Rachel Abrams: From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. For weeks, protests around Minneapolis have caught nationwide attention as the city shows open defiance to a federal immigration crackdown.

Protesters: When our immigrant neighbors are under attack, WHAT DO WE DO? (Stand up, fight back!) BUT BEHIND the scenes, a quieter, organized resistance has taken shape. Today, our producers Anna Foley and Michael Simon Johnson go on the ground in Minneapolis to capture that effort. And our colleague Charles Homans explains why the city has become ground zero in the fight over the government's deportation strategy. It's Wednesday, January 21st.

Michael Simon Johnson: This is Michael Simon Johnson. I'm here with New York Times reporter Charlie Homans. And we are What neighborhood are we in actually?

Charlie Homans: So, this is the Lin Lake area of Minneapolis. We're in South Minneapolis and it's named after this intersection that we're standing at actually which is Lindale Avenue and Lake Street. It's kind of the place where sort of the recent waves of immigrants and settled refugees and the Minneapolis of the kind of white liberal urban culture intersect and those groups have been kind of have been brought together in an interesting way by this ICE crackdown in the city.

Charlie Homans: I mean, the thing that's different about Minneapolis compared to Chicago or Los Angeles or other cities that have been targets of this crackdown so far is that it's a very small city. It doesn't have that many people in it. And the number of federal agents that have been sent here is really quite huge. And what I've been hearing just talking to people here is that, you know, in the last few weeks, you know, people who are potential targets of these raids have really felt like they can't leave their homes at all. And so that has kind of become a focus of the organizing of of a lot of these local organizations and businesses which are kind of gathering donations.

Michael Simon Johnson: So we're about to go to one of these places. Tell me about what this place is and then what its role is in the this kind of network that you're talking about.

Charlie Homans: Sure. So, we're going to go to Smitten Kitten, which is a sex shop on Lindale here, and it's been playing a very interesting role kind of what's been happening here lately.

Michael Simon Johnson: Okay. Well, let's go inside.

Worker: So, I'm Layman, I work here at the Smitten Kitten for the past 2 years. During the regular day, we are an adult store. Um, we really focus on trying to give people like accurate information about sex education. We also have stuff for like every gender ever.

Michael Simon Johnson: Well, it it is very striking that this is like a sex shop, a really nice one, beautifully laid out, but also at the front there's this uh

Worker: mutual aid. Yeah, we're always doing mutual aid, but we just expanded it and like imploded ourselves with mutual aid basically.

Michael Simon Johnson: Well, um let's let's go downstairs.

Worker: Yeah. Sweet. I'm now walking past the sci-fi fantasy dildo section. Here's where we're keeping our diapers right now.

Michael Simon Johnson: This is a lot.

Worker: Yeah. It was 11 boxes, which was kind of crazy. Lots of boxes of diapers, lots of boxes of formula, wipes.

Michael Simon Johnson: Probably a thousand people over the past couple of days.

Michael Simon Johnson: But the the goods are moving. Like you're not like

Worker: we're not sitting on it. It's got to go. It is insane the volume and the urgency that we have been meeting people with. They will be bringing their papers into the store. They are afraid. They are leaving their house to come here to get resources even though they are at risk for being picked up by ICE. And they're all wanting to prove to me the validity of that. And I'm like, I really don't care. Like, you don't have to tell me because I know that the next person behind you has the exact same story.

Michael Simon Johnson: It's like there's no time to notice that there's a dildo on the wall because like your family is being torn apart that that's what's in the store.

Michael Simon Johnson: I'm curious like what you think it says about sort of Minneapolis right now that a shop like this is kind of on the front lines of the community response.

Worker: Yeah. Sex workers and marginalized groups of people like that will radicalize you. I really learned in the strip club that everyone agrees with the revolution. We just don't all have the same language to talk about it. And I feel like we inspired a bunch of other businesses to begin taking in donations and like distributing them to their neighbors. And I've been telling people all day long like the more spots that we can pop up with resources, the harder time that ICE is going to have keeping track of where everyone is at because we've also had ICE agents follow people from our spot.

Michael Simon Johnson: What you're describing is a at least citywide I don't know exactly what the right word is. I don't know if it's like a movement. I don't know if it's a network. I don't know if it's like a change in

Worker: It's like a bunch of people realizing like, oh, they're really not coming. Something that happened in 2020 was the first time I realized like my neighbor's house is on fire and the fire department is not coming. So, you better find a garden hose. Like, why am I and layman at the smitten kitten doing more than Jacob Frey? You you feel like you're doing something that is far more actionable is having like immediate direct

Michael Simon Johnson: So that same day, I went to the site where just a week earlier, an ICE officer had shot and killed a Minneapolis resident, Renee Good, in the city's southside. I'm on the corner of Portland and 35th on one end of the block. And there is uh there's a sign on this tree that someone posted. It says visitor guide. The block you are entering has become a space of mourning. Remember, you are a guest in this neighborhood. Take a deep breath. Drive slow. Approach the space with reverence. Notify neighborhood leaders of suspicious activity.

