Life Under ICE: What Daily Feels Like in Occupied Minneapolis
WIRED spoke to 10 Minneapolis residents about their new normal after a deadly ICE shooting sparked a massive federal crackdown
Two weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, daily life in Minneapolis has shifted irrevocably. More than 2,000 federal agents have been deployed across the city, officially to hunt for undocumented immigrants, with schools, churches, and childcare centers all falling within their line of fire. There is no true safe space for immigrant communities in the Twin Cities right now, and in response, local residents have banded together to build rapid-response networks to shield their neighbors.
Minneapolis is far from the first U.S. city to be put under ICE siege, and it likely won’t be the last. After courts blocked President Donald Trump’s earlier plan to deploy the National Guard in California and Illinois, Trump has stated he is considering activating U.S. troops in Minneapolis under the 19th-century Insurrection Act. Even if that deployment never happens, billions in federal funding have flowed to ICE, enabling roving teams of masked, armed agents to operate unchecked across the country.
To understand what daily life feels like in a city under this kind of federal occupation, WIRED interviewed 10 Minneapolis residents from diverse backgrounds about their new normal. All have quickly adapted to a reality where keeping neighbors—and ourselves—safe is a shared, collective responsibility. Interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.
Anonymous, 37, elementary school teacher
Every morning when I get dressed, I slip my whistle on right away—just in case I spot ICE nearby, so I can alert everyone around me. I head into work, and we try our hardest to keep routines normal for the kids, but all the teachers carry this constant undercurrent of anxiety.
That anxiety peaks when I’m on recess duty, when I’m constantly scanning the area: one eye on my students, one on the edges of the playground. Just today, a helicopter hovered overhead the whole time, and it had the kids on edge. For a lot of us adults, it brings up PTSD from the murder of George Floyd. Back then, our city was flooded with chaos and raw energy, but this feels totally different. That period was rooted in anger; this one is rooted in fear.
If I spot ICE while we’re outside, I blow the whistle to signal everyone to get inside. The kids know what that means. We talked about it in an age-appropriate way: we told them “There’s some unsafe stuff going on right now. If something scary happens while we’re outside, just like when it starts pouring rain unexpectedly, we’ll blow the whistle early and we all go inside together.”
I have to remember to blow it slowly, too. The kids are used to hearing quick, sharp blasts from neighborhood alerts when ICE is nearby, and that spooks them. One of my students told me at recess just the other day: “Make sure you blow slow so we don’t get scared and confused.”
Brandon Sigüenza, 32, volunteer observer detained by ICE
I’d never done legal observation work before January 11, the day I was arrested. A friend asked if I’d come with her to help, and I said yes. Our neighborhood text alert group had just shared that ICE had used pepper spray on a legal observer near my friend’s house, so we headed over to check on people’s safety and document what was happening.
We found two unmarked SUVs blocked in the middle of the road, with other observers circling them honking their horns to protest. We approached from the east, and when the agents turned 270 degrees and headed south on 16th Avenue, we were the first car able to follow them. We stuck behind them for less than a block, around 40 seconds total. It was the first time I’d ever even seen an ICE car in person, let alone followed one.
My heart was pounding out of my chest. When the SUVs pulled over, I told my friend, who was driving, “Just breathe, take deep breaths” — though I was really saying that to calm myself down. My friend is incredibly brave, and she started yelling at them: “We aren’t obstructing you. You can drive right through.” There wasn’t a single car in front of them when they pulled over; they’d blocked us in from the front, and other observers’ cars were behind us, so we couldn’t reverse out either.
Agents got out and surrounded our car. One of them filmed me the whole time. They never said they were with ICE, but I knew. I’d never interacted with an ICE agent before, so I was on edge. My friend kept shouting, “What law did we break? We aren’t obstructing you. Get the fuck out of our way.” I just said Renee Good’s name twice. I couldn’t think of anything else to say—she was all I could think about in that moment.
Most of the agents started heading back to their SUVs, when one pulled pepper spray from his car, walked over to ours, and sprayed it straight into our air intake vent. The SUVs pulled forward about 30 seconds, then stopped again. “Our car is in park, you can drive right past us,” my friend yelled. She told me later she was thinking of Renee Good, and didn’t want them to have any excuse to claim we were blocking them. We both held our hands up in the air. An agent just snapped, “Shut the fuck up.” Then one came to my side of the car and said, “You’re under arrest.” I kept my hands up and waited for instructions— I had no idea if he wanted me to get out or stay seated. At one point, one agent said to my friend: “You need to stop. You’re obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.”
