Streets of Minneapolis Stay Tense Despite Trump’s Call for Calm
The streets of Minneapolis tell a different story than the one coming from Washington. This week, President Trump suggested a de-escalation, praising phone calls with Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, and hinting that progress was being made. But here on the ground, the tension hasn’t broken. It hums in the air, visible in the trailed federal vehicles, the blown whistles of activists, and the closed storefronts in immigrant neighborhoods.
Despite the presidential tone of compromise, the machinery of enforcement grinds on. On Wednesday, federal agents continued operations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In one encounter, Associated Press journalists documenting the scene were pushed, threatened with arrest, and ordered back into their car by Bureau of Prisons officers—a stark contradiction to promises of transparency and calm. Agents broke car windows; pepper spray hung in the air. Attorney General Pamali Bondi’s declaration that “NOTHING will stop” the enforcement felt like the more accurate reflection of the day’s reality.
In a Brooklyn Center neighborhood, the human cost of this “crackdown” came into sharp focus. As agents surrounded a home seeking a man they described as a deportee with a conviction, a neighbor, Kari Rod, called out to them, “You need to know they’re good neighbors.” Her words cut to the core of the community’s rupture. She spoke of trust eroded, not in her neighbors, but in the agents on her street and the narratives they wield. “I don’t trust a single thing they said about who they are,” she said. This loss of trust is perhaps the deepest wound being inflicted.
That fear is paralyzing. Daniel Hernandez, who runs a local grocery and a community Facebook page, reports a ghost town within his store. Nearly all the immigrant-run businesses that rented from him have closed, with no plans to reopen. “The community is still very worried and afraid,” he notes, adding that a change in personnel hasn’t changed the tactics. Life has retreated behind closed doors.
This atmosphere exists alongside a startling judicial rebuke. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has violated 96 court orders in 74 cases since the year began. “This list should give pause to anyone… who cares about the rule of law,” he wrote. His warning that future noncompliance could see top officials hauled into court underscores a systemic breakdown that no conciliatory phone call can fix.
Amidst the fear and the legal battles, there are acts of remembrance. Donnie McMillan, a 71-year-old Vietnam veteran, knelt at the growing sidewalk memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse shot by agents last weekend. He saluted, honoring an “angel” he knew from the VA hospital. “This is not the way we should operate,” he said quietly—a veteran’s verdict on the state of his city.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, herself recently attacked during a town hall, framed the turmoil not as law enforcement but as a coordinated campaign of intimidation. “It is about making people feel they do not belong,” she stated.
And that is the palpable feeling in Minneapolis today. The president’s words speak of wavelengths and progress, but the streets speak of fear, defiance, and a profound crisis of legitimacy. Until the actions on the ground match the rhetoric of calm, the tension will not ease. The city is waiting, watching, and holding its breath, caught between promises from above and a very different, hardened reality below.
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