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TRUMP’S ETHNIC CLEANSING CAMPAIGN IN MINNEAPOLIS  
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Ryan Cooper
January 15, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ Every part of this illegal violent occupation is based on lies.
According to residents, the basic tactic seems to be ICE convoys
driving around looking for any nonwhite person out by themselves,
jumping out, dragging them into a van then driving off _

A family member reacts after a federal immigration officer used a
battering ram to break down the door of a home before making an
arrest, January 11, 2026, in Minneapolis., Photo credit: John
Locher/AP Photo // The American Prospect

 

There are reportedly about 3,000 ICE and Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) goons running riot in Minneapolis, or about five times as many
officers
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as are in the city police department. They have been captured on video
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beating, gassing, and pepper-spraying bystanders, including legal
observers
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kidnapping people, including children
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due process; and breaking into homes
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Several people have been shot, including Renee Good
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a 37-year-old mother of three, who was killed by an ICE agent shooting
directly into her driver’s-side window. Another father told local
news that ICE threw flash-bangs and tear gas
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into his minivan containing his five children, which caused his
six-month-old baby to temporarily stop breathing and lose
consciousness.

According
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to residents
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the basic tactic seems to be ICE convoys driving around looking for
_any_ nonwhite person out by themselves, jumping out and dragging them
into a van, and then driving off.

It’s like a cross between a half-hearted military occupation and a
bunch of extremely racist gangsters hopped up on PCP and drain cleaner
whipping themselves into a murder frenzy. And now President Trump is,
as usual, escalating the threats. He said he is considering invoking
the Insurrection Act
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which allows the president to deploy the military and federalize the
National Guard in cases of insurrection, civil unrest, or rebellion.
It would only be the capstone of an outrageous, criminal assault on an
American city based entirely on lies.

Minneapolis residents have resisted, with considerable success. In
just a few days, they have set up an elaborate nonviolent neighborhood
defense
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network of people who watch for ICE patrols, send the word out when
they are spotted, and surround them with whistles and phones. That is
seriously impeding the ICE/CBP kidnapping efforts, which appear to be
quite poorly organized. During protests over Wednesday night, ICE
abandoned several vehicles
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full of documents and gear, including a challenge coin that looks
distinctly like a Nazi _Totenkopf_.

There is some important background to establish, because it reveals
how everything about this is pretextual. The whole thing was touched
off by some 23-year-old right-wing YouTuber named Nick Shirley. In a
video that went hyper-viral thanks to a coordinated conservative media
effort to boost it, he accused several Somali-run day cares of being
welfare scams because they didn’t have any children in them that he
could see, or they wouldn’t let him in to see the kids. This sparked
a classic right-wing online frenzy, and demands for persecution.

Most of Shirley’s specific accusations turned out to be nonsense. As
the _Minneapolis Star Tribune_ reported
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he visited one day care while it was closed, because it was for
parents working an evening shift. At another, journalists who called
ahead and identified themselves were allowed in where children were
indeed present. Any parent can tell you that day cares will not let
random masked men in—Shirley was accompanied by a posse that was not
shown on the video—and rightly so in this gun-ridden country.
Shirley himself is, shall we say, exceptionally slow on the uptake
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matter—that was all the excuse MAGA needed to send in the
stormtroopers.

There is some precedent here. Back in 2010, James O’Keefe got the
voting rights and community organizing group ACORN defunded—by an
overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, no less—with egregiously
dishonest sting videos falsely accusing
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staffers of being involved in drugs and prostitution.

Now, there was a welfare fraud conspiracy in the Minneapolis community
involving some Somali Americans mostly during COVID, but it has
already been investigated and prosecuted extensively
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under the Biden administration, and one of the ringleaders was a white
woman
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This is a scam-ridden country and these things happen; that’s why
Trump has so many fraudsters to pardon
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after they pay him a fat bribe
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In any case, there is no reason why immigration authorities should be
involved in this. ICE and CBP do not police benefit programs;
moreover, the overwhelming majority
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of Somali Americans are American citizens—58 percent natural-born,
and of the remainder, 87 percent are naturalized.

In sum: We have an utterly fraud-ridden president pretending to care
about a nonexistent scam, and then sending in a police force whose
responsibilities do not include fraud to somehow fix the problem that
doesn’t exist, who then harass and kidnap people who are not under
their jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Trump has done the exact same thing he
accused the Somali American community of doing: stealing welfare money
from children—except several orders of magnitude more of them—by
illegally impounding a whopping $10 billion in child care funding
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exclusively for blue states. (I should note that red states are if
anything much more prone to welfare fraud; Mississippi illegally
diverted a bunch of theirs
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It’s hard to guess what might happen if Trump invokes the
Insurrection Act. Legally, it is totally unjustifiable—the only
disorder in Minneapolis is being directly caused by the Trump
administration’s criminal invasion. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem
tacitly admitted this
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interview, threatening that “if anything doesn’t change with Gov.
Walz, I don’t anticipate the streets getting any safer or more
peaceful.” But we are clearly out beyond the boundaries of legal
niceties, and into a more brutal political realm.

What ICE is learning—at least to the extent that any of these
bestial freaks are capable of reason—is that violently suppressing
dissent is a tricky business. There are about half a million people in
Minneapolis, and 3.7 million in the metro area. Given sufficient
motivation, it is not that difficult to round up enough people to
outnumber any ICE patrol by 20- or 50-to-1. Three thousand people is a
lot of officers, but it is not nearly enough to militarily occupy a
city. And National Guard or U.S. Army troops might not be so willing
as ICE goons to beat or kill their own fellow citizens for no reason
other than Trump’s vindictive whims.

If Donald Trump wants to dominate those who oppose him, he might have
to pick up some body armor and do it himself. Otherwise, he has a
manpower problem.

_[RYAN COOPER is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author
of __How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest
Question in Politics_
[//www.amazon.com/How-Are-You-Going-That/dp/1250272343]_. He was
previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also
appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs.]_

_Read the original article at Prospect.org_
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_Used with the permission. © __The American Prospect_
[[link removed]]_, __Prospect.org, 2025_
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_Support the American Prospect_ [[link removed]]_._

_Click here_ [[link removed]]_ to support the Prospect's
brand of independent impact journalism._

 

* Minneapolis
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* Minnesota
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* DHS
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* ICE
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* Donald Trump
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* Immigration
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* Insurrection Act
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* Renee Nicole Good
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* Kristi Noem
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* Stephen Miller
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* policing
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* Race & Ethnicity
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* Somali immigrants
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* Somali workers
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* Civil Rights
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* Law & Justice
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