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Two masked men could be seen behind the tinted windows of the SUV. The vehicle, parked on a small residential street in Minneapolis-Saint Paul on Friday, January 16, belonged to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal immigration police known by its acronym ICE. Then the commotion began: despite the bitter cold and heavy, falling snow, neighbors came out of their homes, pointed the vehicle out to passersby, and shouted at the officers inside: “Get the hell out of here, you bunch of Nazis.” A woman parked her car across the street to block their exit for several minutes. “They’re targeting a family that lives in the neighborhood,” another neighbor said.

Word spread through the many messaging groups dedicated to monitoring the activities of ICE that have sprung up across Minnesota in recent days. More residents arrived, armed with whistles. Inside one of the vehicles, an agent took photos of those present. Another made an obscene gesture with his canister of tear gas. The standoff lasted two hours. The agents eventually left.

Such has been everyday life in Minneapolis and neighboring Saint Paul since December 2025, when the Twin Cities began living under Operation Metro Surge, the deployment of 2,000 federal immigration officers. Since the death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother shot dead at the wheel of her car by ICE officer Jonathan Ross on January 7, something new has been taking shape in the frozen air of Minnesota. Residents have been organizing, protesting, tracking the officers and resisting with whistles. Reporters from media across the country are there, driving around the streets, on the lookout for ongoing operations.

The video of Good’s death, which more than 80% of Americans have seen, proved to be a turning point. The public has not been convinced by the administration’s attempt to portray the mother as a “domestic terrorist” who allegedly tried to run over the officer with her car: 53% of people surveyed by YouGov believed the shooting was not justified, compared to 28% who approved of it.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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      21 hours ago

      Yes. I have a family member where I’ve shown them 4-5 angles and a frame by frame breakdown. They stopped saying she tried to run over the man, but they keep saying she deserved it and was asking for it.

      I genuinely hate them for it. I’m so goddamn ashamed of people like this.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        21 hours ago

        I am so sorry that you have family like this. I may be annoyed with my family a lot, but they’re at least reasonable people who see the sickness that is happening and are just as disgusted with it as we are. I literally cannot even imagine struggling with family who thought this was deserved somehow.

    • LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Those are very similar to the percentage of voters in the last few elections who said they would vote for Trump no matter what. 20 to 30 percent of America is beyond salvation.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        60 years of propaganda masquerading under the banner of legitimate News organizations will do that to a population.

          • tomiant@piefed.social
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            23 hours ago

            Republicans crying about news not being fair and balanced for right wing talking points is like christian fundamentalists crying that teaching the theory of evolution has an unfair edge over intelligent design.

        • Sarah Valentine@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          Being told that they can have their base desires without deep consideration, that the people from which they would take what they want aren’t really people, or are beneath consideration for various reasons, is a hell of a drug. It’s the kind of state in which pretty people get to live, offered to the ugly masses. Combine that with overlords who keep those masses in a state of struggling to survive, and you have an army ready to do as you command. It’s fucking insidious.

          • tomiant@piefed.social
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            23 hours ago

            Easier done in a faux democracy that only leaves voters two alternatives. That’s why throwing dirt works so well in American politics- you don’t have to have a solid political foundation if all it takes is to convince people that the other side are demons.

      • 4grams@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        There’s the 27% crazy factor:

        John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —

        Tyrone: 27%.

        John: … you said that immediately, and with some authority.

        Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        What’s ironic is these are the same people always yelling we don’t need gun control we need more mental health help for people, and yet these are the people who need mental health help and their guns taken from them because they’re a danger to themselves and others the most.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        If you look at eligible voters, it’s about 1/3 for Trump, 1/3 for Harris, and 1/3 not showing up… but with single digit percents moving those thirds up and down a hair to give Trump an edge.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          I’m talking about the 28% in the poll in the actual article.

          I agree it’s a depressingly high number, but 28% support for this bullshit specifically, it’s surprisingly good for this shithole country.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        …and I’m sure that same 30% would vote for him in 2028 given the chance. They literally have chosen him as their infallible God-Emperor even though he’s the most fallible motherfucker alive.

    • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      That’s not the right way to interpret these polls. Many people aren’t answering the question literally. They’re interpreting it to mean “Do you still approve of Trump’s deportation policy, despite everything?” and they’re saying yes to that. (It’s a reasonable interpretation.) People who really are happy about the killing do exist and they’re disproportionately loud online but they’re not 28% of the population.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        Nearly 1 out of every 3 people in the USA is a fucking psychopath.

        They’re interpreting it to mean “Do you still approve of Trump’s deportation policy, despite everything?” and they’re saying yes to that.

        Did he fucking stutter?

      • vividspecter@aussie.zone
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        2 days ago

        The central tenet of the policy is the mass deportation of brown people without due process. I don’t like throwing the word “psychopath” around for various reasons but any supporter of this policy is a massive piece of shit, including the murders or not.

        • cynar@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Psychopaths or Sociopaths inherently “dehumanise” everyone. It’s why they feel no compunction in setting up a mother of 2 to lose their job, to boost their quarterly profits.

