Minneapolis residents wear passports to ward off ICE

Residents in the Minneapolis area are wearing their U.S. passports visibly as a protection against federal immigration agents, the report says, a practice that has grown in the weeks after a surge of arrests and stops in the Twin Cities. The article was published Jan. 31, 2026. In the past two months, federal immigration agents have arrested thousands in the Twin Cities and have detained citizens, asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented people, the report says.

Agents have also killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and have stopped people asking for identification or simply demanding, “Where were you born?” Members of Minnesota’s Hmong community described heightened fear. Joua Tsu Thao said he tapes his passport and driver’s license to the outside of his clothing; his family watched as ChongLy Scott Thao, a naturalized citizen, was dragged from his home on Jan.

18 and released hours later, the report says. Kaying Thao said her family’s pride as one of the state’s earliest Hmong families has dissipated. The article notes a legal context: a September 2025 decision by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh gave immigration agents increased discretion to detain anyone based on factors that include race and ethnicity, a practice opponents have called “Kavanaugh stops.” Kavanaugh wrote that people wrongly detained “may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S.

citizens.” State Senator Zaynab Mohamed and the mayor of St.

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