No one is Illegal on Stolen Land built by Stolen Hands: Lessons of Resistance from Mni Sota Makoce

For the Dakota peoples, some of the Indigenous Peoples of Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis), where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers converge is a sacred site called Bdote. It is the center of Dakota spirituality, the creation site for the origins of the Dakota people. This is also where Fort Snelling is located, where Dakota people were imprisoned and tortured in the wake of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. 

Now, in 2026, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is using that very same Fort Snelling to kidnap and imprison not just undocumented people but legal residents, asylum seekers, citizens, and even Indigenous peoples. We see the United States federal government once again waging a war against anyone with brown skin.

If you have been following the news, you have likely heard about the drastic increase in ICE activity in Minneapolis and the murder of observers Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents. Although Renee is not the first person to die at the hands of ICE, her murder sparked national attention and community response from residents of Minneapolis who continue to refuse to watch their neighbors be kidnapped by masked agents.

NDN Collective has deep relationships with local organizers, movement comrades, and Tribal leaders in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. Minneapolis is also important to NDN Collective’s origin story, as it is the birthplace of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1960’s. NDN Collective CEO and Founder, Nick Tilsen, shared, “There wouldn’t be an NDN Collective if there wasn’t an American Indian Movement.”

To support our relations in Minneapolis, NDN Collective deployed a team to support the ongoing organizing efforts by our local staff and community partners on the ground of Mni Sota Makoce. We helped organize prayer circles, art builds, hosted several community-centered Know Your Rights trainings, and supported local community organizers and rapid response teams with resources and skill shares. For any community we deploy to, our focus is on uplifting the local community and leadership to invest in the self-determination of the people on the ground.

There is a lot of information and disinformation swirling around about what is happening in Minneapolis. So we wanted to bring a summary of perspectives and lessons learned over the past few weeks from our staff and allies who have been organizing in Minneapolis. 

What is it like on the ground in Minneapolis?

We are currently experiencing a full occupation of the Twin Cities by ICE and other federal agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Even though ICE has been around since 2003, its activity has ramped up since the start of 2026 because of the amount of money given to ICE in the “Big Beautiful Bill” and the 3,000 ICE arrests per day quota delivered to ICE leaders last year. It’s not just undocumented people being targeted by ICE; it’s all brown people, people with an accent, Black folks, Hmong people, even Native people.

Because so many people are being targeted by mass racial profiling from ICE agents, there are a lot of people who are afraid to go to work or bring their children to school. People who are not the right shade of white, whether they have legal status or not, are getting detained, questioned, harassed, violently beaten, and even arrested. Over a third of people arrested by ICE between January 20 and October 15, 2025, had no criminal record. 

What we see happening here is cruel, and we must remember that cruelty is the goal of this administration. They are using ICE to make conditions so dire that people either self-deport or are scared into complying because it’s part of the fascist regime playbook. We also have to remember it is not just Trump who is creating this chaos. It is being directed and influenced by Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Paul Ingrassia, and Greg Bovino, most of whom, if not all, have ties to white nationalist groups.

In what ways do you see the community responding?

The community in Minneapolis is responding in many different ways to protect its neighbors. From neighborhood patrols where people are responding to ICE raids with whistles to alert others, to observers exercising their legal rights to record and document ICE officers violating people’s rights, to Mutual Aid groups supporting communities’ immediate needs, the people of Minneapolis will not be intimidated. We have the right to legally record ICE activity. We have the right to safely follow ICE vehicles and to report to community members where ICE is in our community. We have the right to blow whistles. We have the right to have our freedom of speech to call out the violation of our civil liberties by agents during these abductions and protests. On patrol, people are acting as the eyes and the ears, boots on the ground to keep their community safe.

We also see the community responding with mutual aid to make sure everyone’s basic needs are met. As we mentioned, many people are afraid to leave their homes to get groceries or go to work. So community members are organizing to do grocery delivery or school drop-offs for children. The Powwow Grounds and All My Relations Gallery on Franklin Ave in South Minneapolis is serving as a community hub for many people at this moment. People are coming to this space to be in ceremony, be part of patrols, and to organize supplies for families who need them. So we also see a lot of community care happening in response to the violence that ICE is inflicting. 

Are there any myths circulating about Minneapolis, DHS, or ICE that you’d like to dispel? 

Yes, and the first myth we want to dispel is that ICE didn’t come to Minneapolis to target fraud; they came to Minneapolis to terrorize regular, everyday community members and cause fear. We have seen a lot of ICE activity around Franklin Ave, which is the heart of the Native Community in Minneapolis and where a lot of immigrant neighbors also reside.

Another myth we want to dispel is that observers and patrollers are not the ones causing chaos and trouble – ICE agents are the ones who are breaking laws and violating civil, Treaty, and constitutional rights. Yet we see federal officials trying to blame protestors and observers. This follows a historical pattern of painting brown people as “violent radicals” and “domestic terrorists” when ICE agents are the ones who murdered Renee Nicole Good and now Alex Pretti. 

It is also critical to understand that this increased ICE activity is not just Republicans pandering to an anti-immigrant base. What we are seeing is a consolidation of power amongst people who are using anti-immigration sentiment to make themselves richer and more powerful. The deportation and detention of immigrants continues to be a profit-driven industry where private corporations that run detention centers make billions of dollars. In fact, private prison corporations held 90 percent of detained immigrants in August of 2025. This creates an incentive for these private prison corporations to fund anti-immigrant campaigns and make donations to officials calling for the imprisonment and deportation of immigrants. 