Michael Simon Johnson: There's a lot of flowers, a lot of flags, a lot of teddy bears. There's a bunch of people that have made a fire. Car just pulled up like driving down the block, stopped, asked if these people need more firewood for this fire, and dropped it off. There were about a dozen people there. Some people were staying for just a few minutes, others were lingering. I asked a woman who' brought flowers what she was feeling.

Resident: You have a mixed emotions because you have just this heartbroken feeling for the family because this did not have to happen. But then you have this hyper vigilance and you're watching every vehicle that has tinted windows and seeing, you know, it's like trying to pay your respects but also trying to watch out like is somebody going to come up here and break us up? Like today our building um we have a cleaning lady and I gave her a ride home today because I was like do not stand at the bus stop today. It's not safe anymore. So that's so sad. It's one of those things that it's if you want to help out in any way or if you need help, you know, all you have to do is ask. But that's I mean that's what many the Twin Cities is like.

Anna Foley: Anna Foley here. I'm a producer on the daily who also spent the weekend in Minneapolis. Along with the networks of activists, mutual aid, and neighbors taking care of neighbors, there are people avoiding ICE because they're afraid of getting detained or deported. Immigrants afraid of being targeted. I talked to one of them. We're calling her M.

M: In December when ICE really ramped up enforcement. Em realized she needed to make some changes and take precautions. I start to strategize like different routes to get to university, different routes to get to work and I ended up not going to the grocery anymore at all. It's been a long time since I've been at the grocery and I love a grocery.

Anna Foley: M actually can't be sure she's a target. Her parents brought her to the US when she was two. She's a DACA recipient, but that feels very tenuous to her right now.

M: For a while, the plan was avoid risk, lay low. But over time, that changed. She was watching the raids, the arrests, and then Renee Good was killed. It kind of set something on fire for me. The fear became like resentment and became anger. And as soon as I realized that like everybody's taking a risk, you might as well also take a risk for your community.

Anna Foley: Taking a risk meant that instead of going out of her way trying to avoid run-ins with ICE, she took routes where she knew she might see them so she could alert activists on a signal chat.

M: I would see suspicious vehicles and I'd be like, "Hey, there's a weird vehicle at the gas station at this crosssection. Just letting you guys know." And you know sometimes people ask of you if you can like circle back and I was not able to. I was very explicit. I was like I could not turn around but here's the information and that felt okay. I'm like here here you go. Hope for the best. Hope this helps.

Anna Foley: The network M is alerting on signal when she sees ICE. I got in touch with some of the people who are on the other end. these civilian patrols that have proliferated in cities like Minneapolis. I met up with two of these activists, Patty and Mitch, on Friday afternoon.

Mitch: Just out of an abundance of question, would you mind verbally telling me that you're not with uh ICE CBP or any government agency and then show me your press credential?

Anna Foley: After a few minutes, we hopped into Mitch and Patty's car. Patty had brought along a small notebook. And before we left, they stopped to make sure they both had everything, especially their whistles.

Patty: Um, every time we see ice, so that's been probably almost every every time that we've been out patrolling. And then if they're actually in the process of taking someone if they're in the process of a raid or something blowing the whistles a little bit harder. Yes, especially in the last week and a half. I mean, you will just be just in your house or running errands or you'll hear whistles here and there. You'll hear cars honking and that's how you know ICE is out and about.

Anna Foley: Patty told me people patrolling like this coordinate through group signal chats. Patty spotted a car that to their eyes seemed suspicious. Patty, what are you doing? I am writing down the license plate of this car and I am going to um ask for a plate check on it. We've got confirmed ICE for that.

Anna Foley: About 20 minutes after we started staking out this one truck, the suspected ICE agent emerged. Patty said she was particularly on edge. This was her first time out doing this after getting detained about a week earlier. Patty says one of the agents set off pepper spray. Smashed in um my front two windows and dragged us out of the car. um put us in handcuffs. Now, a few days later, here she was back out patrolling.

Patty: I think that ISIS's point in making these arrests and detaining people who are then often times let out without charges like I was is to, you know, intimidate people and deter them from doing this work. And to me, if they are willing to go through the whole process of trying to intimidate people like that and use their resources that way, then I think that that means that it's having some sort of impact. So, I want to keep showing up and doing everything that I possibly can to, you know, gum up the works.

Rachel Abrams: Charlie, why has this federal force descended on the Twin Cities specifically?

Charlie Homans: Well, the official Trump administration explanation is this fraud scandal. But if you're the Trump administration and you're looking to just arrest a lot of undocumented immigrants, Minneapolis is an odd choice because it's still a largely white city. Minnesota is the state of Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate in 2024, who Trump does seem to truly hate. It's also a very liberal city in a state that Trump has not ever won.

Charlie Homans: Minneapolis, of course, is also the site of George Floyd's murder. You really see the kind of long shadow of 2020 in Minneapolis. A lot of the same relationships and organizing ideas that people used to respond to what was happening after George Floyd are being used now in sort of updated and evolved ways in the response to the federal deployment here.

Charlie Homans: We're sort of off the map of prior experience. There's a sense of real vulnerability that feels different from other places. I've talked to people who have said like, "Am I going to need to start hiding people in, you know, spare room in my house?" And there is a real sense that this is an important moment in history that's unfolding.