Minneapolis, MN — Upwards of 206 U.S. citizens have been hauled off the streets into vehicles by masked federal agents conducting Operation Metro Surge over the past three months in Minnesota, according to legal sources. Many of those citizens, or USCs, have been beaten, had their constitutional rights violated and were brought to the Whipple Federal Building, with some later brought to Sherburne County Jail.

One of the hundreds shared their story with Unicorn Riot on condition of anonymity for fear of repression and retribution and we’re publishing their statement. They shared how they were violently detained by ICE near Karmel Mall in south Minneapolis during the infamous incident on Dec. 15 that featured ICE agents dragging a handcuffed woman through the snow and street while getting pelted with snowballs. Because of the large crowd that surrounded two agents, the woman was able to be get free.

In the anonymous observer’s statement, printed below, they reflected on their experience. They said comparing the treatment they received to the way immigrants were treated within the detention centers illustrates the broader systemic harm faced by immigrants, Indigenous people and communities of color. They urged people not to normalize ICE’s presence as it escalates fear, violence, and community disruption.

Two months after their arrest and charges of assaulting a federal agent, their criminal complaint was dismissed with prejudice by U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank because the government failed to file an indictment within thirty days of arrest.

More than 20 others are facing federal felonies for impeding, or similar offenses, while observing federal agents. Nine others — including journalist Georgia Fort — are facing charges for a protest at a church where acting St. Paul ICE Field Director David Easterwood is a pastor.

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Statement from legal observer on being arrested by ICE agents on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, on 29th St. and Pillsbury Ave.

While driving towards Karmel Mall after an immigration abduction by ICE, the car in front of me stopped, and two agents exited the vehicle and approached mine. They came to both sides of the vehicle and told me to put the vehicle in park and pulled their guns on me.

They held the gun in my face and shouted at me to put the vehicle in park; one reached in and put my vehicle in park. They pulled me from the vehicle, they shouted “… Reaching for something!” and continued to shout at me, weapons drawn, then cuffed me and lifted me into their vehicle. Several MPD [Minneapolis Police officers -Ed.] stood by and watched. I realize now, especially after the murder of Alex Pretti, that I am lucky to be alive.

One of the two ICE agents had gotten OC (oleoresin capsaicin) spray in his eyes at the abduction. He was so deeply affected that he was unable to drive and had to exit the car to switch places with the second officer so that the vehicle could be driven safely. “You drive, I can’t see, too much OC.” His eyes were watery. He seemed very much on edge, talking fast, worried, and anxious. He was crying and wiping his face and whining about the pain it was causing him. As he complained several times over the drive, I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have sprayed so much, then.”

Eventually they shackled me to the chair in front of me.

As the agents calmed down from this interaction, they read me my Miranda rights. Next to me sat a man whose English was not sufficient to understand the rights being read to him, so I asked if they would be reading the Miranda rights to him in Spanish.

One agent spoke over the phone to someone, saying, “We gotta go back there, is everyone out?” We drove past 29th and Pillsbury one more time on our way to Whipple. He said over the phone, “I got one USC and one illegal alien, so we got two and two.” USC implied U.S. citizen. This seemed to imply there was no in-between, or that to ICE, it doesn’t matter if someone has an active asylum case, is seeking naturalization, or is on a valid work visa. Regardless of someone’s “legality” of residing and working in the U.S., ICE was applying a binary USC vs. “Illegal Alien” — at no point prior to booking did they verify anything regarding my documentation, or legality to work and reside in the U.S.. They made assumptions of Legal vs. Illegal based on our clothing, the color of our skin, and our accents. I’m white, without an accent and speak English well, and the other detainee was darker skinned, presumably Latinx as he spoke Spanish better than English.

The man next to me had been sitting in his car behind ICE with his girlfriend during the chaotic scene at 29th and Pillsbury, and the agent went up to his window, shouted something, and without much time or hesitation an agent shattered the window with a device. He reached his hand in the broken window, opened the car door and pulled the man out. His girlfriend was also taken from the car later on. I asked him some questions in Spanish, and the agents asked me, “Are you a professional…? How much are you getting paid for this?”

I asked the man if he had a lawyer and told him not speak to them unless he spoke to his lawyer. The agent who couldn’t drive complained about the broken glass causing his hand to bleed. The agents periodically expressed frustration when I would speak in Spanish to them. “Why don’t you speak English? You know English, speak English.”

