Meet the Minneapolis Neighbors Standing Up to ICE by the Thousands |
A Minneapolis resident offers free whistles to cars driving past the Renée Good memorial site on January 14, 2026. Alex Kormann/ Minnesota Star Tribune/ZUMA
A new activist twist on neighborhood watch is taking shape in Minneapolis and other cities under occupation by federal immigration agents: ICE Watch.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel drive around these cities, they’re often tailed by people in the neighborhoods. The idea is to make sure witnesses are present for any immigration arrest, to catch incidents on video, and to protest—or at least get the detainee’s name.
These ICE watchers are passionate, determined, and just about everywhere—and ICE is getting frustrated. Trump administration officials have called the protesters domestic terrorists. But they say they’re just ordinary folks trying to help their neighbors.
I caught up with Andrew Fahlstrom, who helps lead Defend the 612, a hub for these volunteers. He estimates there are tens of thousands of them citywide. In the conversation below, edited for length and clarity, he shares how this massive movement formed, how ICE is responding (poorly), and how people in other cities can prepare for the next invasion.
“What we’ve noticed in Minneapolis,” he tells me, “is that having people outside, having people ready to respond, having people connected and communicating about ICE activity has kept so many people safe—more than we’ll ever know, more than we’ll ever be able to track.”
How did Defend the 612 come about?
I remember being on a call with immigrant rights organizations from LA and DC, and them saying that when ICE came to their cities, their hotlines were overwhelmed, like they could not take 10,000 calls a day, and it really came down to neighborhoods to respond. I was in South Minneapolis, in a neighborhood called Powderhorn, and this was before anything had happened here, but people had been watching things across the country and wanted to do something. So some neighbors and I did a whistle training—like 300 people came to the first, 200 to the second. It took us by surprise, how many people came out.
You live near where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020, right?
I’m within three blocks of George Floyd Square. During that time, we had created a neighborhood chat, like Signal messenger, with three blocks by three blocks’ worth of people, because there was a lot of activity—the Minneapolis Police Department was constantly trying to open up the street and causing clashes, and we needed to get organized. A lot of that infrastructure and those relationships—like, we would do block parties—continued since 2020. If the power goes out somewhere, you know about it. If a........