Minneapolis, MN – A white Jeep Rubicon sat idling on the eastern side of Tower Road, just outside of the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two silhouettes sat on the inside, a seemingly disembodied face illuminated by the light of a smart phone. 

Outside, protesters carried on with their usual chants. The sun had long since set on the scene, but the Jeep remained, idling. Its exhaust fumes were as consistently present as the visible breath of the hundreds who came to protest the federal government’s occupation of the city throughout the day.

The two men inside the Jeep were not there to protest. At the slightest sign of activity, they would hop out and rush up to the protesters, sticking cameras in their faces to record their reactions for social media.

On the driver’s side was Nick Sortor, wearing a black dress coat and a patchy goatee where someone else might have a jawline. To his right, Cam Higby, dressed in ill-fitting tactical gear, his helmet cocked at an angle, resembling a child drowning in his father’s clothes.

Since the beginning of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities metro area, right-wing social media influencers have descended on the cities to farm for content. Influencers appear at rallies and protests to agitate participants and provoke a response, or to gather soundbites from people who lack media training or otherwise misspeak.

Sortor, 27, is a supposed independent journalist who has built his career on rage-baiting protesters and serving up red meat content for his MAGA audience. Higby, 25, is a content creator for Turning Point USA’s Frontline with a similar schtick to Sortor. Both appeared at the White House’s Antifa Roundtable in October 2025 to help bolster the administration’s crackdown on dissent.

The content these individuals farm has been criticized for fueling the escalation in violence carried out by federal immigration authorities in Minnesota and elsewhere, Slate reported earlier this month.

For example, on Dec. 26, 2025, right-wing influencer Nick Shirley, who also appeared at the roundtable, posted a video to his YouTube titled “I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.” The video, which follows Shirley as he harasses Somali-owned daycares in Minneapolis without proving any of his claims of fraud, was a major catalyst in the increased intensity of Operation Metro Surge earlier this month.

Recently, media personalities have taken to specifically targeting the protests outside of the Whipple Federal Building, which attracts an eclectic mix of protesters. Fox News’s Laura Ingraham appeared on Jan. 8 to ask anyone whether they were paid to be there and took one anonymous protester’s affirmative answer as an authoritative source on the matter who could speak for everyone else. On another occasion, a News Nation anchor appeared to prod protesters how she could join “Antifa” and receive protester training.

But unlike them, Higby and Sortor have been playing the long game. Instead of parachuting in and leaving after collecting the content they came for, Higby and Sortor sit and watch, waiting for the right opportunity to swoop in and rage-bait protesters.

It was Sunday evening, and like many times earlier, tensions between protesters and the federal agents standing along the driveway of the Whipple building were inflamed. And like each time before, Sortor and Higby were already there before anyone could get a blink in.

Sortor, with his DJI Osmo camera, walked in front of protesters to film them. Higby stood aside like a wallflower, not doing anything more than positioning his body toward the action so the camera mounted on his shoulder would catch it all in frame.

A woman at the front of the crowd began yelling at Sortor. They already knew who he was and what he was about, this was not the first time he tried doing this that day. This is what he wanted, but it could be better — she could attack him, that would do numbers on X.

She reached out and swatted his camera away and he just as quickly hit her in the face, tearing away her facemask in the process. Then it became a fight. She tried to swipe back at him and missed, then grabbed his arm as he continued to record. Sortor struck gold.

The federal agents lined up at the gate moved in, firing pepper balls at the two and the group around them. For extra measure, they threw flashbangs and tear gas indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters on the sidewalk who had nothing to do with the fight. It was quickly broken up and the two returned to the warmth of the Jeep.

“NICK SORTOR WAS JUST ATTACKED AGAIN,” Higby posted to his X account shortly after, portraying the scene as though the entire city of Minneapolis was in the throes of riot.

