Native ICE patrols recall Indigenous activism's Minneapolis origins
- - Native ICE patrols recall Indigenous activism's Minneapolis origins
Marc Ramirez, USA TODAYJanuary 28, 2026 at 5:05 AM
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Crow Bellecourt recalls his father Clyde pushing him to embrace his Native American culture, taking him to powwows and sweat lodge ceremonies. Indigenous identity and its preservation were of great significance to Clyde Bellecourt, among the original founders of the American Indian Movement when it launched in Minneapolis nearly six decades ago.
Bellecourt is now executive director of Minneapolis’ Indigenous Protector Movement, which along with American Indian Movement chapters and the city’s Little Earth Protectors has been conducting community patrols to monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and protect Indigenous community members — one of several actions Indigenous groups are taking that recalls the American Indian Movement's origins in the city.
“We knew we had to do something,” he said.
Gregory Bovino speaks during a news conference at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal on Jan. 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minn. The news conference comes after 37-year-old legal observer Alex Pretti was fatally shot during a confrontation with federal agents. The Trump administration has sent a reported 3,000 federal agents into the area, with more on the way, as they make a push to arrest undocumented immigrants in the region.
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U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander at Large Gregory Bovino speaks during a news conference at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal on Jan. 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minn. The news conference comes after 37-year-old legal observer Alex Pretti was fatally shot during a confrontation with federal agents. The Trump administration has sent a reported 3,000 federal agents into the area, with more on the way, as they make a push to arrest undocumented immigrants in the region.
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1 / 22US Border Patrol Chief Bovino under fire after Minneapolis deaths
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commander at Large Gregory Bovino speaks during a news conference at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal on Jan. 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minn. The news conference comes after 37-year-old legal observer Alex Pretti was fatally shot during a confrontation with federal agents. The Trump administration has sent a reported 3,000 federal agents into the area, with more on the way, as they make a push to arrest undocumented immigrants in the region.
Bellecourt’s father’s legacy has been on his mind a lot lately. The 53-year-old member has helped staff a donation station set up for Indigenous and other legal observers of ICE activity in the city, where tensions exploded over the weekend with the fatal Jan. 24 shooting of nurse Alex Pretti by a U.S. Border Patrol agent as he attended a city protest.
It didn't just start with Pretti's killing. Native leaders and volunteers had previously established 24/7 patrols in response to fears spreading across the Twin Cities following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7, 2026.
The Indigenous Protector Movement is one of multiple Indigenous organizations operating community patrols; Bellecourt estimated between 80 and 100 Indigenous participants, including some representing AIM chapters in neighboring Wisconsin and South Dakota.
The groups are patrolling areas populated by Indigenous populations and organizations, mostly in South Minneapolis. Pow Wow Grounds, a coffeehouse on the city’s Franklin Avenue, has served as a community organizing hub and drop-off site for donations.
“It’s all about protecting our community and helping our people,” said Bellecourt, a member of the Bad River Band of Chippewa.
The patrols began as the federal presence intensified in Minneapolis, especially after the detention in early January of five Minneapolis-area Native men that Indigenous groups said had been racially profiled as undocumented immigrants.
“We knew that would happen,” Bellecourt said. “You have ICE agents coming in who can’t tell a Native person from someone south of the border.”
Grace Sontra volunteers at Native-owned coffee shop Pow Wow Grounds during a statewide pause in daily economic activity to protest the U.S. government's surge in immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 23, 2026. The coffee shop has acted as a resource hub coordinated by the Indigenous Protector Movement for donations and community care as ICE operations have escalated. REUTERS/Erica Dischino
According to the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, several of the men were moved to Minnesota’s Fort Snelling, a site Detroit-based Native American activist and historian Heather Bruegl notes served as a concentration camp for hundreds of Native women, children and elderly non-combatants sent there after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes,” said Bruegl, a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. “Groups like the American Indian Movement are now saying, we’ve got to look out for our own people and have more of a presence. It’s going back to when the group was founded, patrolling the streets again.”
Additionally, Indigenous organizations and tribes in states such as Michigan and Oklahoma have issued statements to members offering guidance about their rights as tribal members should they face ICE interaction, and on Jan. 24, the Oglala Lakota Nation voted to ban ICE from operating on the Pine Ridge reservation.
“The harm is still being done, but who’s doing it is different,” Bruegl said.
