By MARK VANCLEAVE and STEVE KARNOWSKI
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal brokers used pepper spray to push by an offended crowd that blocked their autos as they checked identifications in a closely Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis on Tuesday, amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown concentrating on the group.
Metropolis Council Member Jamal Osman, a Somali American who represents the neighborhood, witnessed the confrontation, as did an Related Press videographer.
Minnesota’s Somali group — the most important within the U.S. — has been on edge the previous couple of weeks since President Donald Trump stated in a social media put up Thanksgiving night time that he was terminating Non permanent Protected Standing for them.
Osman stated armed ICE brokers went to East African eating places within the neighborhood Tuesday, closed the doorways and demanded folks’s IDs. They discovered solely U.S. residents and made no arrests, Osman stated.
“Luckily everyone had their passport, because I’ve been telling them to have their passport with them,” Osman stated.
After checking the IDs of some folks stopped at random on the road and quickly detaining not less than one U.S. citizen, Osman stated, the brokers went in seven to 10 autos to a close-by city-owned senior housing complicated. There, he stated, a gaggle of principally white younger folks he referred to as “heroes” blew whistles to sound the alarm and confronted the brokers, who responded with pepper spray.
“Thank God so many people showed up there,” Osman stated. “(The agents) couldn’t get out of there because people showed up with their cars and whistles.”
Osman stated he noticed folks affected by the consequences of pepper spray. He additionally stated he spoke with one younger Somali American who was dragged to a car, detained and brought to an ICE detention middle. There, officers lastly checked out his U.S. passport, fingerprinted him, and launched him however informed him to search out his personal means residence, about 6 miles away in snowy climate.
Activists confronted a gaggle of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers within the largely Somali neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photograph/Mark Vancleave)
“I just don’t know what they accomplished today other than the chaos,” Osman stated.
Trump additional stoked tensions final week when he referred to as Somalis “garbage” and stated he doesn’t need them within the nation. On the similar time, federal brokers launched the crackdown concentrating on Minnesota Somalis.
The president’s strikes have drawn denunciations from leaders of the Somali group and Democrats together with Gov. Tim Walz, amid relative silence from high state Republicans.
About 84,000 of the 260,000 Somalis within the nation dwell within the Minneapolis-St. Paul space, the overwhelming majority of them U.S. residents. Nearly 58% had been born within the U.S., and 87% of these born elsewhere are naturalized residents.
A brand new web site launched by the Division of Homeland Safety lists not less than six Somalis arrested in Minnesota in latest weeks. The positioning says it’s “highlighting the worst of worst criminal aliens” arrested by ICE to point out how brokers are “fulfilling President Trump’s promise and carrying out mass deportations.”
ICE launched a press release Friday itemizing three different arrested Somalis who didn’t seem on the web site, together with folks of different nationalities who it stated had been arrested in Minneapolis as a part of Operation Metro Surge. ICE stated they’d all been convicted of crimes together with sexual abuse minors, theft and home assault.
“Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey protected these criminals at the expense of the safety of Americans,” the assertion stated. “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.”