          There are other ways to dehumanise people however. The American media machine has done an excellent job of it.

          It’s partly why the recent killing has triggered such a reaction. It’s outside the dehumanising bubble. That then had a ripple effect, akin to a rubber band snapping. It broke the trance a lot of people (of all political leanings) were caught in. It’s now a case of seeing how the ripple spreads.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          And/or dumb enough to not understand “due process” and therefore not value it. You know, that thing that has been central to our form of government for the last 250 years.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Lucifer (@LucifersTweetz):

            The worst people in the world couldn’t be the worst people in the world without the faith and support of the dumbest people in the world.

            1/14/2026 1:03 PM

    • Sarah Valentine@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      So far, society and technology have been advanced primarily by greed stemming from evolutionary drives gone haywire. Intellectualism and progressivism are anomalies that have struggled to survive in a world still dominated by senseless, brutal hegemony. We need to fight to keep our flame from going out, to preserve ourselves and our ideals until the rest of humanity catches up to, well, humanity.

  • kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I’m not shocked.

    Minnesotans have the highest voter turnout, have the second hours per capita of volunteers, has a rich history of immigration, and in general neighborhoods, churches, and other ‘third places’ are both welcoming and tight knit.

    Hell there was a massive “socialist” co-op movement here in the 70s and 80s that had a huge and lasting impression on our politics.

    Even our conservatives in the past tended to be the ‘libertarian’ type of conservatives, though of course the national circus has been having an influence since around 2015.

    But even to this day polls show that identity politics don’t play as well in Minnesota as they appear to on the national stage. People don’t care about what happens in your home (perhaps to a fault), but if you visibly contribute to the community even in a small way (shoveling snow for or with a neighbor is the very true trope), you become one of us.

    The massive protests following George Floyd’s death proved that Minnesota is a place where normal people will take real political action when they are pushed.

    All this in mind, I think ICE was always going to fail here. But the death of Renee Nicole Good has dumped gasoline onto the fire and is turning what would have been a quiet failure they would have just stopped talking about nationally into an explosive situation.

    I don’t know where this ends. I don’t want Minnesota to bleed any more then it already has, but I know we will stand firm.

  • homes@piefed.world
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    I wasn’t expecting that because they’re fucking idiots. To everyone else, it was perfectly obvious exactly what was going to happen.

    e voilà

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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    Did the 28% who approved of the shooting watch the videos???

    I guess we’ve found the basket of deplorables.

    • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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      There are edited videos that show him getting hit. These people think those are the real ones and the real ones are fake.

  • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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    So it took Good to be murdered for some muricans to wake up? Floyd wasn’t enough?

    • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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      Lots of Americans of all races protested George Floyd’s murder. As a result, the murderer was convicted and sent to prison.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
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        I believe the point is, that’s when we should have gotten serious about organization, unions, training, staying vigilant.

        • kwomp2@sh.itjust.works
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          22 hours ago

          In it’s core this is a “back in the days things were alright” fallacy. Everyone should have gotten serious about organization, unions, changing the social order to one beneficial for the people, staying vigilant… When Bush lied about Weapons of Mass destruction. When Reagan helped making the neoliberal project hegemonial. When anti-communist propaganda was ramped up.

          Things are getting more fucked up. Time to act. They were horribly fucked up before. Time to act :)

  • Horsecook@sh.itjust.works
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    ”I was at home that day. I heard the gunshots, the horns, I came outside, and I ran into someone who shouted at me: ‘She’s been murdered,’" recounted Letitia Meyer, who lives in the predominantly Latino neighborhood. “Since then, I’ve been coming here every day, and I’ve joined the ICE observer groups to defend our neighbors. ICE didn’t expect this, for us to be as organized as we are, but we’ve been through this before.” It was just a few blocks from here that George Floyd was killed by a police officer in 2020, a murder that sparked the largest anti-racist protest movement in the United States in decades.

    The entire point of what ICE is doing is to incite rioting in a Democrat-controlled city in a Democrat-controlled state, to manufacture a crisis to provide an excuse to expand Federal power. What ICE didn’t expect was how passive people are. Running around with rape whistles screaming “Fuck you” isn’t something that scares these thugs.

    • TheOneCurly@feddit.online
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      2 days ago

      So your take here is that it’s obvious bait but also everyone is being weak and ineffectual by not taking said bait?

      • Horsecook@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        It’s obvious bait, but ignoring the trap won’t cause the hunter to abandon the hunt.

        We’re far past the point of a nonviolent solution.

        • protist@mander.xyz
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          Realistically, what would violence against these ICE goons accomplish? I agree fully with the woman you quoted, it would give Trump exactly what he wants, a reason to escalate. It would also give conservative media talking points they don’t have right now. Right now, they’re at a loss, because ICE is repeatedly demonstrating aggression toward nonviolent protestors, and the general public is clearly perceiving that accurately.

          Civil disobedience is the way. And here we are on MLK Day weekend

        • Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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          While I agree with the sentiment, I do not believe it is my place to take peaceful protest away from people who have already lost so much. Armed, nonviolent presence would be a very good thing however.