{"id":196900,"date":"2026-01-14T15:41:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/immigration-agents-deploy-tear-gas-pepper-spray-in-minneapolis-as-confrontations-with-protesters-grow-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T15:41:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:41:57","slug":"immigration-agents-deploy-tear-gas-pepper-spray-in-minneapolis-as-confrontations-with-protesters-grow-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/immigration-agents-deploy-tear-gas-pepper-spray-in-minneapolis-as-confrontations-with-protesters-grow-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration agents deploy tear gas, pepper spray in Minneapolis as confrontations with protesters grow – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 From high school students to elected officials, residents in Minnesota are pushing back<\/a> against the growing deployment of federal immigration officers in their neighborhoods, leading to days of confrontations and protests.
Resident Neph Sudduth stopped to choke back tears as she witnessed immigration officers roaming around her neighborhood, just a few blocks from the site where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good last week, and clashing with protesters.
\u201cThey will hurt you for real! They will hurt you for real!\u201d she shouted at anti-ICE demonstrators, urging them to move away from the officers\u2019 vehicles. Just then, an immigration officer rolled down his window, extended his arm and sprayed a protester point-blank in the face with a chemical agent.
\u201cHow dare they come back to this neighborhood,\u201d Sudduth told NBC News. \u201cHow forgone you have to be morally to come back here and stand up and do that with your faces covered?\u201d
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that she planned to send more agents to Minnesota this week to quell protesters and continue to enforce immigration policies. President Donald Trump defended the Minnesota operation Tuesday, saying, \u201cWe have taken out killers, rapists and drug dealers, people from mental institutions that came in illegally.\u201d ICE has posted on social media about the arrests of people accused of sex crimes<\/a> and who they allege are in the country illegally<\/a>.
Cary Wang, a medic who is part of 50\/51, a nonpartisan grassroots group, provided medical help Tuesday to several people who were affected by chemical agents deployed by immigration officers.
\u201cI think it\u2019s part of their strategy to intimidate and show that they\u2019re immune to any type of repercussions,\u201d Wang said. \u201cThe fact that they\u2019re ramping up their enforcement officers \u2014 that they\u2019re bringing more here when they already know it\u2019s a volatile situation \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t seem that they\u2019re looking for things to cool down. It looks like they\u2019re actually trying to escalate things.\u201d
The highly charged confrontations between protesters and immigration enforcement have been captured in various clips on social media, including posts<\/a> showing agents asking people at an electric vehicle charging station if they are citizens and another in which protesters curse and scream as an agent appears to kneel on a man\u2019s neck<\/a> as officers arrest him.
The videos and images contribute to a picture of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement operations as they fan out across the country, triggering pushback from residents in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.
In Minneapolis on Tuesday, resistance to the presence of federal agents was represented by the smell of tear gas, which lingered in the air of a neighborhood <\/strong>following a clash between community members and immigration officers who said they were conducting an operation in the area.
Residents and witnesses told NBC News they came out with whistles to alert others about the operation and act as observers while others began protesting. That\u2019s when, they say, officers began deploying pepper spray and throwing tear gas canisters, which were still on the ground Tuesday afternoon.
Sam Luhmann, who saw the incident, said he spotted a large number of armed immigration officers in the area \u201cpounding on doors\u201d and arresting a few people.
Then, \u201cthey started tackling protesters\u201d and deployed what he believed to be tear gas and pepper balls, Luhmann told NBC News. \u201cIt seemed like a war.\u201d
Luhmann, 16, of Chicago<\/a>, drove to Minneapolis with his older brother after Good was fatally shot<\/a>. He said they wanted to help community members monitor immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis the same way they did when immigration officers were deployed to Chicago last year under \u201cOperation Midway Blitz.\u201d
Many of the clashes are taking place just blocks from where Good was killed.
Community observers and protesters gathered after immigration officers rear-ended his car, said Christian Molina, 40. Molina told NBC News officers were asking him whether he was in the country legally.
\u201cLuckily, they didn\u2019t hurt me or shoot at me. But what if they did?\u201d said Molina, a U.S. citizen and father of four. He added that he wasn\u2019t doing anything wrong when officers went after him.
\u201cThere\u2019s no reason for them to just look at you and try to just chase you.\u201d
DHS did not comment on the incident involving Molina.
The crowd that gathered around Molina was later hit with tear gas and pepper spray.
South of Minneapolis, in Richfield, Border Patrol agents stopped at a Target store Thursday and arrested two U.S. citizens, Democratic state Rep. Michael Howard said.
\u201cYesterday in Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both who are U.S. citizens. Madness,\u201d Howard wrote in a news release<\/a> Friday.
Angela Oberfoell, who witnessed the arrests of her co-workers at Target, told NBC News the experience was \u201ctraumatic.\u201d
Oberfoell also provided NBC News with a video she recorded of the incident. It shows workers in disbelief and customers confronting Bovino and other Border Patrol agents.
Another video<\/a> of the second employee arrested showed the moment Border Patrol agents followed the employee as he recorded the agents and yelled \u201cf— you\u201d before the agent tackled the employee to the ground at the store\u2019s entrance.
DHS said<\/a> of the arrest captured in that video, \u201cThis individual was arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.\u201d
Howard said that both of the Target workers have been released but that they \u201csustained injuries and untold trauma while their rights were trampled for no reason whatsoever.\u201d
\u201cWe continue to call on ICE to GET OUT of Minnesota,\u201d he added.
Officials in Minnesota sued the federal government <\/a>Monday to stop the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota.
Shaquille Brewster and Natasha Korecki reported from Minneapolis and Nicole Acevedo from New York.<\/em>
Shaquille Brewster is a political reporter for NBC News and MSNBC.
Natasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
Nicole Acevedo is a news reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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