in a certain place at a certain time. With more than 3,000 federal agents conducting aggressive immigration raids throughout the state, the ground game for resistance is constantly shifting and growing in both size and mode and it’s everything, everywhere all at once.
Rev. Zachary Wilson, a presbyterian pastor in St. Paul who was one of the 98 clergy arrested during a peaceful protest at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport last Friday, acknowledges that there are protests happening all around, but that’s not all there is.
“There are protests; that’s what we did on Friday,” said Wilson, who is the co-executive presbyter of the Twin Cities Area Presbytery church. “But the day-to-day things I would term ‘protection and prevention.’ That’s why I’ve been wearing a clerical collar for the first time in my ministry. If it makes the paramilitary commanders think twice and helps protect my neighbors even a little, I’ll put up with the annoyance.”
“This is resistance to authoritarianism and protection of our communities, but I don’t think this day-to-day stuff is ‘protest.’”
Rev. Zachary Wilson
Speaking to me on Wednesday, Wilson described a scene that he said is repeated at public schools all over Minnesota: “There were at least 8 volunteers with hi-vis vests over their clothes with whistles and phones at Central High School in St. Paul today and the same will be at pick up and probably more without the vests. … Volunteers are at school, arts and sporting events protecting public schools from ICE/CPB. These folks aren’t hiking signs or chanting. Their presence is to visually dissuade the raiders from any incursion or document their behavior if an incursion occurs.
“This is resistance to authoritarianism and protection of our communities, but I don’t think this day-to-day stuff is ‘protest.’”
That “day-to-day stuff” is happening all over the state and often out of public view. It’s variegated and, in some cases, as organized as a Lutheran Potluck supper; in others, it is born of spontaneity rather than sign-up sheets.
“What do you call it when restaurants across the city offer free food to neighbors doing ICE watch, or when car mechanics fix ICE watch patrollers’ vehicles for free?” said Andrew Fahlstrom of Defend the 612, which refers to Minneapolis’ area code.
What the country is seeing in Minnesota is a new brand of broad scale resistance.
Volunteer “constitutional observers” are visible everywhere. That is not hyperbole. They go through long hours of training where they engage in role-playing exercises to learn how to legally and carefully conduct themselves if they have encounters with federal agents. Heat maps of deportation activity are updated several times a day and dispatchers communicate with street-level monitors across geographic sectors using radio communication and encrypted apps such as Signal.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday that the FBI is initiating a criminal investigation into the encrypted group chats used by Minneapolis organizers.
There are vastly different interpretations of the work done by the observers and those who blow warning whistles. Even though Americans have a First Amendment right to follow or record law enforcement officers doing their work in public so long as they keep a safe distance and don’t block or interfere with arrests, the Trump administration nonetheless insists observers are crossing a line. At a White House briefing Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Democratic leaders of “emboldening left-wing agitators who stalk, record, dox, target impede and place (immigration agents) in extremely dangerous situations.”
But the people involved in the widespread patchwork of resistance in Minnesota are increasingly asserting that the Trump administration is purposely weaponizing language to distort their mission and paint everyone who pushes back against the aggressive immigration agenda as unlawful agitators. Donald Trump has referred to resistors in Minnesota as “professional insurrectionists, paid agitators and even thugs, assuming that people will hear those words and visualize rioting and rowdy street theater. In truth, that does not in any way align with the meticulously detailed mosaic of small-bore civic action that is part of the larger mainframe of opposition to ICE in Minnesota.
Residents have set up impromptu rideshares to ferry nursing home employees and hospital workers who are too afraid to use public transportation. Church basements have been turned into pop-up food banks where volunteers deliver meals, supplies, medicine, diapers, baby powder and feminine hygiene products to families too afraid to go outside.
Schedules are passed around for shoveling snow or taking trash cans to the curb for residents in immigrant communities on trash pickup day. (Minneapolis Public Radio reported that earlier this month, ICE agents approached a Venezuelan mother named A.J. as she took out the trash, and they eventually drove off with her 20-year-old son despite him having a pending green card application.)
Many of these people are senior citizens or residents who pull a few hours here or there between work, child care or sports schedules.
