I am no journalist, no reporter, and also not inclined to repackage the uncomplicated and readily evident facts of the last few weeks from my home here in Minneapolis, pretending there’s some fresh angle or hot take you haven’t been privy to. You can believe your eyes when you see the videos of ICE agents murdering American citizens, full stop.
What I can do, what I want to do, is communicate to people back in my birth state of Iowa what it has felt like and looked like to be a human being bearing witness to the violent occupation of our city by our own federal government. My hope is this piece does not become a warning to you of things to come in your hometown, but rather a call for understanding, a simple human witness bearing a question: When the bottom falls out of your sense of safety here in America, where will you turn for help?
Right now, even as Border Patrol head agent Greg Bovino has been reassigned to terrorize other, far-off communities, and Trump officials have toyed with the notion of de-escalation, the city of Minneapolis is still gripped in fear and violence. With hundreds of Minneapolis friends in my daily feed, Facebook has become a horrific, up-to-the-moment litany of unlawful ICE offenses, raids, aggressive encounters and cries for help. Just minutes ago, a friend witnessed six black ICE SUVs tear through the parking lot of an elementary school outside his living room window.
As much as this administration relies upon a furiously revolving news cycle to “flood the rink” and try to change the subject, please know that Minneapolis today is every bit as anxious and threatened as these last several days have proven.
On the morning of Jan. 24, I was at home preparing a list of songs for my record release concert that evening at a venue in south Minneapolis. After marching with roughly 50,000 of my neighbors in downtown the day before in one of the largest mass demonstrations in recent history, there was a sense that it might be safe to exhale, to gather, to remember our humanity via art and music.
It was not to be. I received a call at 9:30 a.m. from a friend saying he’d just heard several shots fired on Nicolet Avenue, just outside the music venue Icehouse. Like so many here in Minneapolis have had to do these last two weeks, we put all plans on hold and waited to find out how far things had slid from bad to worse.
By the time the literal fog of tear gas had cleared, the masked ICE agents who had committed and witnessed the murder had jumped in unmarked vans and sped away from both the crime scene and accountability, and news quickly surfaced that another law-abiding, peaceful American exercising their rights, Alex Pretti, had been murdered, executed even, in the streets of our city.
What can potentially look like a “complex” situation when overanalyzed on biased news sources whose main agenda is to steal and capture your attention has a human toll I can scarcely describe to you. Friends and neighbors living in abject fear. Mothers, fathers, teachers, nurses, good and decent American citizens altering their every daily behavior and choices to maneuver around violence and chaotic brutality. Parents afraid of being abducted while they pick up their children from school. Children being used as bait to gain entry to their parents’ houses.
I have friends who have delivered food to families who, while they are American citizens, are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being indiscriminately detained. Those same friends have told me stories of being photographed by ICE agents, then having those same agents show up at their homes hours later, parking outside in efforts of intimidation. There is a shuddering sense of no accountability, as heavily armed masked agents without badges, license plates or warrants run Minnesotans off streets and drag them out of cars and homes.
Cell phone videos are capturing it all in real time — but the crushing, punishing reality persists that even if any of these ICE criminals were to face the unlikely prospect of court and conviction, surely a pardon awaits them, same as the January 6 rioters. The basic mechanics of relying upon justice in any fair, objective manner are completely eroded here in Minneapolis, and our only hope is to witness and video these atrocities, knowing full well that if we didn’t, this administration would lie outright to protect their support from crumbling, as they’re already trying to do.
Please consider for a moment what Trump and the Department of Homeland Security is telling us we must do in this “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis:
- Stand back and watch while our neighbors are kidnapped, pulled out of vehicles and out of businesses, and thrown into unmarked vehicles
- Stand back and watch while armed and masked men go door to door in our neighborhoods with our children nearby, shooting nerve gas, pepper bullets, screaming threats and violence
- Stand back and watch while we see an ICE agent shoot and murder a mother and a ICU nurse, both U.S. citizens expressing their First Amendment rights and responding to a crisis that was brought to their doorstep
- Stand back and watch while Republicans who have preaching the right to bear arms for decades suddenly abandon their principles and blame the victim for legally carrying a firearm
- Stand back and watch while Trump and Stephen Miller manifest their racism as vengeance for a city which dares treat its immigrant community with dignity
I must make a plea to the decent, conscientious people who may have voted for Trump, who may have wanted U.S. immigration policy to change, who may have wanted to believe there was humanity at the root of these enforcement actions by the government. It is not too late for you to see this administration for what it is, and to change your mind. I’m here to tell you what happened in Minneapolis, while a tragedy, is not an accident; it’s the logical consequence of empowering the vindictiveness and racism of people like Stephen Miller, who want to assume America is as full of hatred as he is.
It’s no secret that Minnesota, more than any state in the Midwest, turns real, difficult decisions into humane policies to try and protect and nurture the lives of our children, our immigrants and our citizens. Don’t you believe for one second that this ICE operation was about “fraud” in the slightest. Ask yourself if you have ever seen an American president who has ever cared less about fraud, or committing it. What is under attack here is not just the people, but an ideology of compassion that most Americans used to aspire to.
Which brings me to a sidenote, otherwise known as the heart of the matter: In 2025, billionaires worldwide added a record-smashing $2.2 trillion to their collective wealth. In other words, the message is clear: don’t blame the mega-rich and their wealth hoarding for your family’s needless struggle, blame those who look different than you, those who are neediest and most vulnerable. The simple, cynical strategy all along has been to convince you that immigrants aren’t just the reason your dreams haven’t come true, but they’re also the reason you can’t afford health care, food, a home. It strikes at the heart of the American ideal from our inception — the aspiration to the tired, the poor, the sick and the suffering for shelter and safety.
To the farmers, the teachers, the church-goers and the workers of Iowa, I say: he never intended to help you at all. Donald J. Trump couldn’t care less about you if he tried, and he’s too busy building a golden ballroom to try. Boots in the streets and murdered protesters are the cost of doing business in his version of America, the one where might makes right. And once we lose our basic humanity and the capacity for empathy to the conman on the golden escalator, it’s impossible to say just how we might get it back.
David Huckfelt is a folk musician from Iowa based in Minneapolis.
