The "ICE Watch" group at the center of the unruly demonstrations gripping Minneapolis urged supporters to "embrace militancy" and escalate their demands "by any means necessary." Hours later, Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) also encouraged residents to resist ICE, accusing the agency of carrying out a "campaign of organized brutality."
MN ICE Watch, which describes itself as an "autonomous collective documenting & resisting against ICE, police, & all colonial militarized regimes," shared an Instagram post on Wednesday teaching agitators how to relay "information on police and/or fascist" activity at demonstrations.
"We within the belly of this imperial beast face a turning point," the post read. "After seven full months during which our protests have utterly failed to slow the gears of the war machine, there is nothing left to do but escalate" (emphasis theirs). "The time is ripe to embrace militancy on the ground, both to keep ourselves safer, and as a demonstration of our commitment to the words ‘by any means necessary.'"
On Wednesday evening, Walz told residents to continue resisting ICE.
Agents are "just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process," he said. "Let’s be very, very clear: This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government."
Walz's speech and MN ICE Watch's guide come as protests have indeed escalated in Minneapolis amid a surge of ICE agents. Just hours later, agitators clashed with law enforcement over an ICE-involved shooting. As an ICE agent attempted to arrest an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, he was ambushed by two other individuals wielding a broomstick and a shovel, according to a statement from DHS. The immigrant grabbed an implement and began attacking him as well—the ICE agent shot him in the leg in self-defense, DHS stated.
During Wednesday night's unrest, MN ICE Watch shared footage of clashes, police movement, close-up footage of federal officers, and vandalism.
Protests were already intensifying following the Jan. 7 death of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident. Good was blocking a neighborhood road when agents ordered her to get out of her SUV. Instead, she drove forward. An ICE agent positioned in front of her car fired three shots, killing her. The agent sustained internal bleeding after being hit by Good’s vehicle, according to DHS.
Good’s wife, Becca Good, was present at the scene and told Good to "drive" as federal agents approached the SUV shortly before the shooting. Becca Good reportedly followed MN ICE Watch on Instagram, and Good, according to the mother of a child who attends the same "social justice first" charter school as Good’s 6-year-old son, was "trained against these ICE agents — what to do, what not to do," the New York Post reported.
The guide posted Wednesday, originally published by the Durango, Colo.-based anarchist group Dirty Hands Collective, frames police and ICE officers as "the enemy." It instructs activists to share specific, real-time information about law enforcement activity during protests, such as precise officer numbers, movement directions, and equipment rather than using general or emotional language. Such details, the guide argues, are necessary to help demonstrators "take informed action" and prepare coordinated responses to "ICE, police, fascist, and zionist enemies."
"Keeping our eyes on the enemy and knowing their movements is essential to executing our tactics and outmaneuvering theirs," the post reads. "Actions such as breaking through a kettle or mass surrounding police cars to dearrest our comrades cannot be undertaken without robust tactical info-sharing and communication about our opponents’ movements."
This isn’t the first time MN ICE Watch shared guidance on how to resist law enforcement. Last June, the group posted training slides that it described as a "basic introduction to de-arresting," a tactic in which activists pressure police to release arrestees. One slide calls for "totally surrounding the officers who have the arrestee or otherwise blocking them and/or their vehicle and chanting 'Let them go!' and the like until the LEOs [law enforcement officers] cave to the mounting pressure." A second slide calls for "pulling and pushing an officer off of an arrestee and/or breaking their grip on an arrestee," a move the slide says is "probably the most risky as it requires physical contact with an officer."
Wednesday’s post also extended sympathy to Palestine Action US, now known as Unity of Fields, a self-described "militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism" that has been involved in many of the anti-Semitic protests at Columbia University and vandalism across several college campuses, including Harvard and Northwestern universities.
"As said by our compxs in @pal_actionus, there is nothing left to do but escalate. ‘By any means necessary’ applies just as much to us on Occupied Turtle Island as it does to the resistance in Palestine. Don’t stop," the post concluded with an emoji of an upside-down triangle—a symbol Hamas uses to denote Israeli targets.
MN ICE Watch also maintains ties to Sunrise Twin Cities, Unidos MN, and Defend the 612—local activist groups that have played a leading role in anti-ICE protests since December. Earlier this month, Sunrise Twin Cities—the local chapter of Sunrise Movement, a left-wing organization originally founded to combat climate change—and Defend the 612, a group that offers "ICE Watch" trainings and provides guidance on "Tracking Federal Agents," tagged MN ICE Watch in a post revealing local hotels that house ICE agents. Unidos MN, an "immigrant-led, BIPOC majority, multiracial, state-wide organization" that leads a "rapid response" network through its affiliate group, MONARCA, is among the 192 accounts MN ICE Watch follows on Instagram.
While MN ICE Watch does not appear to be organized professionally and does not list a fundraising page, Sunrise Twin Cities, Unidos MN, and Defend the 612 have collectively received millions of dollars from the Left’s premier foundations and dark money networks, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
"There is a growing trend of agitators and rioters obstructing the arrest of illegal aliens and assaulting our brave law enforcement," DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Free Beacon. "Our officers are facing a 1,300 percent increase in assaults against them as they arrest the worst of the worst, including murderers, sexual predators, terrorists, and gang members. Secretary Noem has been clear: If you lay a hand on law enforcement, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
