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I am in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car in Minneapolis, four days after Renee Nicole Good was killed here. I’m riding with someone who was doing the same kind of work we think Good was doing when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot her. Right now, our work is much quieter. We’re driving in loose loops when a volunteer who is patrolling the streets as a pedestrian observer on the Signal call we’re listening to—a broad network of thousands of locals relaying up-to-the-moment intel on ICE activity—reports two vehicles near Karmel Mall, known locally as “Somali Mall.” Another volunteer fulfilling the role of dispatcher, also on the call, identifies them by make and model. Another observer cross-references the license plates against a running database. They’re confirmed as ICE vehicles, unmarked like they almost always are.

My guide for the day, who I’ll call C, sits up. “They’re going to come past us right here,” they say, accelerating toward the intersection.

Within seconds we spot them: two SUVs moving faster than the flow of traffic. Through their windows, I can see silhouettes of men with heavy Kevlar high on the neck, faces covered, sunglasses.

C begins calling out every turn, street, and direction the SUVs take—while laying on their car horn hard and continuously, like an alarm. The sound is constant and blunt. It could easily be mistaken for an expression of anger, but watching how others in the area—pedestrians, other drivers—react, it’s a signal: a warning to anyone within earshot that ICE is moving through the neighborhood. It turns what ICE hoped would be a discreet operation into a public event. One pedestrian we pass hears the horn, turns, and gives the ICE vehicles the finger.

The SUVs accelerate. We follow closely, C still honking, still relaying their movements. Then they turn onto a familiar street.

“This is my street,” C says. Their posture changes. They look at me. “Can you record this?”

At the next stop sign, the vehicles split. One SUV pauses, blocking our path, allowing the other to pull away, surging into the intersection, cutting ahead of an uninvolved civilian car, using it as a moving barrier. If C had chased through, we would have been hit broadside: “They have absolutely no respect for traffic laws.” That first SUV is gone.

“They sometimes travel in pairs,” C tells me. “You can’t follow both. They’ll break and try to shake anyone observing.”

The remaining ICE vehicle, a Wagoneer, continues through the block. C keeps honking, keeps calling turns. We circle again. “They’re letting me pass my house again,” they report into Signal.

Then: “They’re stopped in front of my house.”

The first thing I noticed when I got to Minneapolis last weekend was the new language. For example: The work C was doing has a name—“commuting”—a deliberately mundane term for pursuing, tailing, and deliberately irritating ICE agents moving through the city in unmarked cars.

As C scans windshields, front seats, and license plates, they tell me about a recent incident near their home. “Three blocks from my house, an unmarked vehicle with four agents in it roll up and just grab a guy off the sidewalk who was walking,” they said. “They violently shoved him into their car.” Their voice trembles as they describe the incident, one they managed to film, hoping that footage might be useful later. “They just snatched him.”

That verb—snatched—is another example of the new language. So is “abduction.” Both are meant to describe the force, speed, and chaos with which ICE is removing people from their city. People are taken before anyone nearby understands what’s happening.

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