by Stephen Prager | Jan 14, 2026 | Article, ICE, Minneapolis, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 13, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents deployed to Minnesota are pulling many nonwhite residents aside and asking them to prove their citizenship, according to several reports and multiple videos posted to social media this week amid the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to Minneapolis.
There is no federal law requiring US citizens to carry proof of their citizenship, and immigration agents are barred from carrying out indiscriminate searches unless they have reasonable suspicion to believe that someone is in the country without authorization.
And yet, one video, posted on Sunday by a Somali resident of Minneapolis, a US citizen named Nimco Omar, shows a group of agents accosting her and asking her to show her identification as part of what they said was a “citizen check.”
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Omar said she was on a walk when masked agents who “looked like soldiers” approached her and began questioning her.
The video shows one of the agents asking Omar, “Do you have an ID on you, ma’am?”
She replied: “I don’t need an ID to walk around in my city. This is my city.”
“OK, do you have some ID, then, please?” the officer asked. “If not, we’re going to put you in the vehicle, and we’re going to ID you.”
Omar responded: “I am a US citizen. I don’t need to carry around an ID in my home. This is my home.”
After being repeatedly asked, “Where were you born?” Omar replied simply, “Minneapolis is my home.”
The agent then told her: “We’re doing an immigration check. We’re doing a
by Amy Goodman | Jan 14, 2026 | Black Lives Matter, ICE, Interview, Keith Porter, LAPD, Los Angeles, Shooting
Activists in Los Angeles are demanding justice for Keith Porter Jr., an African American 43-year-old father of two, who was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve. His family is demanding transparency in the investigation into his killing. “When he walked in, he brought joy,” says Porter’s cousin Jsané Tyler. “He always had a laugh, a joke, a smile.
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by Holly Krig | Jan 14, 2026 | Abolition, ICE, Op-Ed, Policing, Prisons, Renee Nicole Good
She could have been me. That was my first thought when I learned that Renee Nicole Good — a 37-year-old mother, poet, and community advocate — had been shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. As a mother, an abolitionist organizer, and an artist, I felt that familiar twitching and burning, the despairing rage pooling under my skin, looking for an outlet.
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by Nicole Foy | Jan 13, 2026 | Border Patrol, CBP, choke hold, DHS, ICE, mass deportations, News, Police Brutality, Renee Good
Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns. An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out.
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by Theia Chatelle | Jan 13, 2026 | Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Donald Trump, George Floyd, George Floyd Protests, ICE, ICE Raids, immigration, Jacob Frey, Kristi Noem, Minneapolis, Minnesota, News, Omar Fateh, Policing, Protests, Renee Nicole Good, Tim Walz, Trump Administration
Minneapolis, Minnesota — Tear gas filled the air outside the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on January 9 as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers led two demonstrators away in handcuffs. For hours on Friday, caravans of ICE vehicles passed in front of the pop-up protests, carrying immigrants to be processed for deportation. Amid a mass influx of federal immigration agents to…
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by Gloria Rebecca Gomez | Jan 12, 2026 | Arizona, GOP, ICE, immigration, News, Protests, Renee Nicole Good
Despite public scrutiny over federal immigration agents’ use of force following the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Republicans in Arizona are pushing to criminalize protestors for “obstructing” an arrest. Top Republicans marked the start of the new legislative session with the announcement during an early morning news conference, brandishing bright red posters with “We support ICE”…
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