The deployment of thousands of federal agents to Minnesota to round up undocumented immigrants has yielded no shortage of indelible images in recent weeks.
There was the American citizen dragged out of his home in subzero weather in his underwear. And the detention of a 5-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a hat with floppy ears drew outrage from school officials.
But photos of a Border Patrol agent squirting pepper spray in the face of a man who was being pinned down by fellow officers on Wednesday searingly captured why the ongoing immigration operation has been met with furious resistance on the streets of Minneapolis.
Images of the episode drew millions of views online, made the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune and elicited blistering condemnation from local officials.
“No one looking at this image can seriously claim this is about public safety,” said Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis. “It should alarm every American because if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”
Gov. Tim Walz reposted the Star Tribune newspaper page on social media, along with a two-word comment: “Trump’s America.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to an email asking about the confrontation and whether the use of force depicted in photos and videos taken by bystanders that day had violated use of force policies.
The identity and whereabouts of the man who was sprayed was unclear on Friday.
The confrontation began early Wednesday afternoon, when a group of Border Patrol agents got into a slight collision with a vehicle driven by a young woman in a residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis, according to witnesses.
What came next was captured on video by, among others, two activist brothers from Chicago, Ben and Sam Luhmann, who have been documenting immigration enforcement operations in Illinois and Minnesota for months.
While agents examined an American passport that the woman in the vehicle provided them, protesters gathered around them, cursing and blowing whistles.
Other cars arrived on the scene, and the agents appeared to believe they were getting boxed in. As the agents began to leave, they smashed the windows of a vehicle and dragged a person out of the car. They also confronted a woman on a bicycle that they seemed to regard as an obstacle.
At one point, an agent wearing a tactical vest with a Border Patrol patch screamed at the growing group of observers to move away. The agent, who is not concealing his face with a mask, is then seen deploying a can of pepper spray.
Moments later, three agents wrestled a man to the ground. It was not clear where he had come from or what he had been doing. The unmasked agent walked around the other agents, squatted down and deployed the pepper spray can just inches from the man’s face, drenching him in a thick orange goo.
Within seconds, other officials deployed tear gas, which appeared to overwhelm the agents who had the man pinned down. The man stumbled away.
“He was just screaming, ‘Get me out of here!’” Ben Luhmann, 17, recalled.
The Luhmann brothers said that they did not get to speak to the man.
But having watched dozens of tense scenes since they began documenting immigration operations in Chicago last fall, they said that this one stood out.
“We see on a daily basis what they’re doing out on the streets in public, and I can’t even imagine what they are doing behind closed doors,” said Sam Luhmann, 16.
Consternation over the man’s treatment comes as the Department of Homeland Security is facing a lawsuit by protesters who have documented what they call a pattern of misconduct by federal agents in Minnesota.
A federal judge set limits on agents last week, finding that some had “gratuitously” used pepper spray on protesters, but an appeals court on Wednesday put a hold on those restrictions.
David Easterwood, a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in Minnesota, wrote in a declaration filed in response to the lawsuit that agents were facing “increased threats, violence, aggression, attacks, vehicle block-ins and obstruction of immigration enforcement operations from members of the public.”
He added that he had not seen evidence of federal agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers” with tools such as pepper spray and tear gas.
Richard Tsong-Taatarii, a photojournalist at the Star Tribune who took the photo published on Friday’s front page, said the agents he saw that day appeared particularly eager to use pepper spray and tear gas.
He recalled wondering if the agents were feeling emboldened after the appellate court ruling.
“It was almost as if they were making a statement by deploying this stuff,” Mr. Tsong-Taatarii, 55, said in an interview.
Some readers, having found the image shocking, wrote to the newspaper suggesting that it must have been produced with artificial intelligence, Mr. Tsong-Taatarii said.
He added that he was haunted by the same questions many readers were left with: “Why would you deploy this very caustic, powerful pepper spray at this close range when the person is already in your custody?”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
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