MINNEAPOLIS — A right-wing provocateur who was among the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters led a brief anti-immigration demonstration Saturday in Minneapolis that ended in an altercation between crowds, during a time of heightened tension after President Donald Trump dispatched thousands of immigration enforcement agents to the city.
Jake Lang, who was pardoned along with roughly 1,600 others on the first day of Trump’s second term, gathered with a handful of people near the city’s federal courthouse just before noon local time, blasting “Ice Ice Baby” in a show of support for the federal immigration enforcement agency and shouting racist and incendiary things about how immigrants were “replacing” White Americans.
Lang and his dozen or so supporters were outnumbered by a crowd of several hundred counterprotesters, some of whom yelled at them to leave the city.
The demonstrations, which took place on a bitterly cold day in Minneapolis, lasted only about two hours, before Lang tried to leave. Most people appeared to be letting him exit the area, but a scuffle broke out. Lang appeared to take some punches and was later seen bleeding from the back of his head. Police ordered the remaining crowd to disperse.
Lang has previously invoked antisemitic tropes, attempted to provoke Muslims by trying to burn the Quran and used other incendiary language in his calls for action.
The demonstrations come amid a federal immigration enforcement surge, two shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and threats from the White House to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests. Fears of violence have grown after an ICE officer fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was in her car witnessing federal enforcement actions on a residential street in Minneapolis.
On Friday, Trump slightly walked back his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, telling reporters, “I don’t think I need it right now.” At the same time, however, the Trump administration has further sown divisions between local and federal authorities as it readies to send subpoenas to Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, two of Minnesota’s highest-profile Democrats.
A federal judge in Minnesota on Friday night issued a ruling prohibiting ICE agents from arresting, pepper-spraying or otherwise retaliating against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” State and local agencies and the Minnesota National Guard said they would monitor the demonstrations and continued to urge people to keep their protests peaceful.
“While peaceful expression is protected, any actions that harm people, destroy property or jeopardize public safety will not be tolerated,” Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson said. “Demonstrations must remain safe, and they must remain lawful.”
Lang, who was charged with beating police officers with a baseball bat on Jan. 6, 2021, has relished online his role in provoking outrage and anti-immigrant sentiments. On X, he claimed that thousands would show up Saturday for a “CRUSADER MARCH” on “‘Little Somalia.’” The protest’s name, March Against Minnesota Fraud, draws on the renewed attention cast on Minnesota officials by the president and other right-wing influencers over failing to stop alleged welfare fraud among the state’s Somali immigrant community.
Lang had sat in jail for four years after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as he was awaiting trial. During that time, he tried to organize an armed militant group while detained pending trial, refused to adhere to jail rules and left the court “no basis to conclude that he poses anything but a continuing danger to the public,” a federal judge assigned to his case wrote last year.
Lang, originally from New York state, has also launched a long-shot bid running as a Republican in a special election for U.S. Senate in Florida for the seat that Marco Rubio vacated after he became Trump’s secretary of state.
A counterprotest also formed at the federal building in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday, despite reports that people were being encouraged to stay home, according to the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jaylani Hussein. A group calling itself the People’s Action Coalition Against Trump announced on Instagram that it would gather to protest Lang’s efforts to bring “his hateful anti-Islam rally to City Hall.”
Subarctic conditions will prevail this weekend, possibly tamping down crowd sizes at both demonstrations, with temperatures expected to drop to almost zero degrees. Some Minnesotans — long acclimated to icy weather and blistering winds — have embraced the elements as an advantage against immigration agents unaccustomed to Minnesota’s coldest month of the year.
The Minnesota National Guard will be ready to respond if needed, Jacobson said, but he noted that the troops did not have to act during demonstrations in the city last weekend and said state officials are “optimistic that will be the case” again this weekend.
The potential for clashes, and for harassment of the city’s Somali American enclaves, was the subject of a heated public safety meeting on Wednesday night, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported. State Rep. Mohamud Noor worried the protest could move from the downtown area to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood roughly 1½ miles away, where there is a large Somali population.
“We need to provide more support to the community, so that they know that everybody has got a right to be here, and everybody will be protected from this nonsense and the mayhem that is happening all over the city,” Noor said, according to the Star Tribune.
Asked about concerns relating to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, Jacobson said Friday the state was working with local law enforcement agencies and would be prepared “to address any safety issues that may come up.”
“We will have a good footprint of staff that will be available in that area, but we are just calling for peace,” he said. “We want to be there to be helpful, we want to be there to keep the peace.”
Elizer Darris, executive director of the nonprofit Minnesota Freedom Fund, called the anti-immigrant protest led by Lang a distraction.
“We got much bigger fish to fry here in Minnesota than outside agitators coming to disrupt and distract us,” Darris told The Washington Post on Saturday, emphasizing that focus should be on protecting community members and ensuring federal agents don’t use excessive or deadly force.
Darris also criticized the lack of state investigations into the death of Good and urged Walz or Frey to push for involvement from local authorities.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which investigates officer-involved shootings, “reluctantly” withdrew from a joint probe with the FBI, stating that federal authorities had blocked the state agency from key evidence and materials necessary for investigation.
“This is bigger than Minneapolis. This is bigger than St. Paul. This is bigger than Minnesota,” Darris said.
Justine McDaniel, Kyle Rempfer and Erin Patrick O’Connor contributed to this report. Wang, Hatzipanagos and Tucker reported from Washington.
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