Meet the Minneapolis neighbors standing up to ICE by the thousands

A new, activist twist on neighborhood watch is taking shape in Minneapolis and other cities under occupation by federal immigration agents: ICE Watch.

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel drive around these cities, they’re often tailed by people in the neighborhoods. The idea is to make sure witnesses are present for any immigration arrest, to catch incidents on video, and to protest—or at least get the detainee’s name.

These ICE watchers are passionate, determined, and just about everywhere—and ICE is getting frustrated. Trump administration officials have called the protesters domestic terrorists. But they say they’re just ordinary folks trying to help their neighbors.

I caught up with Andrew Fahlstrom, who helps lead Defend the 612, a hub for these volunteers. He estimates there are tens of thousands of them citywide. In the conversation below, edited for length and clarity, he shares how this massive movement formed, how ICE is responding (poorly), and how people in other cities can prepare for the next invasion.

“What we’ve noticed in Minneapolis,” he tells me, “is that having people outside, having people ready to respond, having people connected and communicating about ICE activity has kept so many people safe—more than we’ll ever know, more than we’ll ever be able to track.”

How did Defend the 612 come about?

I remember being on a call with immigrant rights organizations from LA and DC, and them saying that when ICE came to their cities, their hotlines were overwhelmed, like they could not take 10,000 calls a day, and it really came down to neighborhoods to respond. I was in South Minneapolis, in a neighborhood called Powderhorn, and this was before anything had happened here, but people had been watching things across the country and wanted to do something. So some neighbors and I did a whistle training—like 300 people came to the first, 200 to the second. It took us by surprise, how many people came out.

You live near where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, right?

I’m within three blocks of George Floyd Square. During that time, we had created a neighborhood chat, like Signal messenger, with three blocks by three blocks’ worth of people, because there was a lot of activity—the Minneapolis Police Department was constantly trying to open up the street and causing clashes, and we needed to get organized. A lot of that infrastructure and those relationships—like, we would do block parties—continued since 2020. If the power goes out somewhere, you know about it. If a cat is loose, you see the picture of the loose cat and try to figure out where it is.

So from that group chat, Defend the 612 formed?

Yes, but a three-by-three block isn’t big enough. As we were seeing National Guard and ICE flood into other cities, we started another chat, “Phillips and Powderhorn Federal Threats”—Phillips and Powderhorn are two neighborhoods right next to each other. To the east of us, the Longfellow neighborhood had an even more organized system, like block groups, interest groups, street medics, and they convened other neighborhoods across the city that were starting to think about the same thing. So it was a lot of different people having the idea in different places and starting to slowly reach out to each other.

Then December 1 happened. Immediately, in the Phillips neighborhood, there was a Subaru that kidnapped parents out of a vehicle and left a child in the cold crying in the backseat. And from then on, people have been responding to emergencies and building out communication systems and trying to figure out how to face abductors in our neighborhoods. Defend the 612 gives a front door—it gives people an entry point so they can get connected to the 12 or 13 neighborhoods across the city that are organized right now and willing to take people into their rapid response groups.  

How does the rapid response work?

Rapid response only works if it’s rapid; if your neighborhood is big and you’re trying to respond to something that’s 10 minutes away, these abductions are happening within 4 minutes. And so across the city, folks are out on street corners in our cultural corridors, on foot. Folks are in cars because it’s cold in Minnesota, depending on the day, stationed up on corners on their block. Parents and neighbors are out at school starts and school ends to protect the children. And some folks are out being eyes and ears in a mobile way, in cars and on bikes.

There’s so much going on right now. There’s this amazing group of people—I have no idea who they are—who are tracking all the [ICE] license plates. There’s this amazing group of people who are making maps about where people are being taken. There are school patrols, block patrols, neighborhood patrols, multi-neighborhood patrols. At this point, I can’t track a fraction of what’s happening, because there’s tens of thousands of people doing things.

Wow, tens of thousands.  

It’s been growing exponentially. As of this morning, there are 12,000 people across Minneapolis on the multi-neighborhood rapid responses. That’s 3.46 percent of the adult population of Minneapolis, and that’s people who can tolerate these giant Signal group chats with a thousand people—most can’t.

