The video shows a young employee in a reflective vest being hauled away by federal agents from the entrance of a Target store in a Minneapolis suburb.
“I’m a U.S. citizen!” the worker shouted as the armed agents shoved him into an S.U.V. on Monday, after he had directed expletives at one. “U.S. citizen! U.S. citizen!”
In and around Minneapolis in recent days — in quiet residential neighborhoods and busy shopping districts, at gas station and big box store parking lots — similar chaotic scenes are unfolding, an escalation of tensions between residents and federal agents as the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown in Minnesota following the killing of Renee Good last week.
“It feels like our community is under siege by our own federal government,” said State Representative Michael Howard, a Democrat whose district includes Richfield, where the Target employee and another colleague were seized on Monday.
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee was charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds, displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents in a city where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Local concerns over the federal government grew on Tuesday when six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Ms. Good and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter.
Images circulating on social media over the past two days and verified by The Times show agents approaching a car at a gas station, seeking out the immigration status of the driver and demanding that he open the door. When he doesn’t, they break the window of the car and remove him. Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, yells at bystanders to back up.
In another video, Elliott Payne, president of the Minneapolis City Council, is seen being shoved by an agent.
Mr. Payne said in an interview Tuesday that federal agents with assault rifles and combat gear were patrolling the streets in convoys. At night they shine lights from the vehicles onto pedestrians, he said.
“This is a military occupation, and it feels like a military occupation,” Mr. Payne said.
According to Mr. Payne, federal agents scream obscenities at residents and repeatedly holster and unholster their weapons. “It’s like living in a war zone,” he said.
President Trump said Tuesday that federal agents were in Minnesota to remove “convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals.”
Mr. Trump wrote on social media that “THE DAY OF RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION” is coming for Minnesota, without elaborating.
Mr. Howard, the state representative, said federal agents were asking people if they were citizens and in most cases did not have warrants.
“Nothing about that is making our communities more safe,” he said. “We have many people in our community that are undocumented, but they are valued members of our community.”
For many in Minneapolis, a deep blue city where 70 percent of people voted Democratic in the 2024 presidential election, the resistance from neighborhood groups and community volunteers has felt empowering in what has felt like a hopeless time, residents said in interviews.
But even some of those in favor of the community defense efforts were on edge that protesters could go too far. Residents said they were worried that with the number of agents patrolling the area and heightened tensions, weapons will be fired, deliberately or by accident.
“It’s just a matter of time before something else occurs. Another person shot. ICE agents injured,” said Maurice Ward, 54, who runs a social justice organization.
On Monday afternoon, a few blocks away from the site where Ms. Good was killed, witnesses recounted how a group of federal agents crashed their vehicle into a car that they had been trying to stop. As officers spoke to the driver, a crowd began to swell. Neighbors rushed out and groups of activists who have been following and filming the agents arrived, many whistling and shouting.
“Get out of our city!” they yelled.
Some threw snowballs at the officers and pelted their vehicles with water bottles. The agents deployed pepper spray and tear gas, sending residents scattering.
In an interview later, Christian Morales, 40, said he had been driving to his mechanic shop when he noticed what could be federal agents sitting in a vehicle in an alley. They began to follow him, he believed, solely for looking Hispanic.
He said he was grateful for the community volunteers and neighbors who came out, some in sweats and pajamas, to document the scene, and he believed their presence was why agents ultimately left him alone. But he also worried whether some of the volunteers shouting obscenities at agents emboldened them.
“It makes them act different, like they have more power,” he said.
Mr. Payne, the City Council president, said he was encouraging residents to take video of federal agents, which he said could be used as evidence in legal action that state and local officials are pursuing against the federal government over the federal deployments.
A lawsuit filed on Monday by the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul asked a judge to block the federal government from “implementing the unprecedented surge in Minnesota.”
The lawsuit said “thousands of armed and masked D.H.S. agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional stops and arrests.”
Ernesto Londoño and Mitch Smith contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page.
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