Thousands rally against immigration enforcement in subzero Minnesota
temperatures
[January 24, 2026]
By GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO, SARAH RAZA and JACK BROOK
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Police arrested about 100 clergy demonstrating
against immigration enforcement at Minnesota's largest airport Friday,
and several thousand gathered in downtown Minneapolis despite Arctic
temperatures to protest the Trump administration's crackdown.
The protests are part of a broader movement against President Donald
Trump's increased immigration enforcement across the state, with labor
unions, progressive organizations and clergy urging Minnesotans to stay
away from work, school and even shops. The faith leaders gathered at the
airport to protest deportation flights and urge airlines to call for an
end to to what the Department of Homeland Security has called its
largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.
The clergy were issued misdemeanor citations of trespassing and failure
to comply with a peace officer and were then released, said Jeff Lea, a
Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman. They were arrested outside
the main terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport
because they went beyond the reach of their permit for demonstrating and
disrupted airline operations, he said.
Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church in St. Paul said police
ordered them to leave but she and others decided to stay and be arrested
to show support for migrants, including members of her congregation who
are afraid to leave their homes. She planned to go back to her church
after her brief detention to hold a prayer vigil.
“We cannot abide living under this federal occupation of Minnesota,”
Tollgaard said.
Protesters demand ICE leave Minnesota
The Rev. Elizabeth Barish Browne traveled from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to
participate in the rally in downtown Minneapolis, where the high
temperature was minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius)
despite a bright sun.
“What’s happening here is clearly immoral,” the Unitarian Universalist
minister said. “It’s definitely chilly, but the kind of ice that’s
dangerous to us is not the weather.”
Protesters have gathered daily in the Twin Cities since Jan. 7, when
37-year-old mother of three Renee Good was fatally shot by an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Federal law enforcement
officers have repeatedly squared off with community members and
activists who track their movements.
Sam Nelson said he skipped work so he could join the march. He said he’s
a former student of the Minneapolis high school where federal agents
detained someone after class earlier this month. That arrest led to
altercations between federal officers and bystanders.
“It’s my community,” Nelson said. “Like everyone else, I don’t want ICE
on our streets.”
Organizers said Friday morning that more than 700 businesses statewide
have closed in solidarity with the movement, from a bookstore in tiny
Grand Marais near the Canadian border to the landmark Guthrie Theater in
downtown Minneapolis.
“We’re achieving something historic,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible
Twin Cities, one of the more than 100 participating groups.
FBI agent resigns over Good investigation
An FBI supervisory agent in Minnesota has resigned over the Justice
Department’s handling of the investigation into Good's killing, two
people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The agent resigned
because she felt pressured to not investigate the shooting in a way she
felt the FBI would have ordinarily done, said the people, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss
personnel moves.
The FBI declined to comment.
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Protesters gather Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in downtown Minneapolis.
(AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner, meanwhile, posted Good's
initial autopsy report online, which classified her death as a
homicide and determined she died from “multiple gunshots wounds.”
A more detailed independent autopsy commissioned by Good’s family
said one bullet pierced the left side her head and exited on the
right side. This autopsy, released Wednesday through the Romanucci &
Blandin law firm, said bullets also struck her in the arm and
breast, although those injuries weren’t immediately
life-threatening.
Detention of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old
A 2-year-old was reunited with her mother Friday, a day after she
was detained with her father outside of their home in South
Minneapolis, lawyer Irina Vaynerman told The Associated Press.
Vaynerman said they had quickly challenged the family’s detention in
federal court. The petition states that the child, a citizen of
Ecuador, was brought to the U.S. as a newborn. The child and her
father, Elvis Tipan Echeverria, both have a pending asylum
application and neither are subject to final orders of removal.
A U.S. district judge on Thursday had barred the government from
transferring the toddler out of state, but she and her father were
on a commercial flight to Texas about 20 minutes later, according to
court filings. They were flown back Friday.
Agents arrested Tipan Echeverria during a “targeted enforcement
operation,” according to a DHS statement. DHS said the child’s
mother was in the area but refused to take the child.
Vaynerman rejected that explanation, saying Tipan Echeverria was
“not allowed” to bring his 2-year-old to her mother inside their
home.
DHS repeated its allegation Friday that the father of 5-year-old
Liam Ramos abandoned him during his arrest by immigration officers
in Columbia Heights on Tuesday, leading to the child being detained,
too.
Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Liam was detained
because his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “fled from the
scene.” The two are detained together at the Dilley Detention Center
in Texas, which is intended to hold families. McLaughlin said
officers tried to get Liam's mother to take him, but she refused to
accept custody.
The family’s attorney Marc Prokosch said he thinks the mother
refused to open the door to the ICE officers because she was afraid
she would be detained. Columbia Heights district superintendent Zena
Stenvik said Liam was “used as bait.”
Prokosch found nothing in state records to suggest Liam's father has
a criminal history.
On Friday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino sought to shift
the narrative away from Liam's detention by attacking the news media
for, in his view, insufficient coverage of children who have lost
parents to violence by people in the country illegally. After
briefly mentioning the 5-year-old during a news conference, he
talked about a mother of five who was killed in August 2023.
___
Associated Press journalists Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, and
Tiffany Stanley in Washington; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission,
Kansas; and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed.
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