When Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer last week in Minnesota, it brought attention to the robust effort to combat US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Twin Cities. Residents of Minneapolis and the surrounding areas are joining decentralized networks of activists who are committed to alerting their neighbors to ICE presence on their blocks.

Madison McVan, a reporter for the Minnesota Reformer, rode along with some of those activists to observe their tactics. The activists patrol their neighborhoods looking for ICE officers. When they find them, they alert their networks and tail the officers so their neighbors know where ICE is in the city. These patrols have led to tense standoffs with ICE officers and have drawn accusations of “domestic terrorism” from the Trump administration.

McVan spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about what she experienced while riding along with activists and how these networks sprang up in the first place. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

There’s much more in the full podcast. So listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

You’ve been riding along with Minneapolis residents who are tailing ICE as a form of resistance. What’s that been like?

It’s been intense. The idea is that if residents follow ICE and record them, that they can possibly prevent arrest from taking place at all.

Key takeaways

• Minnesotans are following ICE vehicles in the Twin Cities and alerting their neighbors that officers may be in the area.
  

• Since Renee Good’s killing, the activists have shown more resolve and their numbers have increased.
  

• ICE has responded by trying to intimidate the activists, driving to their homes and telling them they could be arrested for obstructing their operations.

And is it working?

The people I rode along with think it is working. They basically say if we follow ICE and we record them, they’re a lot less likely to get out of their cars and start asking people for their citizenship documentation and that kind of thing.

Tell me what you’ve experienced when you’ve been in the car with these people.

There’s usually one person driving and then a second person manning the phones. And so the passenger is following along with a group chat. They’re on a group call with other people in the neighborhood who are doing the same thing, so they can correspond about where they’re seeing ICE and notify each other when someone finds ICE and starts following the vehicle.

This kind of plays out [in] a pattern that I’ve seen over and over now, which is that the observers start following an ICE vehicle. The ICE vehicle identifies themselves as federal officers by checking to see if they’re being followed. They turn into a side street or they do an aggressive maneuver, or they start weaving through parking lots — seeming to make sure they’re being followed. And then at some point they stop the vehicle, the observers stop behind them, the ICE agents get out of the car, surround the vehicle, and tell the observers to stop following them — that they’re obstructing ICE operations and that they may be arrested if they continue following.

When I was riding along with a pair of observers, they were following an ICE vehicle, and that exact thing happened. ICE officers got out of their vehicles, they surrounded the car, and one officer told the driver, stop following us or we’ll arrest you. The observers decided to continue following the car, and the ICE vehicle drove straight to the address of one of the observers that was in the car. So it seemed like they were doing some kind of, looking up of the identity of the person who owned the vehicle and then driving to their home address.

The ICE vehicles stopped at the observer’s home and then kept going, and so the observers decided to continue following the vehicles. Two of the vehicles in the convoys split up and the observers decided to follow the third ICE car. As they were following that third ICE car, agents circled back to the observer’s house that they had just stopped in front of and went and banged on the door. The observer’s wife was home. She was terrified and she pretended she wasn’t home, and neighbors started coming out of their houses. Once they realized ICE was next door, [they started] blowing whistles, some people stopped and honked horns, and eventually the agents left.

Much of the country was not paying attention to Minnesota before Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent last week. Was this going on before that?

There was an immigration enforcement surge starting in December, so that was when patrols really started ramping up. But even before that, people were organized in rapid response networks and starting when Trump took over for his second term.

The idea behind the rapid response networks was that if we see an ICE action taking place, we can notify a bunch of people in the neighborhood, and the neighbors can respond to film ICE to inform people of their rights and to protest. But with this big surge in ICE agents arriving, they’ve kind of changed tactics. It seems like now the ICE agents are traveling in smaller groups; they’re conducting arrests quickly. They’re really trying to get in and out before people have time to respond en masse and start protesting. That’s why the rapid response networks have shifted more towards a proactive approach, following ICE agents in hopes of preventing raids or arrests before they even happen.

The Trump administration has suggested that the people doing this are organized activists who have, I don’t know, possibly mendacious goals. Tell me about them, though. Who are these people? How did they get organized?

Well, I think this is where it’s relevant to mention that Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd less than a mile from where an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good. So this neighborhood has been organized before. They’ve mobilized en masse against police brutality before. So I think that there’s already a culture — particularly in the south side of Minneapolis — of organization and protest.

“I think the killing of Renee Good has really only strengthened the resolve of a lot of the people who are already involved in this, and it’s driven more people to try to join the movement.”

The people who are doing this come from all walks of life. We’re seeing churches get involved in this. We’re seeing parents organize with people whose children go to the same schools, so that they can be standing outside during dismissal or so that they can escort immigrant parents when they’re dropping off their children at school. It’s people who have a lot of time and identify as activists, and it’s also people who are commuting to work in the suburbs saying, “Let me take a different route today to see if I spot ICE, and I’ll let you know if I see anything.”

Do you know if Renee Good was one of these people?

We don’t know the details of her involvement in any of these networks. The people I talked to who lived in her neighborhood, who were involved in some of these rapid response groups, said they did not know her. But it’s important to note that it’s possible she could have been in the group and they wouldn’t have known, because everyone uses anonymous nicknames. It’s possible she was there using an anonymous nickname, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.

After Renee Good was killed by the ICE agent, it has seemed like things in Minneapolis have become pretty chaotic. How have these people changed their tactics since she was killed? Are they doing anything differently?

I think the killing of Renee Good has really only strengthened the resolve of a lot of the people who are already involved in this, and it’s driven more people to try to join the movement. I think a lot of people who are protesting ICE or who are going out on patrols are asking themselves what they’re willing to risk for this movement, knowing that someone was shot while protesting ICE.

You’re a journalist, so of course you’re sort of looking at all sides of this debate in Minneapolis. What do you make of the argument from ICE agents that this is threatening — that people following them in cars feels like a threat and that it shouldn’t be happening?

Well, I think that’s part of the point. I think the people on the ground here, many of them feel that this is an occupied city, and they want to show that they’re unhappy with that. They want to try to disrupt ICE operations within the bounds of the law to protect their immigrant neighbors. That’s how they see it. So I’m not surprised that ICE agents feel threatened by this. I think that’s part of the goal.

That’s very interesting, because as you know, the Trump administration has tried to paint Renee Good and others like her as a danger to the city itself. Kristi Noem called Renee Good a “domestic terrorist”. Vice President JD Vance has called this “classic terrorism.” 

How do you make sense of statements like that based on what you’re seeing and the activists who are doing this kind of work?

I think it’s important to remember that at least the activists I’ve been with are committed to doing this within the bounds of the law. So it’s really this gray area between what’s considered obstruction in a legal sense and what is practically obstruction of ICE’s work. Honking horns and following them is not physically blocking them from making an arrest, but it certainly discourages them from doing so. That’s kind of where a lot of the action is happening.

And when it comes to Renee Good, it’s unclear what exactly her involvement may have been in any kind of organized movement to protest. But I think what her actions show is that the people of Minneapolis collectively — at least most of them, it feels like — have decided that when they see ICE, they’re taking action in whatever form feels right for them.