- - Immigration agents deploy tear gas, pepper spray in Minneapolis as confrontations with protesters grow

Shaquille BrewsterJanuary 13, 2026 at 5:43 PM

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ICE agents detain a woman after pulling her from a car Tuesday in Minneapolis. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

MINNEAPOLIS — From high school students to elected officials, residents in Minnesota are pushing back against the growing deployment of federal immigration officers in their neighborhoods, leading to days of confrontations and protests.

Resident Neph Sudduth stopped to choke back tears as she witnessed immigration officers roaming around her neighborhood, just a few blocks from the site where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good last week, and clashing with protesters.

“They will hurt you for real! They will hurt you for real!” she shouted at anti-ICE demonstrators, urging them to move away from the officers’ vehicles. Just then, an immigration officer rolled down his window, extended his arm and sprayed a protester point-blank in the face with a chemical agent.

“How dare they come back to this neighborhood,” Sudduth told NBC News. “How forgone you have to be morally to come back here and stand up and do that with your faces covered?”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that she planned to send more agents to Minnesota this week to quell protesters and continue to enforce immigration policies. President Donald Trump defended the Minnesota operation Tuesday, saying, “We have taken out killers, rapists and drug dealers, people from mental institutions that came in illegally.” ICE has posted on social media about the arrests of people accused of sex crimes and who they allege are in the country illegally.

Cary Wang, a medic who is part of 50/51, a nonpartisan grassroots group, provided medical help Tuesday to several people who were affected by chemical agents deployed by immigration officers.

“I think it’s part of their strategy to intimidate and show that they’re immune to any type of repercussions,” Wang said. “The fact that they’re ramping up their enforcement officers — that they’re bringing more here when they already know it’s a volatile situation — it just doesn’t seem that they’re looking for things to cool down. It looks like they’re actually trying to escalate things.”

The highly charged confrontations between protesters and immigration enforcement have been captured in various clips on social media, including posts showing agents asking people at an electric vehicle charging station if they are citizens and another in which protesters curse and scream as an agent appears to kneel on a man’s neck as officers arrest him.

The videos and images contribute to a picture of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations as they fan out across the country, triggering pushback from residents in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.

In Minneapolis on Tuesday, resistance to the presence of federal agents was represented by the smell of tear gas, which lingered in the air of a neighborhood following a clash between community members and immigration officers who said they were conducting an operation in the area.

Residents and witnesses told NBC News they came out with whistles to alert others about the operation and act as observers while others began protesting. That’s when, they say, officers began deploying pepper spray and throwing tear gas canisters, which were still on the ground Tuesday afternoon.

ICE agents detain an observer Tuesday after they arrested two people from a residence in Minneapolis. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

Sam Luhmann, who saw the incident, said he spotted a large number of armed immigration officers in the area “pounding on doors” and arresting a few people.

Then, “they started tackling protesters” and deployed what he believed to be tear gas and pepper balls, Luhmann told NBC News. “It seemed like a war.”

Luhmann, 16, of Chicago, drove to Minneapolis with his older brother after Good was fatally shot. He said they wanted to help community members monitor immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis the same way they did when immigration officers were deployed to Chicago last year under “Operation Midway Blitz.”

Many of the clashes are taking place just blocks from where Good was killed.

Community observers and protesters gathered after immigration officers rear-ended his car, said Christian Molina, 40. Molina told NBC News officers were asking him whether he was in the country legally.

“Luckily, they didn’t hurt me or shoot at me. But what if they did?” said Molina, a U.S. citizen and father of four. He added that he wasn’t doing anything wrong when officers went after him.

“There’s no reason for them to just look at you and try to just chase you.”

DHS did not comment on the incident involving Molina.

The crowd that gathered around Molina was later hit with tear gas and pepper spray.

South of Minneapolis, in Richfield, Border Patrol agents stopped at a Target store Thursday and arrested two U.S. citizens, Democratic state Rep. Michael Howard said.

“Yesterday in Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both who are U.S. citizens. Madness,” Howard wrote in a news release Friday.

Angela Oberfoell, who witnessed the arrests of her co-workers at Target, told NBC News the experience was “traumatic.”

Oberfoell also provided NBC News with a video she recorded of the incident. It shows workers in disbelief and customers confronting Bovino and other Border Patrol agents.

Another video of the second employee arrested showed the moment Border Patrol agents followed the employee as he recorded the agents and yelled “f--- you” before the agent tackled the employee to the ground at the store’s entrance.

DHS said of the arrest captured in that video, “This individual was arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.”

Howard said that both of the Target workers have been released but that they “sustained injuries and untold trauma while their rights were trampled for no reason whatsoever.”

“We continue to call on ICE to GET OUT of Minnesota,” he added.

Officials in Minnesota sued the federal government Monday to stop the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota.

Shaquille Brewster and Natasha Korecki reported from Minneapolis and Nicole Acevedo from New York.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Breaking”