Then he smashed the passenger window. Another agent smashed the driver window at the exact same time. Our doors were unlocked, but neither even tried to open them—they just broke the glass. All I could think about was Renee Good and what had happened to her, and I told myself I just needed to stay calm, to not give them any excuse to hurt me. I kept my hands up and breathed as slowly as I could, and the whole thing felt surreal, like I was watching it happen to someone else. But the sound of shattering glass was loud and jarring, impossible to ignore. (Later, when I was searched at the detention center, they found shards of glass in my coat pocket.)
On the drive to the detention facility, one agent warned me: “What you guys are doing is really dangerous. We’re hunting really bad people.” When we pulled into the facility garage, I saw a young East African woman in her 20s being held, and she reminded me of so many of my friends and coworkers. I asked the agent, “Is she one of the bad guys you’re after?” He didn’t answer.
I’d heard that on January 10, Minnesota lawmakers had been turned away from this building, so I told myself I needed to remember every detail, now that I was inside. When I was being booked, I saw 20 to 30 Brown people lined up: most were Latinx, some were East African. My friend and I were taken to a separate table, marked for U.S. citizens, with a little sign that read “Obstruction.”
An agent searched me, took my passport, stuffed it in a mesh bag, and had me sign a form for my personal belongings. They cuffed my ankles and led me to an area marked “USC” — which I learned stood for U.S. citizens. I was locked alone in a 10x10 foot cell, with yellow painted walls and a concrete bench. My friend was in the cell next to mine, separated by two-way mirrors, so I yelled through the wall: “I love you, it’s going to be okay.” That made an agent uncomfortable, so he moved me to a holding spot in the hallway where I couldn’t see or talk to her anymore.
They read me my Miranda rights before letting me make one phone call, then I was taken back to my cell to start my 8 hours of detention. Later, when I was escorted to the bathroom, I had to walk through most of the facility, and that’s when I saw how many people were being held. The cells were the same size as my 10x10, which had held just me, but these cells had 12 to 15 people crammed inside. I had enough space to lay down on my concrete bench; none of these people did. Most stared at the floor, the walls, or the ceiling—there was almost no talking between detainees. I heard screaming, and I heard crying, the loudest, most wrenching sobs I’ve ever heard. When I walked past one open cell, I saw a woman using the bathroom, with three male federal agents standing there watching, casually making small talk about where they were from and their kids.
Three agents brought me into an interrogation room. They said, “We’re not with ICE, we’re with Homeland Security Investigations. It looks like you’re in trouble, but maybe we can help you out.” They asked me all sorts of questions: “Do you know any protest organizers? Do you know of any bombs that are going to be planted? Do you know anyone who plans to shoot an ICE officer?” I said no. I’ve never even met a protest organizer, and I don’t know anyone who wants to commit violence. Everyone I know who does legal observation does it to stop violence, not cause it. I don’t have any undocumented family members, and I don’t even know any undocumented people personally. I refused to cooperate with their questions, and that was that. They took me back to my cell. I later found out my friend got the same offer.
After I was released, a woman messaged me on Facebook. She sent a photo of her boyfriend and wrote: “I saw your post about being detained. He was picked up Sunday—did you see him in there?” I just broke down crying. All I could think was, God damn it, I should have paid more attention, I should have looked harder for him.
Adam Wish-Werven, 37, indie record label owner and parent
Even though I haven’t been detained by ICE myself right now, I can still feel the tension of what’s happening to other people all around me. There’s this pervasive emptiness—Minneapolis often feels like a ghost town these days. But when ICE agents are spotted nearby, everything shifts into frantic, chaotic energy: people running to respond, crowds gathering with their phones to document.
Most days, I drop my 2-year-old son off at daycare then work from home. Most of the daycare staff are people of color, and I can clearly see how on edge they are, how much lighter their moods used to be. The owners sent out a mass text through our daycare app to share their ICE protocol. They said they would comply with any “audits” — the kind of language mainstream business owners use to avoid saying “ICE raid” outright, which I get, they’re small business owners just trying to get by. But what that means, to me, is that if ICE shows up with a warrant, they’ll let them inside and let them take whoever they came for.
I can’t bear the thought of my 2-year-old witnessing violence in his supposed safe space. It terrifies me. We just want to enjoy our son—he’s our only child—but we don’t even know when the right time is to talk to him about what’s going on.
Aide Salgado, 41, consultant and investor for Latino businesses
I grew up in Minneapolis. My family opened our business on Lake Street back in the mid-90s, when no one wanted to be there and rent was incredibly cheap. Our business became a core part of the local Latino community, and in a lot of ways, we helped build this neighborhood from the ground up.
Lake Street is where so many people built their dreams. Every building, every business was built with hard work, sweat, and tears. It’s where people found community, where they found collective power, where so many Latina women built their own independence. That’s why it’s such an iconic place—and why it’s become a battleground now.
After the pandemic and the uprisings following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, so many local businesses needed support, so I started consulting that year. I keep drawing parallels to those days: no one knew when the crisis would end, no one knew how devastating it would be, both emotionally and financially.
