Minnesota officials have called on demonstrators to remain peaceful and maintain ICE surveillance, but doing so has become increasingly difficult amid fierce opposition from the Trump administration.
Demonstrators clash with ICE in Minneapolis, intensifying protests
Protests intensified in Minneapolis as thousands of people clashed with ICE over enforcement tactics following a fatal shooting.
Protesters who want to speak out about the shooting death of Renee Good are facing a barrage of conflicting directives from authorities.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz encouraged protesters to record themselves with federal immigration authorities and said in an appeal to Walz residents, “Please help us document exactly what is happening in our communities.”
But the Trump administration has accused the group that monitors and tracks ICE of unfairly preventing the agency from completing its removals.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said posting photos and videos of ICE officers online constitutes “identity theft” and threatened to “prosecute anyone who unlawfully harasses ICE officers to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Governor Walz is encouraging obstruction of federal law enforcement, which is a federal crime and a felony,” McLaughlin told USA TODAY. “He is putting his constituents in a potentially dangerous and criminal situation.”
Republican Rep. Harry Niska of Minnesota also criticized Gov. Walz, saying the governor “incited fear and anger by falsely claiming that Minnesota was ‘at war’ with the federal government and ‘under attack’ from ICE, and by disparaging federal agents as a ‘modern-day Gestapo.'”
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, told USA TODAY the situation was tense, with police deploying gas and firing rubber bullets, putting protesters in a “very difficult position.”
“It seems like Americans from all walks of life are trying to navigate this moment, not just expressing their disapproval of what’s happening in their communities, but also trying to stay safe,” Cárdenas said. “But the existence of points means no one is safe, right?”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Walz both called for calm, with Walz appealing directly to President Trump, asking him to “lower the temperature.”
“We can and must speak out loudly, urgently, but peacefully,” he said in a statement to Minnesotans. “We can’t fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants.”
Do protesters have the right to photograph federal officers?
According to several First Amendment organizations, Americans have a First Amendment right to monitor and record law enforcement agencies, including ICE, while performing their official duties.
However, there are also clear legal restrictions.
“You can’t stop federal agents from doing their lawful jobs, and it’s not really up to individual neighbors to decide whether ICE’s actions are lawful or not,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “In other words, unless there’s a court order saying, ‘ICE get out of Minnesota,’ or ‘ICE get out of Minneapolis,’ ICE is allowed to be there. They’re allowed to enforce federal law.”
With the rise of smartphones, filming of law enforcement officers has become more common since a bystander recorded the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne, who himself was shoved by a police officer while monitoring ICE activity, is urging people to join Defend the 612. It helps connect people within the Minneapolis area code with hundreds of small neighborhood groups involved in rapid response, school protection patrols, and community assistance programs.
‘No one can guarantee’ whether protests will be peaceful
Cárdenas, of America’s Voice, said local organizers and leaders have repeatedly stressed that protests must be peaceful and must not be interfered with, but violence cannot be completely prevented.
“The reality is that sometimes that happens because there are a lot of different situations and bad actors could be infiltrating these protests,” she said. “No one can guarantee that violence will not occur.”
One reason for this, said Sidney Tarrow, a political science professor emeritus at Cornell University who studies social movements, is that there is no centralized protest organization that can urge protesters to remain nonviolent.
The large-scale protests that occurred across the United States in 2025 were organized by a coalition of large national left-wing groups, including Indivisible, but were carried out and organized by local activists. These protests, which occurred in thousands of cities across the United States and were attended by millions of people, were largely free of violence.
There are no groups involved in these protests. ICE Watch, which the Trump administration has repeatedly accused of masterminding, is a training program that teaches best practices on how to challenge ICE without interfering with arrests. Not all protesters are trained.
In Minneapolis, protests have begun in loosely organized Facebook groups and Signal chats where ICE agents share where they are and what vehicles they are driving, but like other major cities across the country, there is no executive in charge of directing the action.
Tarrow said it was remarkable that the demonstrations had continued so peacefully for so long.
“Normally, you would expect sporadic and sporadic outbreaks of violence by people who consider themselves part of a movement, who are outraged by the government’s actions and who are unable to restrain themselves from committing acts of violence,” he said. “It is also very possible that violent actions on the part of ICE officers could incite violence or be interpreted as violence on the part of protesters. So far, we have not seen that.”
Contributed by Cate Charron, USA TODAY NETWORK