Women are gathering to knit tasseled red pointy “melt the ice” hats modeled after the ones worn by Norwegians as a silent symbolic way to resist Nazis in the 1940s. Volunteers who call themselves peacekeepers zoom to places were traditional protestors are confronting immigration agents to diffuse tensions and, in some cases, quite literally put out fires. Many of these people are senior citizens or residents who pull a few hours here or there between work, child care or sports schedules. Parents are pulling double duty at food banks and phone centers while their kids are doing homework in a corner on the floor.
Residents are also posting up at bus stops and the entry point for restaurants and markets frequented by immigrants — often for hours and in subzero temperatures. On a recent trip home to Minneapolis, I spoke with a public health nurse named Melanie, who asked that we not use her last name for fear of reprisal.
“We are just being a presence and a being a body between them and ICE agents so they don’t get taken,” she said. “I think the residents and the people of this neighborhood are super appreciative of the fact that we are showing up and are here to tell them that we care about them and we don’t want anything bad to happen to them.” High-profile events such as the shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents and detaining the 5-year-old boy in the bunny hat have certainly inspired some people to resist. But people tell me that much of the resistance has been inspired by smaller moments: witnessing a cook being pulled out of a beloved restaurant or seeing a caravan of ICE vehicles pull into a gas station and realizing that some of the customers are trembling while others feel more safe because of their obvious European heritage. The foundation for Minnesota’s layered mosaic of resistance existed before immigration officials descended on Minnesota and was pressure-tested not only when a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, but also when police in or around the Twin Cities killed Philando Castile, Daunte Wright, Jamar Clark, Winston Smith and Amir Locke. The networks that formed in response to the violent unrest following the George Floyd murder, either to protest police brutality or protect neighborhoods against rioting, helped to form the scaffolding for the organizational structure in the current resistance. Minnesota has a long tradition of union organizing, grassroots progressive political movements and a deep history of welcoming refugees. But there are other traditions that have contributed to the rapid and sprawling organized opposition. Minnesota has a long tradition of union organizing, grassroots progressive political movements and a deep history of welcoming refugees through resettlement programs run by Catholic and Lutheran churches. Minnesota also has a strong sense of civic duty. It was the state with the highest voter participation rate in the 2024 presidential election. When Trump threatened to thump Minnesota with a day of reckoning and retribution, he didn’t know he was targeting a state willing to stand up to his militarized immigration agenda day in and day out to the point residents have reorganized their everyday lives to bear witness to the deportations and watch out for their neighbors. If Trump’s show of militarized enforcement was meant to drive people inside out of fear, it hasn’t worked. Thousands of volunteers are officially signing up each week, and many more are stepping up in unofficial ways. “Maybe ICE didn’t realize that in Minnesota, civics is a way of life,” said Melissa Rach of Minneapolis. “They can bring the ‘largest operation ever’ to our doorstep, but they cannot break a city that views civic duty as a sacred oath.” Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak told me this weekend, “They will never ever EVER break Minnesota.” The opposition to the aggressive immigration enforcement in Minnesota has become so widespread, habitualized and routine that it raises an interesting question: When does the refusal to accept a version of policing defined by fear and force become less like protest and more like civic-self-defense? “They will never ever EVER break Minnesota.” Protest is usually about specific acts that are meant to bring about change. Something deeper and much more structural is happening on the ground in Minnesota creating new networks and new modalities for resistance. Sometimes protest screams. Sometimes it carries signs or beats drums. But sometimes the most sweeping and effective form or resistance carries a camera or a bag of diapers or a pan of hot food to someone who is too afraid to go outside. When the history of this moment is examined years from now, the heated images of everyday people braving frigid temperatures to confront immigration agents dressed as if they are going to war in Fallujah will likely be the visual marker of Minnesota’s opposition. But what has made this resistance so resilient and so effective is the work done in networks well beyond public view, often by those who don’t see themselves as “protestors” but as people just trying to protect a way of life. And in doing so, they will help determine the kind of America we all live in.
Michele Norris is a senior contributing editor for MS NOW. 
