A small protest organized by a conservative influencer in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday was quickly overwhelmed by a liberal counterprotest, as both sides scuffled and exchanged taunts for hours.
The influencer, Jake Lang, who was among the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, was eventually chased into the lobby of a hotel by a throng of counterprotesters who threw water balloons at him when outside temperatures hovered around 10 degrees, prompting police officers to respond. Mr. Lang was seen with a trickle of blood on the back of his head before disappearing into the hotel. It was unclear how he suffered the injury.
The counterprotest, led by The People’s Action Coalition Against Trump, vastly outnumbered the people gathered by Mr. Lang for his March Against Minnesota Fraud. Mr. Lang had vowed to burn a Quran and march through a neighborhood with a heavy Somali population, but apparently did not follow through.
Demonstrators who had gathered in opposition to Mr. Lang also denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement, holding signs that read “ICE Out of Minnesota.” They blasted music from the Disney musical “Frozen.”
Minneapolis police officers and Hennepin County sheriff’s deputies amassed in downtown Minneapolis in large numbers to monitor the protests, which drew hundreds of attendees by early afternoon and lasted for close to two hours.
Mike Anderson, 42, stood in the cold for hours, frozen droplets clinging to his beard. He said he was there to protest fraud and illegal immigration and had traveled from his home in Forest Lake, a town about 30 minutes outside Minneapolis.
“I have nothing against immigration as long as it’s legal,” he said, adding that his fiancée is a legal immigrant from Canada.
The protests capped a tumultuous 10 days in Minneapolis, after an immigration agent shot and killed Renee Good, 37, on Jan. 7. Since then, thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have fanned out around the Twin Cities, arresting people for immigration violations, interrogating U.S. citizens and deploying tear gas and pepper balls in residential neighborhoods.
Mr. Lang’s protest opposing fraud was directed at a wide-ranging investigation into Minnesota’s social services programs. Most of the people charged in the scheme so far have been of Somali origin. A preliminary assessment suggests that billions in taxpayer funds spent on programs intended to help low-income people since 2018 was most likely stolen, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Lang could not immediately be reached for comment after he left the protest.
On Friday, a federal judge restricted the actions of immigration agents toward protesters in the state, ordering agents not to retaliate against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” and to refrain from using pepper spray or other “crowd dispersal tools” in retaliation for protected speech.
The judge also said agents could not stop or detain protesters in vehicles who were not “forcibly obstructing or interfering” with agents.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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