'I never thought I would have to wear my tribal ID'
The Indigenous Protector Movement has been conducting patrols through its Many Shields Warrior Society program, offering rides to community elders or young people on foot to ensure they safely reach their destination. Meanwhile, other volunteers drop off diapers to Native moms afraid to go to the store and provide soup and gasoline gift cards for legal observers.
Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers surround a vehicle during a traffic stop before leaving without detaining anyone in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., Jan. 5, 2026.
For some organization members, the fear has been felt firsthand: On January 9, Indigenous Protector Movement vice president Rachel Dionne-Thunder posted an Instagram video partially depicting an event she said happened that day as she observed ICE activity. Officers approached her vehicle and demanded she roll her window down, she said, threatening to break it when she did not comply.
The officers backed off and left after community patrol members quickly surrounded the vehicle, she said.
“This is how quickly things can turn,” Dionne-Thunder wrote. “This is how unsafe it is right now. And this is why no one should be out here alone.”
Mary LaGarde, executive director of the Minneapolis American Indian Center, described daily life as frightening. The center has temporarily shut down its Boys & Girls Club, changed nearly all of its in-person programming to daytime hours and provided transportation for elders who want to attend activities but don’t feel safe walking, she said.
“There’s an overall sense of uneasiness when you leave the house,” said LaGarde, a member of the White Earth Band of Chippewa. “It’s a really scary place to be. I never thought I would have to wear my tribal ID around my next in case I were to be pulled over by ICE for some reason.”
A detained woman is carried by federal agents after being pulled from her vehicle following an immigration raid that led to the detainment of two Hispanic youths and multiple observers, days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 13, 2026.
But that’s a move now suggested by the Indigenous Protector Movement and other Native organizations.
In recent weeks, tribal representatives have come to Minneapolis to provide tribal IDs to urban members unable to travel to reservation lands to procure them, including one who Bellecourt said drove in from nine hours away to provide 84 IDs for members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota.
Indigenous activism's Minneapolis link
Minneapolis is among the largest Native American urban centers in the U.S., dating back to its role as a major hub for the urban migration that followed the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, Bruegl said.
“The U.S. put relocation policies in place where they were encouraging Indigenous people to leave their reservations and go to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Denver,” Bruegl said. “They said they would help them find jobs but what ended up happening is they were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods with unemployment and discrimination.”
American Indian Movement co-founder Clyde Bellecourt, left, presses Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) on Native American issues at a forum on race and economic opportunity at Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Feb. 12, 2016. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
By the late 1960s, she said, resentment was also growing over broken U.S. treaty promises of sovereignty and land. In July 1968, according to the Minnesota Historical Society, about 200 Native Americans of various tribes gathered in Minneapolis to discuss action at a meeting organized by residents Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and George Mitchell, giving rise to the American Indian Movement.
“AIM was born out of the movement to protect human rights but it also brought national attention to what would evolve into the Land Back Movement,” Bruegl said.
A series of high-profile protests and actions highlighting those causes would follow, including the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz Island, a six-day occupation of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs office in 1972 and the dramatic 1973 takeover of the Wounded Knee community in South Dakota, among others.
When his father helped launch the American Indian Movement, Bellecourt said, Minneapolis’ Indigenous neighborhood centers had fallen into economic ruin. While Franklin Avenue is now a thriving home to art galleries, tribal offices and a cultural center, he said, it was a skid row of bars and liquor stores in the late 1960s.
“Police would come and Natives would get arrested,” he said. “AIM patrols would follow the cars to make sure they got to jail and not taken down to the river and beat up. There was police brutality.”
American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks (L) and Russell Means (C) attend a meeting on March 16, 1973, as about 200 American Indians occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, fighting for the rights of Indigenous people. The town of Wounded Knee, site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, was seized on February 27, 1973, by AIM followers, who staged a 71-day occupation of the area. Two Indians were killed and a US Marshall was seriously wounded.
In 2020, AIM community patrols sprang to life again in the community violence that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, helping to protect tribal property and people as protesters set dozens of structures ablaze throughout the city.
That renewed the community bonds that enabled members to quickly coalesce as ICE activities in the city made it necessary.
“I think I owe it to my community and my father and mother who did this kind of work in the 60s and 70s,” Bellecourt said. “My dad passed away four years ago and I know he’s watching over me. We didn’t think we’d be in this situation, but we are. We’re not falling in line. We’re not giving up.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Indigenous ICE activism recalls AIM's origins in Minneapolis
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