The night of Tuesday, Minneapolis’ predominantly Somali district found itself at the center of a heated clash between federal forces and local residents. Officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted to check identification at several storefronts, but a packed crowd blocked their vehicles, forcing the agents to deploy pepper spray in order to break through the hostility.
City Council Member Jamal Osman, a Somali American representative for the area, observed the confrontation firsthand and was joined by an Associated Press camera crew. He reported that armed ICE officers visited East African restaurants, shut the doors, and demanded people’s IDs. In the end they only found U.S. citizens and claimed no arrests were made, although the number of individuals detained or escorted to ICE facilities remains unclear.
Trump’s administration has intensified pressure on Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest such community in the United States. After announcing on social media that he would terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, the federal agency began a surge of investigations and detentions that also affected people of other nationalities. While ICE maintained that no arrests occurred on that Tuesday, the city’s council member and local witnesses say several individuals were temporarily held.
Osman noted that when agents checked IDs at random on the street, at least one U.S. citizen was held briefly before the officers moved on to a city‑owned senior housing building. There, a group of mostly white young people—Osman referred to them as “heroes”—used whistles to alert the crowd and confronted the agents. The officers responded with pepper spray, and the sound of whistles, along with the arrival of vehicles, broke the officers’ progress.
He also recounted seeing people suffer the effects of pepper spray and spoke with a young Somali American who was forced onto a vehicle, detained and taken to an ICE detention center. The officials finally examined his U.S. passport, fingerprinted him, and released him, but the man was told to find his own way home—a journey of roughly six miles in inclement winter weather.
“I just don’t know what they accomplished today other than the chaos,” Osman said.
Last week, Trump amplified the tension by describing Somalis as “garbage” and insisting they should leave the country while simultaneously ordering federal agents to target Minnesota’s Somali enclave. The remarks drew condemnation from Somali community leaders, Democrats, and state officials such as Governor Tim Walz. Republicans in the state legislature have largely remained silent on the issue.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 of the nation’s 260,000 Somalis, most of whom are U.S. citizens. Approximately 58% were born in the U.S., and 87% of those born abroad have been naturalized.
The Department of Homeland Security’s new website lists at least six Somali individuals arrested in Minnesota in recent weeks, labeling those individuals as “criminal aliens” to showcase what the agency claims is fulfillment of the president’s pledge to carry out mass deportations. In a separate statement, ICE named three additional Somalis not listed on the website, as well as other nationalities involved in Operation Metro Surge. The agency said all of those arrested had prior convictions, including offenses such as sexual abuse of minors, robbery, and domestic assault.
The statement criticized local officials, saying, “Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey protected these criminals at the expense of the safety of Americans,” and warned, “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message for criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW. If you don’t, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you.”
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