Later that evening, some of the protesters turned on Sortor and Higby in their Jeep as their numbers dwindled. They pounded on the hood, broke the rear window and spray painted the word “bitch” multiple times on it while the two men were still inside of it.

Sortor began shouting for the protesters to get out of the car’s way as he began to inch forward, but hit the gas before waiting too long. Protesters on the right were pushed out of the way, but a man on the left was hit, lifted onto the Jeep’s hood until he rolled off the side, hitting the asphalt below.

They didn’t return that night, they had all the content they needed to post online. 

“We’re dealing with literal TERRORISTS out here,” Sortor posted to his X two days later. “And they should be TREATED as such.”

In a parking garage only hours later, they made more content looking over the Jeep’s damages. In the bed, they found two frozen water bottles. Obviously, these were the projectiles used to smash the rear window, Sortor told his audience on X. Had they not driven out of there, Sortor alleges, the protesters would have targeted the side windows next and could have killed them with the Kirkland Signature plastic water bottles.

Higby himself got the idea later to visit the protesters’ mound of supplies on the northeast corner of Tower Road and Federal Drive, near where they had parked before, to milk this water bottle idea.

“JUST IN: Rioters have stockpiled frozen water bottles in front of the federal building,” Higby posted to X on Jan. 17. “This is what they used to smash the windows of [Sortor’s] car a few days ago.”

In reality, Whipple Federal Building is in an isolated location in the Fort Snelling unorganized territory near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport and the water bottles were consistently stocked alongside food items for protesters who were there for hours at a time. Protesters would drive up with truckloads of fresh water bottles, taking the frozen ones to their garage to thaw before bringing them back. 

“Does a journalist have to be killed before we actually start throwing these blood thirsty thugs in prison?” Higby waxxed on X the next day. “ANTIFA has been declared a terrorist organization. Why is it not being treated like one? Round them up.”

Later that same day, he made a post writing just “Insurrection Act” 12 times, as if the attack on Sortor’s Jeep warrants a declaration of martial law.

“Don’t wait til me, one of my friends or a federal agent gets killed,” he wrote.

Several days later, Higby appeared on Fox News to discuss his experience with Jesse Watters. During his appearance, he recounts how a car in the road pulled out in front of the Jeep as they were trying to escape.

“They pulled their cars out in front of us, just like Renee Nicole Good did to those ICE agents,” Higby said.  “They blocked us from the front and the back.”

This would not be the end of Sortor and Higby’s content farming in the Twin Cities. 

On Jan. 18, Sortor and Higby were lurking around Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in a brand new cherry-red Jeep, looking for more content. Unfortunately for them, the members of the community were already aware of who he was and were following him around.

At the intersection of Sixth Street South and South 15th Avenue, just outside of Riverside Plaza, Sortor was driving while holding his DJI Osmo out the window to record people. While his guard was down, a Somali woman ran up to him and snatched the camera out of his hand.

Sortor rushed out of the vehicle and began fighting with community members who had already been gathered in response to his presence.

She quickly got into her car and began driving, but Sortor caught up and latched onto the driverside door, tugging at the handle. The car hopped up on the sidewalk and began driving south down South 15th Avenue with Sortor still attached, running alongside the car.

A woman can be heard shouting through the commotion, “Just give him his camera back!”

Higby’s video of the incident cuts to Sortor returning, his hand bleeding from supposedly having ripped off the door’s handle in the process.

A Somali man interrupts him as Higby is trying to ask questions.

“That’s what the fuck you wanted, right?” He shouted at Sortor. “Listen, mother fucker. You better get the fuck up out of here.”

Sortor claimed the woman stole $1,000 worth of equipment from him and called the police, who told Sortor to leave the area to prevent further escalation. Higby likened the incident to the police blaming a rape victim for wearing the wrong kind of clothes.

“A group of Somali thugs just ROBBED me of my $1,000 camera in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis,” Sortor posted to X shortly after. “NOBODY bothered helping. DHS MUST RAID THIS PLACE!”