I recently started offering free 20 to 30-minute consultations for any local business owner who needs to talk through what’s happening right now. The first week of January, I started getting flooded with calls from community members—daycare owners, restaurant owners, barbershop owners—all saying, “I need help, can we build a contingency plan?”
Some are furious, some are practical, some just break down crying. A lot of the time, I cry with them, we hug, and I tell them: “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. This will pass, but you still need to eat, you still need a roof over your head. I can’t help with the legal side, and I can’t make ICE go away. But I can help you get your finances in order, so when this is over you can rebuild.”
I know a lot of these small businesses won’t survive this. And the ones that do pull through will be left deeply damaged, financially and spiritually. But resilience is our superpower, and I have to hold onto that.
David Brauer, 66, former journalist
Legally, I’m a U.S. citizen, so ICE has no authority to detain me at all. But I never leave my house now without a backpack full of supplies: paper and a pencil so I can document what I see. I always wear my thickest, warmest clothes because it’s freezing here right now, and if I get detained, I could be stuck in a cold spot for hours. I turned off all biometric unlock on my phone, so I only use a passcode. If I’m stopped and they take my phone, they can’t just hold it up to my face to unlock it. I also carry my passport card with me everywhere, just in case.
Lori Norvell, 54, school board member
It’s only 14 degrees outside right now, but people still walk their dogs around the neighborhood just to patrol the streets. When anyone leaves the house, they bring a whistle, a mask, and a bottle of water to stay safe. We’re all connected to multiple text alert threads, so at any minute you could get a notification that ICE is nearby, and you need to get in your car and go help.
I take different routes every time I drive, to cover more vulnerable neighborhoods. When I go to the gym, I drive down by George Floyd Square, and instead of taking the highway, I take surface streets—just so I’m there if I’m needed, if I can help stop something bad from happening.
Yesterday I left my gym, and a car pulled up and just sat there, with heavily tinted windows. I stopped immediately, pulled out my whistle, and just waited. Turns out they were just meeting someone, another car pulled up, I could hear them laughing and talking. But that’s just how it is now: constant hyper-vigilance, always looking out for each other.
We never used to lock our front door. Now we lock it all the time. We never know when ICE will show up in our neighborhood. It feels like there are no rules anymore, no laws that apply to federal agents here. Everything you used to believe, that the government would protect you? Right now, the government is working against us. So it really does feel like we’re completely on our own.
Ryan Ecklund, 45, realtor detained after filming federal agents
I wasn’t out looking for ICE. On the morning of Monday January 12, I dropped my son off at school at 9:30 and was driving home. I realized I needed to stop at the grocery store less than a mile from my house to pick up yogurt and pears. When I pulled into the parking lot, I immediately spotted what was clearly an ICE vehicle: blacked out windows, out-of-state license plate, driver wearing tactical gear and a face mask, driving back and forth down the parking lane.
In that moment, I thought it was my responsibility as a member of this community to hold them accountable. I wasn’t trying to catch them doing something wrong or make a viral video—I just wanted them to know we see they’re here. So I pulled out my phone, hit record, and started following the vehicle, a silver Ford Explorer. They parked sideways in a spot, and I parked a few spots away. Then the Explorer backed up straight behind my car, so I couldn’t leave.
The passenger agent got out and walked straight to my driver’s side window. I was still recording, so I rolled my window down and said, “Good morning, what can I do for you?” He pulled out his own phone, took a photo of me, didn’t say a word, then walked back to his car and they drove off slowly.
I kept following them. They turned out of the shopping center onto the main road, then turned into my neighborhood, then onto the street my house is on, then into the cul-de-sac where I live. I realized they’d run my photo through facial recognition or run my license plate to find my address. They led me right to my own front door, clearly to send a message: we know who you are, we know where you live. It was a pure intimidation tactic, no question about it. They aren’t here to target violent criminals, they aren’t here to do any public service. They’re here to scare people, and that’s exactly what they did to me. They couldn’t have made their message clearer.
I followed them back out of the neighborhood. A few minutes later, they stopped in the middle of traffic on a main road, and both agents got out. I rolled my window down again and said, “What can I do for you?” One agent said, “This is your only warning—you aren’t allowed to follow us.” I said, “I don’t need a warning. I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m allowed to record your movements in public. I’m not blocking your investigation or your car, I’m not causing a disturbance, I have every right to record you.”
They both got back in their car and kept driving. Then another unmarked ICE vehicle, a black Ford F-150, pulled in front of them to form a caravan. We drove about 200 feet off the main road, and both ICE cars boxed me in so I couldn’t drive away. Five agents walked up to my driver’s door. One said, “You were warned, you’re breaking all kinds of laws.” My door was unlocked, so he just pulled it open. He