I asked the agents if they knew why someone might refuse to comply with an order. They seemed very excited at that question, saying, “Tell me!” and presumably beginning a recording on their phone. They thought that I was intending to incriminate myself. (I did comply with all orders received during my arrest). I said that if the orders are given in English and someone only speaks Spanish, it’s reasonable to believe that people might not understand the order and might not comply.

We arrived at Whipple. After a while, a federal agent came to my side door and said, “Give us your name,” and something expressing that it would be bad for me if I didn’t.

They opened the hatchback so the agent who couldn’t drive could get his own OC off of himself and wipe his bloody hand. While performing the abductions amid the crowd they had looked worried and disoriented, yet as the ICE agents gathered outside the vehicle, they were seen patting each other on the back, offering each other food, laughing, smiling, joking. It was unclear if they really liked the violence and chaos of abductions, or if they were attempting to look cool in front of the other agents. I caught some bits and pieces of conversations from the back of the vehicle, such as, “Don’t talk near this one, one of them speaks English,” and, “I got forty-four and I just need six more. One agent said, “I’m ready to go back right now… Let’s go back… That place really is a hot spot.”

I was eventually removed from the vehicle, and they took a bottle of water and poured it into my hair down the front of my face, saying, “We have to do this,” regarding the pepper spray. It was incredibly ineffective and seemed like it was only done to get pepper spray into my eyes and face from my hair. They laughed as I sputtered from water covering my nose and mouth. The agent bent my wrist in on itself and pushed me towards a garage. I said, “Is this necessary for you to be hurting my wrist?” He said this is what they are supposed to do, standard procedure. My wrists have scars and still hurt from the cuffs and the forceful mishandling.

I was brought down a corridor from the garage into a holding room at Whipple. There were two or three folks that were Spanish speakers who were in the room with us the whole time who worked at Whipple. When I asked what they did here, they said they were there to clean. There were also many federal agents and Whipple building employees going in and out. There were two men in the corner sorting property and counting money. On the ground directly in front of us was “THE WRAP,” a full body-detention strait-jacket device. We all sat on a bench, me and four men, who were presumed by ICE to be undocumented. I could tell by the difference in how we were treated, presumed undocumented people were sort of ignored or disregarded in a way that I wasn’t. They were all dark-skinned Latino folks. I recall now hearing from friends in immigrant and native communities–learning that ICE frequently was targeting darker skinned people, making assumptions of people’s ethnicity and citizenship. I began speaking to some of the folks.

One had been doing his laundry at the laundromat when he was approached entering his car, and apparently at some point someone’s arm was caught in the car door. He worked as a dish washer at a restaurant. He said that the ICE agent who arrested him was “feo, muy feo” (ugly).

The man who I was in the car with was asking for his girlfriend as we were being segregated by sex.

I spoke with one ICE agent who I think did not like that I was asking him why he was doing this job, and I told him that I do things in the community such as feed homeless people, and that we treat people right in Minnesota, “What happened to southern hospitality?” I asked. I said something about “Minnesota Nice.” He replied that I should come down to Texas (unclear if this was a threat) and that he was just running around all day trying to find an ATM so he could give his $100 per diem to a homeless person. He seemed to pose this as a question to me, in the way of, “See, we are not bad people, we are actually doing what is right.” I said, “People are complicated.”

I overheard an agent who was struggling to count money talking with an ERO agent in his friends’ group chat. I offered to help him count money since he seemed to be having such trouble, counting it multiple times. He was lamenting about how the group chat was supposed to just be fun memes and “fart jokes” and “no religion, no politics.” She was commiserating with him about the difficulty of facing backlash for working as an immigration agent. He said that one of his friends sent him a message and that his wife told him, “Don’t even read it.” And so, “I’m not gonna read it.” He seemed to be implying that the message was something critical of him or the work he was doing, and that seemed to be troubling him. I asked him how long this was going to take, and he looked up and joked, “Hey, you hear that? They’re disappointed with the service! You can leave us a review.”

He told a story of another ICE agent who would give detainees a feedback form for evaluation of the detention process and that he would turn all of those forms in periodically as a fun joke to his supervisor.

