How much can a city take? | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAICESHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersExpandThe Verge DailyInstallerVerge DealsNotepadOptimizerRegulatorThe StepbackArchivesStoreSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.How much can a city take?Comments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...PolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyCivil rightsCloseCivil rightsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Civil rightsHow much can a city take?As Homeland Security’s siege on Minneapolis enters its third week, locals are volunteering for patrol shifts, protesting in the streets, and keeping one another up to date in group texts.by Scott MeslowCloseScott MeslowPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Scott MeslowJan 19, 2026, 9:00 PM UTCLinkShareGiftImage: Photo by Steven Garcia/The VergeLinkShareGiftI live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third week — with no clear end in sight — I’ve received a steady string of messages from increasingly concerned friends across the country. They all start the same way: Uh… is this really as bad as it looks from the outside?My answer to that question is easy: no, it’s worse. Not since the pandemic has my daily life been ruptured in such a frightening and surreal fashion. Then, at least, there was a semblance of the country being united. Morons who rallied against masks and vaccines aside, most Americans could at least agree that the world would be a better place if Covid-19 didn’t exist.There’s no such comfort with ICE, which is quite literally a hostile, heavily armed, masked police force violently occupying Minneapolis. No one — certainly not the ICE agents themselves — is even really bothering with the pretext that they’re here to make the city safer. This is Donald Trump’s revenge campaign, and they’re the foot soldiers.Demonstrators protest outside of the Whipple federal building on January 17, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Protests have ramped up around the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration enforcement agent during an incident in south Minneapolis on January 7Unfortunately, their obvious incompetence and buffoonery does not make them less dangerous. The killing of Renee Good was bad enough, but the blatant lies DHS Secretary Kristi Noem spun about the incident — and the FBI’s refusal to share evidence that would allow the state of Minnesota to investigate the death of one of its own citizens — made it clear, to both sides, that ICE would face no consequences for anything they did, at least not while Trump is in the White House.In the days since, ICE agents have acted accordingly. We know they are often under-trained, wear masks to avoid being identified, and have the unquestioning support of an administration almost openly pushing for violence in the streets of Minneapolis. At the time I’m writing this, Trump is still toying with invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying 1,500 paratroopers to the city. How worried am I about what ICE will do to those who oppose its tactics? Enough that I considered whether I should publish this story anonymously.And so the second question people are texting me — Are YOU okay? — is harder to answer. I guess that’s because the answer is no. Call me naïve, but despite plenty of evidence for the ghoulishness and cynicism of the Trump administration and its operatives, I was not prepared for them to unleash this level of chaos and violence on my city.Demonstrators protest toward exiting vehicles outside of the Whipple federal building.Spray-painted signage.Federal officers line up outside.Protestors acknowledged indigenous land.Protestors continued to show up in numbers.The presence of ICE is not an abstraction to the people who live here. It’s a constant threat requiring constant vigilance. Our public schools were closed because the state government could not guarantee students would be safe. Many stores and restaurants, including 80 percent of immigrant-owned businesses, are not open, protecting both staff and patrons from the threat of an ICE raid. Many nonwhite Minnesotans — regardless of whether they are citizens or not — are essentially sheltering in place, skipping grocery runs and doctors’ appointments to stay at home, where ICE (theoretically) needs a judicial warrant to harass them.There is a right-wing trope, frequently employed by Trump, that anyone who resists ICE must be a paid protestor. Of course, the reality is the opposite. Many of us have families, most of us have jobs, and all of us have bills to pay. None of that has changed, but the task of protecting our community still requires many, many unpaid hours. As a white U.S. citizen, I’m one of the “lucky” ones: ICE may still detain me, as they have many other lawful protesters, but I’m much less likely to be actively targeted. I’ve also been lucky in another sense: So far, I haven’t run into any truly bad situations with my young children in tow. But I expect that luck to run out soon.Right wing influencer Jake Lang is confronted by protesters at a rally near city hall. Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty ImagesOver the past two weeks, I’ve become a volunteer driver, shuttling nonwhite people between their homes and their jobs. My passengers put up the hoods on their winter coats before they get out of the car to hide their faces, walking into homes still bearing cheerful Christmas lights and wreaths. I don’t leave until they’re behind locked doors.Protestors demanded justice for the killing of Renee Good.With no alternatives, parents have gotten organized via platforms like Signal and WhatsApp. Working in tandem with people around my community, I’ve taken shifts as a security guard, waiting outside schools, daycares, and community centers to send a rapid-response alert if ICE arrives. I’ve marched and fundraised, while boycotting stores like Target, a Minnesota-based company without the courage to issue even a tepid, mealy mouthed defense of Minnesotans.None of what I’m doing is enough. But all of it, I reassure myself, is better than nothing. The most heartening thing about this deeply disturbing moment is seeing how consistently and forcefully Minnesotans of all demographics have been pushing back. It has been galvanizing and radicalizing in ways I’m not sure anyone outside the city can truly understand. High schoolers across the Twin Cities metro area have organized walkouts. Parents who might normally be busy with PTA duties are patrolling their neighborhoods, trailing ICE agents while honking car horns, and blowing whistles to warn the community of their presence. My father-in-law, a devout Catholic in his 70s, made a cardboard sign that read “Love Thy Neighbor” and joined the thousands who rallied against ICE on a frigid afternoon in Powderhorn Park.This has been an especially difficult year for Minneapolis. The assassination of Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman, and Donald Trump’s characteristically callous response to it, is still an open wound. Many yards still contain pink lawn signs created as a sign of community support after the deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in August. The murder of George Floyd, never far in the background of the city’s collective memory, has returned to the surface, as one needless murder in the streets recalls another. How much can one city take?I guess we’ll all find out. Over the past two weeks, I wake up more enraged than exhausted and go to bed more exhausted than enraged. I’m eating more restaurant takeout than I should, but it feels like a good time to support local businesses — even if many of them remain closed. I bought a pack of whistles and texted some neighbors to see if anyone needed one. Nobody took me up on it; they’d all bought packs of whistles too.Demonstrators protest toward Hennepin County Sheriff’s officers outside of the Whipple federal building.Protests continued well into sundown.The community is united in outrage, action, and, remarkably, even good humor. A variety of local businesses, including the Detroit-style pizza hub Wrecktangle and the sex shop Smitten Kitten, have become hubs for resources and community activism. We share ICE sightings over Signal and trawl r/Minneapolis. When conservative influencer Jake Lang — pardoned by Trump after spending four years in prison for assaulting Capitol police officers with a baseball bat — announced an anti-Muslim march in Cedar-Riverside, group chats across the Twin Cities lit up with the same Tom Hardy GIF. We’ve already experienced enough to know when ICE and their allies are trying to bait us.We talk, optimistically, about the money ICE is burning through every day and how difficult it will be for them to sustain this full-scale assault in the weeks and months to come. We hope that Trump’s distaste for anything complicated means he’ll get frustrated by the stalemate between ICE and the people of Minneapolis or that his toddler-esque obsession with new, shiny things means he’ll just get bored and order his minions to do something else.Suuban Mohamed, a protestor who was detained earlier in the day.Mohamed in profile.We also know that we’ll win. Time is on our side. ICE may have the inflated salaries and the backing of a tyrannical federal government, but we’re the ones who live here, and as the city’s greatest musician Prince once said, the cold keeps the bad people out. And when the ICE agents finally take off their masks, leave their shitty chain hotels, and fly back to wherever they were before they came to terrorize us, we’ll still be here.Here’s the last thing I text anyone who checks in with me: Wherever you are, get organized now. Figure out who your likeminded neighbors are. Set up your Signal chats. Get some whistles (I can spare a few if you need them). This administration has made it clear that Minneapolis is just the beginning, and when they come to your city, you’ll want to be ready.Protestors were undeterred by the cold. Photo by Steven Garcia/The VergeFollow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Scott MeslowCloseScott MeslowPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Scott MeslowCivil rightsCloseCivil rightsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Civil rightsPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyMore in PolicyWhy Coinbase derailed the crypto industry’s political futureMinnesota wants to win a war of attritionGoogle is appealing a judge’s search monopoly rulingTrump and Mid-Atlantic governors want tech companies to pay for new power plantsCanada is going to start importing Chinese EVs — will the US follow?600,000 Trump Mobile phones sold? 