A Minneapolis native who visited the protest site near the ICE shooting just gave one of the most clear-eyed, unsettling accounts of what’s actually happening on the ground — and why she believes this tragedy was entirely preventable

A Minneapolis native who visited the protest site near the ICE shooting just gave one of the most clear-eyed, unsettling accounts of what’s actually happening on the ground — and why she believes this tragedy was entirely preventable.

“I’m a Minneapolis native, and I just left the protest site from where the ICE shooting incident occurred yesterday, and I want to give you my two thoughts because I feel like nobody in mainstream media is covering this correctly. The left and right see this incident very differently: the right believes that she was trying to ram the officer and injure him, the left believes that she was just innocently trying to get away. There’s no way to know for sure what she was trying to do here. What we do know is that within, you know, a little over 24 hours, there’s a very well-coordinated effort to get a protest going here in Minneapolis. That began within hours of the incident. Now, Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are kind of egging it on, in my opinion, saying, “ICE, get the F out of here.” Walz is invoking, calling this a civil war, calling the ICE officer a rogue officer, and saying that National Guard are going to come in and almost get ICE out of here, which does sound like a civil war.

But to me, when I visited the protest site, this is what was very apparent to me: protesters are blockading the streets so that normal drivers cannot drive down that road. They’ve blocked a couple blocks off. This is not police putting in barricades, this is not any type of law enforcement doing that, National Guard, this is protesters. Where I was standing, I was standing with media, and the protesters were screaming at all of us in media, telling us that we are the problem and telling us what angles people were allowed to film at and telling us not to film at all. And what’s even more absurd about that is that media was paying attention, but it was kind of scary. It’s scary to be yelled at like that.

There were also people wearing fluorescent vests directing traffic. Again, these are not, like, protester—maybe some of them are protesters. These are just random passersby, and they are being barked orders at by people who look like they’re official. They’re wearing kind of official vests, telling them where to go. Once they cleared enough cars, they brought in this big van, and this van had supplies in it that they were unloading. And these protesters are not letting anybody not affiliated with the movement go closer towards the scene. In my opinion, I think it’ll get pretty violent either tonight or tomorrow, or both. If you look back at the 2020 George Floyd riots, it was the second and third nights that progressively got worse and spread throughout the city. If I had to guess, that’s going to happen now too, although tomorrow will be colder, so maybe not.

One more thing: a lot of the protesters are dressed in camo, and they have bulletproof vests on. So it seems like they’re gearing up for a real fight. Bothering me about this, though, and what nobody is covering is that the police let protesters get away with this type of behavior in Minnesota. That is ultimately, in my opinion, what cost this woman her life. Ten years ago, I remember talking to police officers who told me that they’ve basically been given a stand down order, that they just let the protesters do whatever they want to do when something like this happens. So that woman, when she drove away yesterday, probably thought the police would let her get away with it. ICE doesn’t follow those same orders. ICE doesn’t give the stand down orders. The reason I feel like this is so tragic is because this is entirely preventable. If Minneapolis police did not let left-wing activists get away with whatever they want to do—block off city blocks, shut down highways—for the last ten years, I’m sure yesterday’s outcome would have been different. It’s really sad for my city that it’s like this.”