I would say there’s at least three times that many people in their individual neighborhood groups, block groups, and school patrol groups doing rapid response and ICE watch. And then I would double that number again for the folks who are giving rides, bringing food to people’s homes, going grocery shopping for targeted communities, doing fundraising for rent and other material support. At this point, I don’t know a single person in Minneapolis who isn’t involved in this work.

How are federal agents responding to the ICE watchers?

DHS—ICE, CBP, HSI—is a force of people who are here to occupy, and so they’re trying to work as fast as possible in secretive ways. Anything that calls attention to that is met with violence and force.

If neighbors are [driving] trying to observe safely behind ICE vehicles, what you see is something called “box-ins,” where a team of ICE vehicles will surround the vehicle and then threaten through the window, bang on the window, and in recent weeks it’s escalated. It’s happening multiple times a day. They’ll either box you in and warn you, say you are impeding an investigation, or they will outright break out your window, cut your seat belt, drag you out of the car, and take you into custody. [Last week, a federal judge ordered ICE to stop detaining observers who were following them at an appropriate distance, as long as the observers haven’t committed a crime or obstructed them; the Justice Department plans to appeal.]

I’ve seen at least a dozen videos of this happening, and it’s pretty indiscriminate, in that it scoops up people who are doing ICE watch and people who aren’t. There was a story of someone going to a doctor’s appointment the other day, I don’t know which agency did this, but they thought they were being followed by this person, and they broke out their window.

Then you have what happened in North Minneapolis, where they followed someone to a home. Northsiders came out at the hubbub of it and federal agents deployed tear gas, pepper spray, and some other new green gas that people are sharing images of; I don’t know the name but they say it’s more toxic than regular tear gas.

I saw a reel out there today of ICE agents saying over and over, “Didn’t you learn your lesson?” Referring to what happened to Renée Good. Like they’re on camera doing that. And a friend of mine, Patty O’Keefe, was pulled over and pulled out of her car, and according to MPR News, she said the agent said something about that “lesbian bitch.” [Good had a wife.]

Patty and a friend were taken into custody to the Whipple Federal Building, and on the way there officers were ridiculing Patty, saying that she looked ugly. Her friend at the Whipple building was offered money if he gave up the name of organizers.

Wow.

It’s not a good time here.  

I’ve also heard stories about ICE agents noticing ICE watchers behind them and figuring out where they live and leading them back home.  

They look up the registration of the vehicle, and then they lead the people there, yeah. That’s been happening for six and a half weeks, the entire time they’ve been here. It’s an intimidation tactic and a threat. It’s unclear what they might do to people, but it’s really unsettling. The recommendation that I’ve seen out there is to disengage if you think you’re being brought back to your home.

Has any of this happened to you?

I was behind one ICE vehicle; they stopped and turned on their lights, and two agents with assault rifles came out. I disengaged and turned down an alley before they gave me any order, but the person behind me was stopped and threatened by two agents. They said, “You are impeding an investigation. If you don’t stop we’re going to arrest you.” Both with their hands on their long guns. The observer was shaken up but chose to continue to observe behind them.

How are local police reacting?

The Minneapolis Police Department has been relatively hands off. Federal agents, especially the convoys, are rampantly not obeying traffic laws—they’ll run red lights, go the wrong way down one-ways—and MPD isn’t pulling them over. But also, MPD is not necessarily responding to their backup calls. Two nights ago, after ICE shot someone, MPD did do crowd control, basically a bunch of cops protecting ICE from neighbors who had responded. So there is sort of tacit support of ICE when they say they are scared.

Anything else you want to add?

The core message from Minneapolis is that people everywhere need to prepare for this. This isn’t the last time this is going to happen. Unless communities are talking to each other about how to protect each other from this kind of invasion, they’re going to be on their backfoot and caught unaware.

I encourage people across the country to organize on their blocks, know their neighbors. Because that has been, far and away, the thing that has kept people safe. What it’s meant is family after family hasn’t been torn apart.

In the same way that any of us could have been Renée Good, any city could be Minneapolis. They’re not going to stay here forever. They’ve got billions of dollars and a growing security force that only answers to Trump. Other places need to be ready.

This story was revised to avoid any implication that ICE Watch actually derived from neighborhood watch.