Video still of ICE agents and Minneapolis residents on Park Avenue (January 13, 2026) | Emily Condon
On Tuesday morning, January 13, I was driving home after dropping my 9-year-old son off at school. There were ICE vehicles everywhere, I was surrounded by them on Park Ave.
After a block or two of this, I parked and got out of my car. I saw that there were many ICE agents around me, and that some were knocking on the door of an apartment.
They started running around the building, as a crowd of us started to gather. People were there very upset and asking the ICE agents if they had judicial warrants.
They refused to engage with the many Minneapolis residents who were asking for their jurisdiction and whether they had they legal right to take people away.
Then some agents stumbled out with two boys, both looking to be in their teens or very early twenties. One was only in a T-shirt and shorts, despite the cold. The agents showed no paperwork or anything of any kind to demonstrate the legitimacy of what they were doing.
Heavily armed agents marched these kids out in handcuffs and I shouted, “Shame on you,” and “We don’t want you here,” and other people shouted other things, mostly chanting “ICE out.” Everyone I saw was peaceful, other than a few of the ICE agents.
Everyone was very emotional and upset.
And then they started pepper-spraying people. One agent ran down a small embankment and grabbed and pushed a guy for no clear reason. I turned my face to avoid the pepper spray and saw that other agents had their knees on a brown-skinned man face down on the ground, and they were tying his hands together.
Some agents started pushing some of us in the crowd. They chased one white man across the street.
We yelled, “Shame on you.”
A bunch of masked men in the street told a woman in a car to turn, yelling at her to move it right now, her car was surrounded by ten or so agents with huge guns who were pounding on the car windows. She began to turn, but there was another car facing her, and she was trying to avoid sideswiping it.
She was trying not to hit that car or any of the dozens of people and officers who were in the street surrounding her car.
I turned back to see one of the ICE agents shatter the passenger-side window of the car attempting to turn. Then a group of agents rushed to the driver side door, yanked it open, and dragged the driver out of her car, carrying her by all fours.
She was screaming, as were all of us around her.
I walked a few feet to see where there taking her and got distracted because in from of me another group of masked men were carrying an old, white-haired man who was covered in mud from the ground, they stuffed him into an ICE vehicle.
We yelled more, and people blew whistles and dozens of cars had stopped and were honking their horns, and it felt so helpful to know they were there, they were seeing this and letting everybody know, “THIS IS HAPPENING,” and it felt like the perfect articulation, the whistles and the horns, that “THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO HELP US!!!”
Every resident on that corner knew this was wrong, I honestly believe even some of the ICE agents were feeling that way.
Then for no clear reason, some agents threw a bunch of flash-bangs, and teargas filled the air. The gas burned my eyes and nose and throat and face, it burned a little, and then it burned A LOT.
I took off my glasses and tears streamed down my face; I doubled over because I couldn’t see, and I stuck a fistful of snow in my eyes. Someone in the crowd grabbed my hand, and another bystander wearing brown boots and corduroys guided me carefully away from the gas, navigating the slush on the sidewalk.
The two of them wore gas masks, and then another guy with a bandana around his face, whose name I think was Ryan, indicated that his house was right there, and that we should all come inside.
The person who’d first taken my hand found it again and warned me to be careful of the slippery stairs as the four of us stumbled up onto a porch, and then through the front door. Ryan apologized that “the house is a little messy,” coughing, and pointed to the bathroom.
A woman whose name I didn’t catch told me to lean over the sink, saying, “It works better if you have someone else do it,” and then she poured some water from a plastic drinking bottle and gently reminded me to try to blink. Ryan brought me a glass of water from the kitchen, and a big gorgeous sweetie pie of a dog ran in, and I asked her name and he said it was Hazelnut, and that she’s very friendly but that she was upset by the sound of the flash-bangs.
I petted her for a minute, and they asked me if I could get to my car safely, and I said, “Well, a minute ago it was surrounded by ICE agents with machine guns.” I assured them I’d be safe and waited until the ICE agents were gone, petting Hazelnut to calm myself down.
When I walked back to my car, there were still clouds of toxic smoke hanging in the air.
When I got home, I accepted a hug from my husband, got a seltzer to drink, and then used my phone to send a text saying I’d be ten minutes late for an appointment I’d previously scheduled.
I went about the rest of my day—I ate lunch, ran a couple of errands, and drove back over to school. I picked up my son, handed him a fruit rollup and some popcorn, and drove across town to his guitar lesson.
As I write this, I’m dead tired, and there is so much coming at us, and I can barely keep my eyes open because we’re getting no sleep and because my energy is also going into trying to help my neighbors and keeping sense of normalcy for my kiddo and feeding him and making sure his shoes are packed for school today, so he’s not stuck in his boots for gym class again while our government attacks our city.
Just holding it together isn’t easy right now, and we’re the very, very lucky ones. Forgive any rough spots in this text, I’m just trying to live and keep it calm for kids and ourselves, and also to let everyone out there what’s happening here on the ground in Minneapolis. We are being attacked by a masked, heavily armed army, and it’s not quite clear who can stop them.
—Posted on Facebook on January 15, 2026
