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Police arrested astir 100 clergy demonstrating against migration enforcement astatine Minnesota’s largest airdrome Friday (January 23, 2026), and thousands gathered successful downtown Minneapolis contempt Arctic temperatures to protestation the Trump administration’s crackdown.
The protests are portion of a broader question against President Donald Trump’s accrued migration enforcement crossed the state, with labour unions, progressive organisations and clergy urging Minnesotans to enactment distant from work, schoolhouse and adjacent shops. The religion leaders gathered astatine the airdrome to protestation deportation flights and impulse airlines to telephone for an extremity to to what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever migration enforcement operation.
The clergy were issued misdemeanor citations of trespassing and nonaccomplishment to comply with a bid serviceman and were past released, said Jeff Lea, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman. They were arrested extracurricular the main terminal astatine the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport due to the fact that they went beyond the scope of their licence for demonstrating and disrupted hose operations, helium said.
Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church successful St. Paul said constabulary ordered them to permission but she and others decided to enactment and beryllium arrested to amusement enactment for migrants, including members of her congregation who are acrophobic to permission their homes. She planned to spell backmost to her religion aft her little detention to clasp a supplication vigil.
“We cannot abide surviving nether this national concern of Minnesota,” Tollgaard said.
The Rev. Elizabeth Barish Browne traveled from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to enactment successful the rally successful downtown Minneapolis, wherever the precocious somesthesia was minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) contempt a agleam sun.
“What’s happening present is intelligibly immoral,” the Unitarian Universalist Minister said. “It’s decidedly chilly, but the benignant of crystal that’s unsafe to america is not the weather.”
Protesters person gathered regular successful the Twin Cities since January 7, erstwhile 37-year-old parent of 3 Renee Good was fatally changeable by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Federal instrumentality enforcement officers person repeatedly squared disconnected with assemblage members and activists who way their movements.
Sam Nelson said helium skipped enactment truthful helium could articulation the march. He said he’s a erstwhile pupil of the Minneapolis precocious schoolhouse wherever national agents detained idiosyncratic aft people earlier this month. That apprehension led to altercations betwixt national officers and bystanders.
“It’s my community,” Nelson said. “Like everyone else, I don’t privation ICE connected our streets.”
Organisers said Friday greeting (January 23, 2026) that much than 700 businesses statewide person closed successful solidarity with the movement, from a bookstore successful tiny Grand Marais adjacent the Canadian borderline to the landmark Guthrie Theater successful downtown Minneapolis.
“We’re achieving thing historic,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, 1 of the much than 100 participating groups.
A two-year-old was reunited with her parent connected Friday (January 23, 2026), a time aft she was detained with her begetter extracurricular of their location successful South Minneapolis, lawyer Irina Vaynerman told The Associated Press.
Vaynerman said they had rapidly challenged the family’s detention successful national court. The petition states that the child, a national of Ecuador, was brought to the U.S. arsenic a newborn. The kid and her father, Elvis Tipan Echeverria, some person a pending asylum exertion and neither are taxable to last orders of removal.
A U.S. territory justice connected Thursday (January 22, 2026) had barred the authorities from transferring the toddler retired of state, but she and her begetter were connected a commercialized formation to Texas astir 20 minutes later, according to tribunal filings. They were flown backmost Friday.
Agents arrested Tipan Echeverria during a targeted operation, according to a DHS connection said. DHS said the child’s parent was successful the country but refused to instrumentality the child.
Vaynerman rejected that explanation, saying Tipan Echeverria was “not allowed” to bring his 2-year-old to her parent wrong their home.
DHS repeated its allegation Friday (January 23, 2026) that the begetter of 5-year-old abandoned him during his apprehension by migration officers successful Columbia Heights connected Tuesday (January 22, 2026), starring to the kid being detained, too.
Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the kid was detained due to the fact that his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “fled from the scene.” The 2 are detained unneurotic astatine the Dilley Detention Centre successful Texas, which is intended to clasp families. McLaughlin said officers tried to get child's parent to instrumentality him, but she refused to judge custody.
The family’s lawyer Marc Prokosch said helium thinks the parent refused to unfastened the doorway to the ICE officers due to the fact that she was acrophobic she would beryllium detained. Columbia Heights territory superintendent Zena Stenvik said Liam was “used arsenic bait.”
Prokosch recovered thing successful authorities records to suggest Liam's begetter has a transgression history.
On Friday (January 23, 2026), Border Patrol commandant Gregory Bovino sought to displacement the communicative distant from the child’s detention by attacking the quality media for, successful his view, insufficient sum of children who person mislaid parents to unit by radical successful the state illegally. After concisely mentioning the 5-year-old during a quality conference, helium talked astir a parent of 5 who was killed successful August 2023.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner posted an archetypal autopsy study online for Good that classified her decease arsenic a homicide and determined she died from “multiple gunshots wounds."
A much elaborate autarkic autopsy commissioned by Good’s household said 1 slug pierced the near broadside her caput and exited connected the close side. This autopsy, released connected Wednesday (January 21, 2026) done the Romanucci & Blandin instrumentality firm, said bullets besides struck her successful the limb and breast, though those injuries weren’t instantly life-threatening.
Antonio Romanucci, an lawyer for the family, said successful a connection that the household is inactive awaiting the afloat study from the aesculapian examiner and “hope that they pass with Renee’s household and stock their study earlier releasing immoderate further accusation to the public.”
A spokesperson for the steadfast said determination were nary ceremonial plans to stock yet.