Since then, their circle of the Internet has been hard at work doxxing the woman who nabbed his camera, posting her personal information as well as her address on X.

“This city is surrendered to Somali thugs,” Higby posted to X.

On Jan. 20, it was announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was allegedly picking up the case. Sortor posted on X that FBI Director Kash Patel reached out to him personally, “because it’s HIGHLY doubtful the City of Minneapolis will help at all.”

In an earlier instance of this behavior, after the vigil for Renee Good, who was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, organizers at the Portland Avenue site had Sortor escorted out of the area for agitating mourners, prompting him to call 911. Sortor claimed in an X post that the dispatcher told him he was on his own and hung up on him.

“MINNEAPOLIS PD HAVE SURRENDERED THE CITY TO ROGUE LEFTISTS,” Sortor wrote on X. “The city needs to be taken under FEDERAL CONTROL.”

While the duo relentlessly searches for the right moment to pick a fight with protesters, they are also not above spreading blatant disinformation without any regard for actual facts.

When far-right provocateur and J6er Jake Lang was chased out of Minneapolis during a hate rally he held on Jan. 17, two right-wingers who showed up to the rally were hurt on the peripheries.

One individual was Raymond Reynolds, who was hit repeatedly in the head with a wooden flag pole on his way to find his car in a parking garage in downtown Minneapolis. Higby claimed in a video posted to X that the man had his throat cut open by counter-demonstrators, which is untrue.

The other individual was Sean Benson, who was chased down and punched by protesters a block away from the parking garage, which caused him to fall and hit his head on the concrete. Higby claimed in the same video that Benson had nothing to do with the rally and was a tech worker who protesters pulled out of a diner and chased down. Photos and videos of Benson emerged later of him attending the rally wearing a Border Patrol hat, yelling into a megaphone that he loved Jake Lang.

Higby also claimed in the same video that no Minneapolis police officers were present at the protest, which is also untrue. MPD officers were stationed with an armored vehicle at the intersection of South Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue South before the protest even began, showing up later outside the Hotel Indigo to disperse the crowd that gathered after protesters chased Jake Lang there.

Watch Unicorn Riot’s video from the Lang hate rally to see the aforementioned Reynolds and Benson, below.

Like every other incident before, this marked another opportunity for Higby to beg the president for martial law.

“INSURRECTION ACT NOW,” he posted to his X account shortly after Lang was chased away.

The two remain in Minneapolis for now, along with a number of other right-wing influencers with the same goals in mind. They will continue to appear at gatherings, poking and needling people until they blow up, with cameras ready to find evidence of an insurrection, any evidence at all.

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Editor’s note: Neither Cam Higby, Nick Sortor nor Nick Shirley are from Minnesota. Back in June 2025, Nick Shirley happened to be present in Minneapolis, publishing misleading videos from an expansive Homeland Security-led search operation that drew a large community mobilization. As the community sought to understand what was happening in real time, Shirley falsely called it an “ICE raid,” leading to more confusion and angst.

Aside from rage baiting, Nick Sortor’s content consistently attempts to demonize community members. After ICE agents shot their second person in a week, Sortor filmed people rummaging through abandoned vehicles that agents were using. His footage helped lead investigators to arrest some of the people involved. 

Racialized rage baiting for clicks is not new to Minneapolis. Over a decade ago in November 2015, white supremacists who were further radicalized on the internet antagonized protesters seeking justice for Jamar Clark and during a session of trolling, Allen ‘Lance’ Scarsella shot five people. His racially motivated attack gained him ten years in prison. He was released from prison on Jan. 5 this year and is currently under the supervision of the MNDOC Interstate Supervision Unit.

Cover image contributed by L. Cam Anderson.

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Click the image to see all UR coverage of federal law enforcement operations in MN.

Watch Unicorn Riot’s videos from ICE in Minneapolis in playlist below.

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