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Scott Meslow’s article “How much can a city take?” offers a harrowing account of the escalating tensions in Minneapolis following a prolonged occupation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, which the author describes as a violent, unprovoked assault on the city’s residents. Writing from the perspective of someone deeply rooted in the community—having grown up in a suburb of St. Paul and returning to Minneapolis after years on the coasts—Meslow underscores the visceral impact of this federal intervention, which has disrupted daily life in ways he compares to the pandemic’s chaos but with far greater intensity. The presence of over 3,000 ICE agents in the city has created a climate of fear and unpredictability, with the author noting that the situation is “worse” than it appears from outside perspectives. Unlike the pandemic, which at least fostered a sense of collective struggle, the current crisis lacks any unifying narrative. Instead, Meslow frames the ICE presence as a direct extension of Donald Trump’s “revenge campaign,” characterized by armed, masked agents operating with impunity under a federal administration that openly advocates for violence in the streets. The article highlights the absence of accountability for ICE’s actions, exemplified by the fatal shooting of Renee Good, an immigrant woman killed during an enforcement operation. The subsequent cover-up by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the FBI’s refusal to share evidence with Minnesota authorities further erode trust in institutions, reinforcing the perception that ICE operates without consequence.

The article details how residents have adapted to this ongoing occupation, with many abandoning normal routines to ensure safety. Public schools have closed due to fears of ICE raids, and 80% of immigrant-owned businesses remain shuttered, leaving nonwhite Minnesotans—regardless of citizenship status—to isolate themselves to avoid detection. Meslow critiques the right-wing narrative that protesters are “paid” by opposing forces, emphasizing instead the grassroots nature of resistance. He recounts his own efforts as a volunteer driver, shuttling nonwhite residents to work while urging them to conceal their faces during transit. Additionally, he describes organizing community patrols, using platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to coordinate security efforts at schools, daycares, and community centers. These measures reflect a broader shift in collective responsibility, as ordinary citizens take on roles traditionally held by law enforcement. Meslow also critiques local businesses like Target, which he accuses of failing to defend Minnesotans despite their regional ties. The article underscores the emotional toll on residents, with Meslow acknowledging his own growing rage and exhaustion while highlighting the resilience of a community that has mobilized in unprecedented ways.

The piece delves into the cultural and political undercurrents of the resistance, noting how Minnesotans have leveraged humor and solidarity to counteract the oppressive atmosphere. For instance, local businesses such as Wrecktangle and Smitten Kitten have become hubs for activism, while online communities share real-time updates on ICE movements. Meslow also references the broader context of Minneapolis’s struggles, including the assassination of Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and the lingering trauma of George Floyd’s murder. These events, he argues, have contributed to a collective consciousness that views the ICE occupation as part of a larger pattern of systemic violence. The author’s personal anecdotes—such as his father-in-law holding a “Love Thy Neighbor” sign at a protest or high schoolers organizing walkouts—illustrate the broad demographic reach of the resistance. Despite the gravity of the situation, Meslow notes a surprising sense of camaraderie among residents, with community members using platforms like Reddit’s r/Minneapolis to share information and coordinate efforts.

Meslow also addresses the political calculus behind ICE’s actions, suggesting that Trump’s administration is leveraging the occupation as a test of its authority. He speculates that the president’s aversion to complexity and his tendency toward impulsive decisions might lead to a withdrawal, though he acknowledges the danger of relying on such assumptions. The article closes with an urgent call to action, urging readers across the country to prepare for similar scenarios by organizing locally. Meslow emphasizes that while ICE’s presence in Minneapolis is a crisis, it is also a harbinger of potential conflicts elsewhere. His final message—“Wherever you are, get organized now”—reflects both the immediacy of the threat and the belief that collective action can counteract authoritarian overreach. The piece ends with a reference to Prince’s famous line about Minneapolis’s cold climate keeping “the bad people out,” a nod to the city’s enduring spirit. Meslow’s account is not merely a report on events but a plea for vigilance, underscoring the fragility of civic institutions and the necessity of grassroots resistance in the face of federal aggression.