I started to get on his nerves, perhaps, as I was singing something in Spanish. One of the agents said, “This is America, why don’t you speak English?” He also said, “You’re corny, you know that, you think they wanna hear you singing in Spanish right now? I know exactly what you people sing about ‘gringo,’ ‘Corazon,’ all that liberation bullshit.” He mentioned being a Buddhist and meditating. I offered some retorts which I do not recall, perhaps asking him if he feels like he can sleep at night doing this job, abducting people. He approached me and wanted to have a little argument about how “It’s not an abduction.”

“Ask him if I was compassionate,” he said, referring to the dish washer. “Ask him how compassionate I was. I’m compassionate.” He seemed to find it funny that the dish washer was otherwise disposed getting his property receipt and wasn’t talking with me, saying, “He won’t even give you the time of day, he doesn’t even care about you, you’re so corny.” Eventually, when the man who worked as a dish washer had a moment, I asked the question that the agent wanted me to pose to him, and he laughed at the absurdity. I told the agent he found him ugly and that sort of ended the conversation.

At one point, someone entered the room and said, “What’s up guys?” and when I replied, “¿Que paso?” he muttered, “Disgusting,” and left immediately.

Some building staff were discussing eating Somali food and other ethnic foods in Minneapolis. I said, “How can you be talking about trying the food when you’re basically working for ICE?” They all seemed miffed by that, saying, “Why are you talking about ICE? We’re talking about food, what does ICE have to do with food?”

Eventually they came to remove me from the holding area, and the agent who I’d had the extended conversation with shouted over to me that I should try meditation. I told him, “I have no deeds that I need peace from.”

I was taken to a holding cell. I was not yet given water, and I’m not sure there was toilet paper, so I asked repeatedly for water, a lawyer, and toilet paper, and/or an understanding of how much time it would be before water and toilet paper would be given. I was still covered in pepper spray and I could not touch my hair or my eyes. The building staff and/or ICE agents threatened me with being placed in a padded room if I did not cease asking for a lawyer. I was singing a lot and making trumpet noises to pass the time and persist in being a nuisance until my needs were met. I sang Joseph’s “Close Every Door” and Phantom’s “Let Me Be Your Shelter” and “Music of the Night” and Aladdin’s “A Whole New World.” My captors would periodically tell me to shut up, and that someone would come on an indefinite timeline. Eventually they stopped answering my questions over the comm box. Someone pushed the door closed despite my foot being in the doorway. I’m not sure how much time passed.

An HSI [Homeland Security Investigations -Ed.] agent came to my door and said that they would like to interview me. I refused the interview and said that I would like to speak with a lawyer now. They said, not now, but later, and returned me to the cell. Eventually HSI returned and I was able to get on the phone with someone. Hours later, without warning or explanation, I was taken from the holding cell, and two HSI agents transported me in a vehicle to Sherburne County. They did not let me out to pee, and I had no knowledge I was about to take an hour long drive, so I peed in their vehicle while awaiting entrance to Sherburne. The HSI agents conferred me into the custody of Sherburne County and told me they would come to pick me up the next morning.

When they heard what medications I required, they assumed I was trans and asked me if I wanted a woman to pat me down, and I said that I just don’t want them to grope me and to use the back of the hand. I don’t think they understood what I meant, as they proceeded to pat me down open palmed, running their hands across my chest (Women are usually patted down with the back side of the hand).

I was put in a new holding cell. I sang lots of songs, and I could hear the folks in the other cells singing with me. I at one point said that I take requests and a detainee asked for “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. I sang “Grenade,” and “I’mma Leave The Door Open” (which was apt considering it coincided with the nurse opening my door to check vitals), Lion King’s “I Just Can’t Wait To Be [Free]” and my fellow inmates sang along to “Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke.

The pepper spray was becoming quite painful. Officers at Sherburne were slightly more attentive when I needed water, etc. I was given a bologna sandwich which I cannot eat. I was strip searched and told to show my armpits and turn and cough with my ass bared naked by male COs [corrections officers -Ed.]. I asked for a shower several times and was denied. After repeated requests for a shower, I was told late into the night: “Big boss says no,” and so I began screaming, moaning, and making as much unpleasant noise as possible. I got a shower relatively quickly after that, in super hot water (which is not recommended for pepper spray), which was very painful but better than the alternative of no shower at all. My whole body was on fire for about a half hour after that, and I still had pepper spray on my hands and hair days later. But my condition improved in general.

