The Trump administration has accused the Minneapolis Police Department of abandoning its beleaguered federal agents. Some city residents say they are the ones being abandoned, by police officers who are paid to protect them and have done nothing of the sort.
Even the police chief, Brian O’Hara, has taken sides, warning officers who don’t intervene when federal agents use excessive force that they will lose their jobs.
Caught in the middle are the 600 officers of a police force badly outnumbered by the 3,000 federal immigration agents who have swarmed Minneapolis and St. Paul, and whose actions have threatened to undo a half decade of work to re-establish the trust between law enforcement and residents that was shattered by the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“It’s an almost no-win situation for them on the frontline,” said Janeé Harteau, the Minneapolis police chief from 2012 to 2017.
The Minneapolis Police Department remains the largest in the state, but its leaders have battled a dire staffing shortage for years, exacerbated by Mr. Floyd’s murder, the riots that followed and the prosecutions of the perpetrators in uniform. Since President Trump launched his Operation Metro Surge, the department has been stretched thinner than ever.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis has said officers are overwhelmed. With both protesters and federal agents alike calling 911 for help, police across the region have struggled to respond. Police and union officials say morale has plummeted as officers find themselves caught between powerful political forces beyond their control.
“Both sides dug their heels in, and here we are in the middle of it,” said Mark Ross, president of the Saint Paul Police Federation, the capital city’s police union. “They are playing political football and we are the ones getting kicked around.”
Local leaders, activists and ordinary citizens have urged officers to intervene directly with federal agents whose behavior appears unlawful and to investigate them for possible criminal charges, especially after the deaths of two citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Officers are trying “to remain neutral,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a hard-charging liberal prosecutor. But, she added, “I don’t think it’s a neutral thing to be there watching unlawful behavior against your community and not do anything.”
Demonstrators have also pleaded for more protection from the Minneapolis Police Department, or M.P.D., an agency many of them have spent recent years stridently protesting and pushing to defund.
“M.P.D. should not be cleaning up Bovino’s mess by setting up police lines to keep protesters out of the area,” Simon Elliott, a community activist, said, referring to Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who was leading the immigration surge until Monday, when he was abruptly reassigned to California.
Pressure is also coming from the Trump administration, which has demanded cooperation and collaboration from local law enforcement authorities. At a news conference last week, Mr. Bovino said local departments had “failed” because they had not responded to federal calls for assistance when protesters were “stalking” his agents.
“That’s what you call ‘missing in action,’” Mr. Bovino said. “When fellow law enforcement officers are in need, missing in action. Unconscionable.”
The open display of friction has left virtually everyone in the Twin Cities frustrated and worried about the future of public safety.
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The region is just the latest testing ground for the relationships between police, residents and federal law enforcement. Similar strains surfaced in Chicago late last year, and over the summer in Los Angeles, the first city to weather a surge of immigration enforcement. But the scale of the Trump administration’s operation in Minnesota, the concentration of forces in a city the size of Minneapolis, the pushback from local leaders and the muscular resistance from residents have all raised the stakes.
And that was before the killing of two protesters by federal agents focused the world’s attention on the city’s streets. On Jan. 7, a federal agent fatally shot Ms. Good, 37, in the driver’s seat of her S.U.V., setting off furious protests in Minneapolis and across the country. Tensions escalated again on Saturday when federal agents gunned down Mr. Pretti, also 37.
The two deadly episodes, along with other displays of aggressive force by federal agents — including the shooting of a Venezuelan man and the arrest of a Hmong immigrant who was a U.S. citizen — have been “profoundly damaging,” said Mr. O’Hara the Minneapolis police chief.
If the offending federal officers are not stopped or held accountable, “the result is not public order. It is public fear,” the chief wrote in a Tuesday opinion piece for USA Today. “When fear eclipses trust, public safety suffers.”
Chief O’Hara’s threat, in an interview last month, to fire officers who fail to intervene when they see federal agents use excessive force stood in contrast to orders from other chiefs.
The chief of police in Bloomington, a suburb south of the Twin Cities, said his department must ensure the safety of residents and out-of-town federal agents. Bloomington officers might be called on to do crowd control, the chief, Booker Hodges, said, but directing them to intervene during immigration sweeps could put them in danger and spark a conflict that could quickly spiral out of control.
“If you go out here and arrest a federal agent, unless it’s something egregious, what do you think is going to happen next?” Chief Hodges asked. “I don’t want to start a civil war.”
Amid those conflicting signals, anger has simmered among federal authorities and some community members. Both sides have questioned what they say have been slow responses and a thin officer presence during clashes between demonstrators and federal authorities.
On Sunday evening, when protesters began vandalizing and pushing into a hotel where they believed federal agents were staying, a single Minneapolis police officer was on hand initially to try to calm the scene.
More officers eventually swarmed the building, but before they arrived, one federal agent, wearing a tactical vest marked Bureau of Prisons, could be heard on video shouting to reporters, “Where’s the local PD?”
Local law enforcement officials insist they are doing the best they can under difficult circumstances. Ms. Moriarty, the county attorney, called it unreasonable for federal agents to expect a local police presence wherever they meet protesters.
“Are they supposed to follow you around and be your personal bodyguard?” she asked. “ICE is creating this chaos, and yet when they create chaos, they’re demanding that local police show up immediately and help them get out of a situation they created.”
Hanging over this tug of war are fears about what comes next for the area’s law enforcement community. Will this latest period of strife erase the progress that local departments have made since Mr. Floyd’s murder? Will residents trust police after federal agents leave? Will staffing levels plummet once again?
Chief O’Hara has said the federal operation has already made the city less safe by eroding public faith in the justice system. But some local activists say there are key differences between the current moment and 2020, and they credit police for forming relationships with the communities they serve.
“We have built strong and meaningful friendships with officers — and with each other — and this has benefited our city,” said Aileen Johnson, who founded the group Minneapolis Neighborhood Safety Clubs in 2021 to help bridge the divide between residents and police.
In recent days, Ms. Johnson has been visiting city police precincts to deliver hot meals to weary officers and speaking with residents about the limits of the police department’s authority.
Cynthia Wilson, president of the Minneapolis branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said she believes many people by now understand the difference between local police and federal agents.
“At this point, our immediate disdain is with the Border Patrol and ICE, not so much our city police officers,” she said.
Still, she acknowledged, it will fall to local police and community members to pick up the pieces. She said that can’t be done until federal agents leave.
“Right now we’ve got to eat humble pie and wait,” Ms. Wilson said. “We’re under siege. What else are we going to do?”
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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