Trump’s war on Minnesota is more than executive overreach

All over Minneapolis, barricades erected out of wood pallets restrict access to neighborhoods. For the past few weeks, makeshift fortifications have slowed passing cars for anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protestors to scan the passengers, relaying warnings if they see any ICE agents. These stationary defense teams are supplemented by mobile “ICE-watching” groups, which follow ICE squad cars and report their movements. Many members are trained constitutional observers who are also prepared to film arrests — the two American citizens recently murdered by ICE, Alex Pretti and Renée Good, were among them.

The increasingly sophisticated anti-ICE effort is a response to the war of attrition U.S. President Donald Trump is waging on my hometown of Minneapolis. As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz put it last May, ICE is behaving like Trump’s own rendition of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s clandestine police force. Trump sent in ICE under the pretense of curbing fraud committed by Minneapolis’ large Somali immigrant community.

That story, however, thinly veils Trump’s true intentions: to bend Minnesota to his will in what he has called a “day of reckoning and retribution.” By terrorizing Minnesota’s immigrant community, Trump aims to prove that he can inflict pain wherever he wants, on whomever he wants.

That is why we must look to Minneapolis to gauge the threat ICE poses on a national level — the city is not unique; it is merely the first target. In Minneapolis, ICE’s campaign of terror exhibits two intertwined symptoms: an erosion of public trust in government, and, simultaneously, a fundamental disruption to the everyday lives of citizens.

It is well documented that ICE agents are poorly trained, quota-driven and far from law-abiding. A hotspot for ICE’s foul play is the B.H. Whipple Federal Building, where they keep many detainees in overcrowded cells, and where protests are constant. Whipple is a short-term holding facility, not a detention center — there are no beds, health protocols or meal schedules. ICE officials have illegally denied Congress members entry into Whipple, which some lawmakers have highlighted is a serious transparency concern. Private ICE planes ship Whipple detainees, including toddlers, to large detention centers in states like Texas to evade court orders for their release.

ICE arrests appear more like abductions: agents break down doors without warrants and smash open car windows. ICE sightings evoke such acute fear that elementary school teachers have reported children urinating themselves when schools enter ICE-induced lockdowns.

University students in Minnesota are also threatened. Carleton College, a liberal arts school located south of Minneapolis, went into lockdown in late January following ICE sightings in the area. Private security guards around the University of Minnesota are instructed to prohibit entry onto University property for anyone without confirmed business. Faculty members carry whistles to raise the alarm if there is a breach. If ICE agents make it to the classrooms, my mother, a professor there, says she plans to stand between the armed agents and her students. 

Even for Minnesotans less vulnerable to racial profiling by ICE — one of their main tactics for arrests — life is still far from normal. Widespread business shutdowns, both from protests and because many Minnesotans are too afraid to go to work, have upended commercial normalcy. New estimates peg Minneapolis’ economic losses from ICE activity to $20 million per week. The culturally diverse Lake Street, a historic 5-mile thoroughfare, is losing upwards of $7 million each week alone.

And ICE’s irresponsibility is dragging down other government agencies along with them.

A key target is Minneapolis’s police department. Since George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) has seen improvements. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, appointed in 2022, has aimed to reform the police force from its image of discriminatory violence, in part through increased recruitment of people of color. While the police force still faces criticism under his leadership, Minneapolis has seen a decline in violent crime (albeit alongside a nationwide decrease).

But, truthfully, it’s hard to make the distinction between a good cop and a bad ICE officer through the haze of tear gas and pepper spray. It seems ICE has thrown any legitimacy O’Hara might’ve worked to build out the window.

Further, the public infighting between levels of government is difficult to see as trustworthy for anyone involved. JD Vance claimed that the unrest “unique to Minneapolis” is the fault of the police force refusing to cooperate with ICE. Trump’s calls for “retribution” frame the state and federal governments as opposing sides. Caught in between is O’Hara’s department, whose hard-won public favor has been snuffed out.

Trump’s weaponization of ICE is different from his other executive power plays. With ICE, there is no way to stick your head in the sand. If your city is next, then you are next.

To impose economic and social consequences at will in a quest for didactic revenge is a fundamental departure not only from constitutionality but also from democratic unity. By murdering civilians, sowing mass fear, devastating the local economy and delegitimizing state institutions, ICE functions like a war tactic intended to subjugate Minnesota. As Walz articulates, Trump means to “make an example of Minnesota” — states that don’t vote for him and whose thriving immigrant communities don’t fit his anti-immigrant narrative will be punished. In a democracy, you do not wage war against one of your own states.

So no, Americans would not “like a dictator,” as Trump suggested in a Freudian slip last year. We certainly don’t want a Gestapo, either.

Paul Fertig is a contributing writer for the Opinions section. He is a freshman at Stanford studying chemistry.

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