Cold City, Hot Heart

Minneapolis is ready.

Minneapolis, Minnesota. January 22, 2026.

At least the bastards are cold. I can tell you that. Because I’m cold. And I’m wearing snow boots, thick socks, foot warmers, thermals, gloves, hand warmers, a sweatshirt, two coats, a face covering, and a hat. So I know damn well the ICE guys are cold. All the tactical gear on earth can’t overcome a cold heart.

The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building is a squat, bunker-like seven story concrete box out by the Minneapolis airport. It is the headquarters of the ICE and CBP invasion of the city, and is now both the real heart of the deportation machine here, and the greatest symbolic target of resistance to it. People go to Whipple every day to protest. The road leading into Whipple is now lined with concrete barriers topped with chain link fences. Protesters are confined to the opposite side of the street. Hennepin County Sheriff’s vehicles sit out there constantly to make sure that nobody gets on the wrong side of the barriers. Nevertheless, some enterprising individuals have managed to spray paint “FUCK ICE” and “RIP RENEE GOOD” along the street side of the concrete slabs. On the “EMPLOYEES ONLY” sign at the building’s parking lot, someone has crossed out “EMPLOYEES” and written “PIGS.”

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The protest area at Whipple is now situated so that the protesters stare directly into every SUV carrying ICE agents as it enters or exits the headquarters. The agents, most of them smirking men with shades and buzz cuts, film the protesters with their phones as they drive by. The protesters film them back. And they yell at them: “Pussy!” “Maricon!” “Your mama smells like rotten onions!”

Some offer advice: “Get a different job!” “Be a better person!” All they get in return are the smirks, as the cars full of burly men in green uniforms wheel out to go and kidnap the city’s residents.

Pressed against the chain link fence in a long hooded coat was a grandmother named Cindy. She had made a sign on bright green posterboard that read “The 1st and 4th Amendment Are Not Suggestions.” The sign was attached to a long stick and she slid it through a gap in the fence so that it reached out into the road when the agents drove by. She lives in Wisconsin. She had been driving into Minneapolis to stand in that spot every day for a week. “I do watch my grandson in the city,” she said, “but even if I wasn’t watching him, I would still come.”

She is just a normal person who feels compelled to do something. “What’s happening is not okay,” she said. After I left, she was still there.

Thursday in Minneapolis is the coldest day I have ever experienced in my life. On my way to Whipple on the light rail I unwisely decided to hop off at the Franklin stop and grab a cup of coffee. At the bottom of the staircase, on the sidewalk of a busy street, was an elderly woman in a wheelchair, sitting in front of an elevator that didn’t work.

“Can you push me to the corner?” she asked. “I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes. I don’t know where my son is.” She seemed ready to cry, but still spoke in a tone that would suggest that she would never want to impose upon you. I almost walked on by because she was so unassuming. She had no gloves on. There was nobody else on the street. It was seven degrees outside and falling. It occurred to me that she might, realistically, die.

I pushed her to the corner. Her name was Connie. She was trying to get to a health clinic located two blocks further up a hill. The sidewalk was covered in snow. “Just push me in the street!” she pleaded. The street in question was a highway off-ramp. I had visions of us both being obliterated by oncoming traffic. Instead I turned her chair backwards and dragged it through the snow that way because the wheels would not turn if it was going forward.

Halfway up the hill was a tiny enclosure made of two pieces of plywood with a dirty blanket on top and some purloined couch cushions on the ground. Inside was someone living their own struggle. They had built a fire on the sidewalk and there were several logs still smoldering. I kicked the logs to the side and gingerly maneuvered the wheelchair through the ashes. “I’ve been trying to get an electric wheelchair,” Connie said, as if to apologize.

We made it to the clinic and they took her in and gave her a cup of coffee and then everyone sort of went on their way as if things were normal. The whole thing seemed preposterous and I wanted to say “Can you fucking believe this shit?” to somebody, but there was nobody out there to say it to. Imagine being poor and having no health insurance so you have to go to the clinic and you have no car so you have to take public transportation and the elevator is out and you have no cell phone and you can’t roll your wheelchair up the hill because a homeless person is snowed in on the sidewalk so you just sit there and freeze to death. Right there in the middle of Minneapolis. Meanwhile the government is telling us too many people want to come here. What a country.

Thursday night, I went to a union-led training session for people volunteering to be marshals at tomorrow’s events. A hundred or so of us piled into the pews at a Lutheran church and the trainers talked about de-escalation tactics as a pipe organ loomed behind them. A lot of things they told us would be good things for me to try to apply to my life in general. “People are filling in where they can, give each other and yourself grace,” a bullet point read. They talked about keeping everyone safe and calm, about focusing on the cause, about listening to people who were acting out and making an effort to hear them and not be antagonistic. I don’t go to therapy. I need to take these things to heart.

“Why don’t we act like cops?” the trainer asked. There was a pause in the room.

“Because we don’t like cops,” a voice in the crowd answered. Close enough.

People on the left are always pining for a general strike. Tomorrow in Minneapolis we will see the closest thing that we have seen in a long time. This is a city full of activists and strong labor unions and, generally speaking, one of the most organized cities you will find anywhere in America. That characteristic, combined with the utter grotesqueness of the racist ICE assault on the city, has inspired the people of Minneapolis to plan a day of action which just may go down in history. There are many good reporters in this city who have documented the causes and the planning and the goals of the movement that has come together to build something that may, may, may be unprecedented. You should read their work. I am only here to bear witness. If the general strike goes down, it would be a shame to miss it.

For weeks now it has just been one atrocity after another in Minneapolis. Ugly slurs about Somalis and kidnappings across the city and constant tear gassing and on and on. Just in the past day they took a five-year-old boy into custody, and arrested a school board member and two other activists for protesting at a church led by a pastor who also works for ICE. JD Vance came here today and pontificated in his particular smug way. “We have so many people here that we do not want to have here. I do not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis. I mean, good lord, it’s really, really friggin cold outside. But they’re here not even to enforce immigration laws, but to protect the people from the rioters.”

Unfortunately, the thugs I sent to kidnap you have provoked you into anger that has forced me to send even more thugs. Why do you make me hurt you like this?

It will be -15 degrees in Minneapolis tomorrow. The people are going to shut down the city because they are sick of injustice. Let’s watch and admire them and walk beside them. If they can do it here, you can do it too. It’s warmer where you are.

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Also

I will be out in Minneapolis tomorrow. Then I will write another piece, so stay tuned. [Update: Here it is.] If you are close to Minneapolis, come out tomorrow. If you aren’t, you can find good places to donate here. My reporting is supported by readers like you. If you’d like to help this site keep going, you can donate to our reporting fund, and you can also become a paid subscriber. Thank you for reading. See you in the streets.