ICE's Gestapo Tactics in Minnesota Detailed by Two Arrested U.S. Citizens
There’s perhaps no more obvious indicator of how morally depraved the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been in the state of Minnesota (and of course, everywhere else) than the way its agents have been treating American citizens who are simply attempting to observe and document everything that is going on as masked government thugs flood their city. In no scenario is there need for anonymous security personnel to brandish weapons, administer beatings or drag bystanders into detainment, other than as a concerted campaign of intimidation that is meant to stop American eyes from prying into the brutality of the underlying campaign against undocumented immigrants. Being a U.S. citizen affords those bystanders some relative degree of privilege, such as the relative certainty that if they’re detained, they’ll eventually be unceremoniously released and shoved back out into the streets–but at the same time, one has to be wary of trigger-happy federal agents who may feel “threatened” at any moment, with results like the ICE shooting death of Renee Nicole Good. Still, a case like Good’s is hardly the best case scenario for ICE–too much attention, too much outrage, even for a mouthpiece like DHS’s Tricia McLaughlin, who seems to delight in justifying murder. A more widely indicative type of intimidation is instead what happened to Patty O’Keefe and Brandon Sigüenza, two Twin Cities residents who were arrested by ICE this weekend and have subsequently described the entire process in detail. Their accounts provide a valuable insight into the ways ICE is violating the rights of observers and attempting to both silence and cajole them into giving up more information on immigrants and protesters.
O’Keefe and Sigüenza are both “community patrollers,” a role that has grown in nuance and importance in (predominantly blue) cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago or Portland that have seen surges in ICE operations at the whims of Donald Trump and DHS. The job of the community patrollers, as they see it, is both to document and video everything that ICE is doing in the course of their myriad raids, traffic stops and intimidation campaign, and also to inhibit their ability to be effective through nonviolent means. This can involve following the ICE agents around, following their unmarked SUVs and maintaining a constant watch on them. And suffice to say, agents of ICE don’t tend to care for this, which often leads to confrontation when the agents in question note that they’re being followed. Sometimes, the agents simply respond with warnings. Other times, they escalate to arrests based on claims of “obstruction,” even when the observers are simply sitting parked in their cars in the vicinity. Agents of ICE have even reportedly employed more creative forms of intimidation, such as looking up the address of the car owner and then driving to that location, idling in front of the observer’s home just to demonstrate some version of “we know where you live.” Community patrollers in Minneapolis have even reported different agents visiting their homes while they’re out observing ICE, to harass any family members who might be there, seemingly in an effort to get the observers to quit.
On Sunday morning, O’Keefe and Sigüenza were patrolling in south Minneapolis when they heard that ICE had surrounded the car of another patroller and were using pepper spray on observers. Following agents from that scene, they were eventually confronted by ICE agents who demanded the pair stop following them, with one of the agents allegedly spraying pepper spray into their car through the intake vent. Sigüenza even captured a photo of the agent doing it, which was shared with Minneapolis’ KARE 11 TV station.
O’Keefe and Sigüenza did not stop following. Instead, they continued tailing the ICE vehicles, until the agents stopped their cars again. This time, they were having none of it. The resulting arrest was captured on video by other bystanders, wherein agents can be seen smashing the two windows of O’Keefe’s car, despite the fact that the doors are unlocked, before opening the doors and dragging O’Keefe and Sigüenza out. The pair were handcuffed and placed in separate unmarked vehicles bound for the Whipple Federal Building, adjacent to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Throughout the process, O’Keefe says she was degraded and insulted by the agents, one of whom immediately mentioned Renee Nicole Good, allegedly saying: “You guys gotta stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.”
There’s obviously no direct video or immediate proof of this particular ICE agent saying those words, but O’Keefe and Sigüenza have since told their story in full to Minneapolis’ KARE 11 news anchor Jana Shortal, in the below embedded video. When asked by Shortal why they thought the ICE agent would have gone out of his way to invoke Good, inflaming what is obviously an extremely sore subject for any protester or community patroller who is currently active in Minnesota, O’Keefe thinks for a moment before replying: “He was extremely angry and activated, and he was wanting to say things that made me feel angry and paralyzed. That was the goal.”
In his written statement, which has subsequently been widely shared, Brandon Sigüenza describes the chaotic conditions within the Whipple Federal Building, where the two arrested U.S. citizens said they could hear the wailing and crying of people being processed, and witnessed injured detainees who had received no medical treatment. Food and bathroom breaks were difficult to come by, and Sigüenza characterizes the people running the place as seeming intensely disorganized, often unable to open doors or figure out how to use the building’s phone system. For the eight hours they were detained, O’Keefe was denied a phone call or ability to notify family where she was. Sigüenza, meanwhile was eventually told that a lawyer was there to see him, but ICE agents refused to give them complete privacy in the subsequent meeting.
Perhaps most shockingly, though, Sigüenza said that he was eventually given an offer by agents who identified themselves as DHS, offering to pay him money or extract favorable immigration outcomes on his behalf if he would give them the names and contact information of other illegal immigrants. Sigüenza would repeat this story to KARE 11 as well. In writing, he describes it this way:
At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.
Sigüenza said he had no idea why agents made this offer to him, other than the fact that he has Mexican ancestry and a Hispanic last name. Subsequently, he and O’Keefe were put back into a holding cell. Finally, after roughly eight hours, and without being told whether he was being charged with anything (he wasn’t), agents came for Sigüenza again, escorted him to the exit, and shoved him back outside into the already active protest happening at the building … just as security there deployed pepper spray and crowd dispersal rounds once again. He would eventually have to borrow the phone of a stranger in order to contact his wife and coordinate pickup. In summarizing his experience, Sigüenza notes the privilege he experienced in captivity compared to how the same experience could have gone if he wasn’t a United States citizen–he could easily have been one of the wailing people that he and O’Keefe could hear rising above the din throughout their entire experience.
“During my detention I knew that I was being released,” Sigüenza writes. “I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?”
O’Keefe, meanwhile, said that the experience had left her shaken … which was no doubt the intent of the experience. Speaking to KARE 11, she said that she wished the federal agents in Minnesota could understand why local residents like herself and Sigüenza were taking to the streets, out of an effort to stand up for friends and neighbors who have significantly less protection in the eyes of the law.
“They don’t realize this is coming from a deep place of love and empathy and care for my community,” O’Keefe said. “And that is a stronger feeling that I have in me than fear.”
Firsthand experience of a US citizen, arrested by #ICE
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— KimberCanada (@kimberleybsb.bsky.social) Jan 13, 2026 at 9:01 AM