What do you see happening on the ground in Minneapolis that makes you worry?

After an ICE agent murdered an unarmed observer, Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, we saw Kristi Noem accuse her widow, Becca Good, of domestic terrorism, and the Trump Department of Justice began investigating Becca Good rather than the officer who shot and killed her wife. In addition to intimidating community members, these actions are likely part of a larger strategy for Trump to create pretenses to ignite the Insurrection Act. If invoked, it would essentially make the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis a militarized zone where federal officials have full authority.

This would further erode the civil liberties of people here in the Twin Cities and across the so-called United States. ICE agents are already brazenly abusing their authority and violating constitutional rights. They should not be entering homes or businesses without warrants signed by a Federal judge. They should not be pulling people from their cars without cause. Yet we see them still doing all this, which is a threat to all of our civil rights, regardless of immigration status. 

What do you see happening on the ground in Minneapolis that gives you hope?

Amidst all the cruelty and chaos perpetrated by ICE, we also see so many community members rising up with love for their neighbors and city. Many people who may not have been politically involved in the past are now risking their lives for people they have never even met, simply because they are their neighbors. We also see people getting to know their neighbors as communities organize patrols, help one another, and watch out for everyone’s children. 

We also see strong alliances that give us a lot of hope. This includes alliances with the Somali immigrant community and how we have organized in solidarity with them to protect and patrol neighborhoods. In Minneapolis, we also witnessed how strong our non-native allies are in general because they have the political analysis of what it means to be doing this organizing work on Indigenous land.

We continue to witness the strength of our spiritual practices in difficult times and how our prayers work. We know that the power we have as a people is unstoppable when we work together. One way we have seen communities stop or impede ICE abductions is when the community shows up there in their power. When that happens, we have seen ICE agents return to vehicles because they feel the power of the people who have shown up to protect their neighbors. 

What important lessons might you have learned in Minneapolis that you want to share with others?

A critical lesson that we have taken from the response in Minneapolis is the importance of hyperlocal organizing. This means block by block organizing, literally working with your next-door neighbors to develop a plan and then mobilize to protect one another if ICE shows up in your community. Even though ICE activity is heightened in Minneapolis right now, ICE abductions continue to happen across the country, and other cities will likely be targeted like Minneapolis has been in the future. We must get organized so we do not allow the federal government to come in and take over cities, but instead keep pushing ICE out and continue to keep each other safe. 

We have seen how ICE is deploying and using new technology to target communities in Minneapolis. It is important to remember that a lot of that technology and brutal tactics were first developed by the Israeli Occupation Forces and used on Palestinian communities. These tools and tactics are now being used to terrorize immigrant communities in the United States. Therefore, we must work across communities and learn from each other, and share relevant lessons from past experiences. 

Finally, an important lesson to share is that we are up against a whole political agenda; it is not just this one political moment in Minneapolis. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the United States, with a budget of $85 billion. So to effectively stop this invasion, we need sustained mass non-cooperation across all communities.

This means that we need each person to figure out what they can do to jam up the gears of the machine that allows ICE to operate the way it has been. For example, what would it look like for Tribal governments to ban ICE from their traditional territories? What about local governments banning ICE from their cities? In addition to passing these bans, we would then need the Tribal and local governments to create a plan to enforce them. 

What resources or trainings should people plug into?

Some trainings people should seek out to learn how to respond to ICE include finding and joining patrol groups, rapid response groups, and mutual aid efforts in their communities. It is also important that people understand the different roles and responsibilities that exist. Some people may be blowing whistles to alert the neighborhood, while others document ICE activity with cameras. Others might be organizing grocery deliveries to neighbors unable to leave their homes safely. 

It is important to understand what your rights are and assert them. To learn more about this, you can attend a local Know Your Rights training or check out the resources linked below. Having an emergency preparedness plan is also critical. That way if you or anyone in your household gets detained, you have a plan for how to respond. 

How can people who don’t live in Minneapolis support the community there at this time?

One way to support the community is to send financial resources to people who need them. Some folks are afraid to go to work because they are at risk of being detained by ICE, regardless of their immigration status, and therefore cannot pay rent. Various GoFundMe’s are circulating to support people directly impacted and ensure their basic needs are met. 

There are also groups in Minneapolis, like the Indigenous Protector Movement, which is organizing the community on the ground to protect and care for one another, that could use financial support for their important work during this moment. Even though this occupation by the federal government seems like a new moment, it is a repeated pattern. As Native people, we have always been organizing to protect and care for our communities from the United States federal government and other colonial systems.

Finally, Tribal members can reach out to their Tribal representatives and encourage them to ban ICE. We need people to exercise their Tribal sovereignty. Our Indigenous community members are on the ground defending our land and neighbors, and we need the support of our Tribal governments to help protect our people from ICE and this authoritarian regime. 

Organizing with Love

In 2025, 31 people died while under the custody of ICE. We have to remember that this agency, ICE under the Department of Homeland Security, has very little government oversight at the moment. Therefore, we must lean on our community to keep each other safe, and this is exactly what we are seeing happening here in Mni Sota Makoce. 

We see people risking a lot for people they have never met. People on the ground here are fighting in the present for future generations to live a life free from the terror of having their loved ones kidnapped by ICE. 

Community members are taking these actions out of love and care for their neighbors. People are blowing whistles, carrying sage, observing what is happening, and making prayers – and all these actions are needed to protect communities. This movement here is crossing neighborhoods, racial lines, and class, and that is what it is going to take to ensure ICE is banned from our territories and cities.

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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.

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