I was finally moved into housing at 2 a.m. and was kept in maximum security for about 30ish hours. The inmates there were very nice and kind and helpful. I never received a meal that didn’t have meat and asked the COs to give the meat and dairy products to other people. They always took the milk back but did allow me to give away the meat. I asked for a book, but one of the other max security folks said all the books sucked. I was eventually able to get time to call friends, attorneys, and family. I played cribbage with myself using the holes in a grate at the back of my cell with broken pencils as pegs and with a handmade deck of cards. I drew fake windows, and within the windows a lake scene with a dock, a beaver and a treeline.

I was in detention at Sherburne for about 30 hours, despite HSI agents telling me as they dropped me off that they would come back in the morning to bring me to the U.S. Marshals. When they arrived to pick me up, they also attempted to fingerprint me in a booking room. In the booking room there was a swastika on the wall and an “SS,” which I asked if they would remove. They said, “Someone will come to clean it.” When I received a wipe to clean my hands of the fingerprinting ink, I used to it clean the hate symbols off the wall. I told them that I would bill them later for the cleaning. This time, before leaving, they took care to ask if I needed to use the restroom. They transferred me to the custody of U.S. Marshals.

I was fingerprinted two to three times, photographed two to three times, and body scanned once over the course of my experience. I was released a few hours later.

While in holding at the U.S. Marshals, I made conversation with a man from Red Lake who said that ICE had been active on the reservation abducting Natives. I write this now knowing that three Lakota men have been detained indefinitely by ICE, merely for being brown, unhoused, and like many folks unhoused lacking readily accessible documentation and legal representation.

I write this knowing that as I was being detained, when the ICE agents shouted at me with their guns held at my face, asking me, “What are you reaching for!?” that I am lucky to be alive.

I write this knowing the fear and danger ICE poses to me is nothing compared to what is being faced by individuals in the Indigenous, Latinx, Somali, and Southeast Asian communities.

I write this in the wake of the murders of Keith Porter, Victor Manuel Diaz, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez and many others.

I write this in the wake of the murder of Renee Good by Jonathan Ross despite her attempt to escape, despite the fact she posed no threat. After he shot her, he called her a “fucking bitch.” She has been branded a domestic terrorist by the head of DHS, much like I’m sure they will brand me, and other legal observers. Much like they branded [Alex] Pretti, much like they brand the entire Trans community as being “Narcissistic Violent Extremists.”

I write this hoping you understand ICE for what it is, an existential threat to our way of life.

ICE rips families apart and irreparably damages the fabric of the immigrant communities that make America great. The front doors of businesses are locked, the public gatherings and dances in our immigrant communities have ceased or occur in secret, children are being sent off to Texas, and the taco trucks have disappeared from Lake Street.

ICE agents will shoot our press, tase and pepper spray observers, and shoot unarmed observers like Renee, like Pretti, like me.

ICE agents say, “Haven’t you learned?” implying non-compliance is reason enough for execution.

If you read this far, I would hope you share this account with anyone who supports ICE. With anyone who believes we should just “weather the storm,” or is losing faith. Too often, people’s belief in good, in our government, leads them to believe that no one could be this cruel, things could not be this bad, they are just going after “the bad ones,” or negative opinions are just propaganda for the “other side.”

The racism and cruelty are overly evident to anyone detained or in the streets observing ICE. The intent to intimidate and instigate is overwhelmingly clear. The criticism of ICE agents affects them. Talking about these things with your friends and co-worker’s helps to combat its normalization. This is not normal. Whether you allow ICE to come into your businesses, your communities, your hotels, your friend groups, will affect the course of history. Don’t let them sleep at our hotels, use our bathrooms, fill up their vehicles with gas, or eat at our restaurants. Because where ICE is welcome, others are not. I hope we all can work together, grab our whistles, and stick up for our neighbors and our rights before they disappear.

This is a statement from a United States citizen who was arrested by federal agents while observing a violent federal operation in south Minneapolis. This citizen was held for multiple days in federal custody and on Feb. 17 had their felony assault on a federal agent charge dropped by a judge. The views and opinions expressed in this statement don’t necessarily represent those of Unicorn Riot.

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Edit: Two descriptor edits were made in the observer’s statement on Feb. 28, 2026.

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