Over the last several weeks, the Rev. Rachael Keefe has spotted them again and again.
In her heavily Mexican American enclave in a southeast suburb of the Twin Cities, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in fatigues have been circling in their S.U.V.s and knocking on her neighbors’ doors.
Yet even when the agents are not there, as she is walking her dog through the quiet, snowy streets of a Minnesota winter, the feeling of dread remains.
“I’m always conscious of them,” said Ms. Keefe, the pastor of a small church in Minneapolis. “It’s like being hypervigilant, on high alert, all the time.”
Weeks into what the Department of Homeland Security is calling Operation Metro Surge, federal agents are not visible everywhere all the time, but the reality that they could appear anywhere at any time has put Minnesotans on edge.
In that sense, the ICE operation is everywhere, even when agents are not.
What is constantly visible, even among residents with legal status in this country, are signs of fear. Many public schools look nearly deserted, closed to students as teachers prepare to reopen and offer remote learning. Outside day cares, volunteers wear watchful expressions and orange whistles around their necks, ready to sound the alarm when ICE agents are sighted.
In neighborhoods with heavy immigrant populations, business at grocery stores and restaurants has plummeted. Some small businesses now keep their doors locked even when they are open, admitting patrons one by one. In church basements, volunteers sort canned goods for neighbors too frightened to leave the house. Residents in apartment buildings have taken to pulling their blinds closed all day and night, hoping to escape notice from ICE agents.
Signs on front doors of houses declare that ICE is not welcome inside.
Sandra Maurer, a therapist in St. Paul, has a view of the street from her home office, where the thought of immigration agents is a regular distraction.
“I can’t get through a few minutes without watching a car go by and thinking, ‘Is that ICE?’” she said.
Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official, has said that the work of immigration agents was needed to root out crime. “Our operations are lawful,” he said this week. “They’re targeted, and they’re focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community.”
But many people in the Minneapolis area described an operation that has functioned with seeming randomness and expanded with little clear definition, sweeping up undocumented immigrants, but also colliding with many others in ICE’s path including U.S. citizens, bystanders, people with brown skin or accents that suggest they were born outside the United States.
On Tuesday night, as a deep freeze settled over the Twin Cities, Bruno Suarez Bango dropped off cans of soup at a food collection site in South Minneapolis, figuring it was the least he could do. “It’s close to my heart, this whole thing,” he said.
Mr. Suarez Bango, a graphic designer, was born in the United States in 1993, but his family moved to Ecuador when he was 3 months old. He moved to Chicago at age 18 to study art and, after living in several countries, moved to his wife’s home state, Minnesota.
Now, Mr. Suarez Bango sees videos of ICE agents questioning American citizens speaking with foreign accents and thinks of stories his Jewish grandfather told him, of fleeing Tunisia for France during World War II only to fall under the scrutiny of the Gestapo. He takes no chances, carrying his passport everywhere he goes.
“I’ve been around a lot,” he said of his global travels, “and I haven’t been scared. But I’m scared now, which is scary.”
Erin Maye Quade, a Democratic state senator who lives in the suburb of Apple Valley, said that she constantly sees clues that ICE agents have been nearby. There are the empty cars, for instance, parked askew along the edges of highways and side streets in the Twin Cities, their engines sometimes still running. So many such drivers have been arrested by immigration enforcement that local tow truck companies began removing the cars at a steep discount for families.
Ms. Maye Quade is bombarded by texts and updates on her phone from neighbors, warning that ICE agents were spotted.
“We’ve adjusted so much of our daily life to account for the ‘any moment, anywhere, any time-ness of it all,’” Ms. Maye Quade said.
Standing outside Stonebridge World School in South Minneapolis this week, Omer Goodovich, 42, was on volunteer watch duty, scanning the area for ICE agents.
He has yet to see ICE agents in person. But the fear of them appearing is real.
“I’ve got my head on a swivel,” he said. “I’m very anxious, in case anything does happen.”
A woman working at a fabric store in a South Minneapolis neighborhood, who declined to give her name out of fear for her safety, recounted some of the traumatic events of the past few weeks: the killing of Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman shot by an ICE agent in her car; and the disappearance of a friend who was detained and deported and hasn’t been heard from since.
Even with legal status in the United States, the woman said she worried that agents might be nearby and could confront her on her way home.
Some Minnesotans have offered support for ICE, saying that the tense situation has stemmed from so-called sanctuary city policies, which limit local law enforcement agencies’ cooperation with immigration enforcement.
“As they thumb their nose at law enforcement, thumb their nose at federal officials, that’s what’s causing this escalation,” said Kendall Qualls, a Republican candidate for governor. “It never would have gotten to that point under my administration.”
Yet when ICE agents have appeared in a neighborhood, they have frequently operated with force, interviews and videos show.
In the last several weeks, Ms. Maurer, the therapist in St. Paul, has been driving around, running errands, even grocery shopping, when ICE agents materialize.
“All of a sudden there’s a huge assault rifle in the shopping cart area,” she said. “They’re pretty unpredictable, and they’re very violent.”
Last week, Judge Kate M. Menendez of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota placed restrictions on the federal agents in an 83-page opinion criticizing their tactics.
The opinion, based on sworn statements and videos, describes a pattern in which ICE agents treat citizens harshly as they gather both to observe and to loudly protest ICE. One person was “body-slammed” to the ground. Another had “a chemical irritant” sprayed into his eyes. When a pregnant woman was tackled to the ground and another protester tried to intervene, an agent yelled, “Let’s get him” and put him on the ground.
But on Wednesday, an appellate court blocked those restrictions.
In recent weeks, widespread anger in the Twin Cities over the Trump administration’s crackdown has forged unlikely alliances.
During the civil unrest that tore through Minneapolis in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, the local and state governments and the protesters were at odds. That has shifted, with local and state officials and residents in Minneapolis generally united in their opposition to ICE tactics.
“Can we find a way to make sure that we can do these things without scaring the hell out of our community members and freaking everyone out?” Chief Axel Henry of the St. Paul Police Department asked.
The immigration crackdown has landed especially hard on a stretch of Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, known as Eat Street for its zesty mix of international foods. This week, a halal store was shuttered, and the man taking orders at the neighboring Thai restaurant said he hadn’t seen anyone there in days.
Life is altered at La Casa Market across the street, where a sign boasts, “Where You Find the Taste of Home.” Now, many regular customers are wary of leaving their homes.
The market, which regularly opened at 6 a.m., now opens at 10 a.m. since the early morning clientele has dwindled. Plus, the worker who handled the early shift left for New York. Now, more white people are shopping at La Casa, often asking what would be appropriate to buy for immigrant neighbors, an employee said.
At closing time each evening, white residents protesting ICE gather in front of the store to monitor any action by federal agents against the employees as they leave for the day.
Business has plunged at a nearby restaurant known for its Ecuadorean specialties. The owners have turned one of the booths into a makeshift supply closet of diapers and other necessities for families fearful of going shopping.
Lisette Cando, 31, who was born in New York and is a member of the South American family that owns the restaurant, said she realized that she had reacted to “unconscious fear” by speaking Spanish less, particularly in public.
Ms. Cando said she finds herself in tricky conversations with her 7-year-old son, who has classmates whose parents have been detained or deported.
She tries to reassure her son, and herself. “I told him we’re safe,” Ms. Cando said.
Maia Coleman and Lauren McCarthy contributed reporting from Minneapolis.
Julie Bosman is the Chicago bureau chief for The Times, writing and reporting stories from around the Midwest.
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