Citizens Trained to Break the Law
Professional Outside Agitators Responsible for Deaths
Citizens of Minneapolis, irresponsibly encouraged by their mayor, earlier this year participated in an anti-immigration-enforcement action called “ICE watching” that went far beyond politically protected protesting and resulted in two deaths. Professional outside agitators trained local citizens to break the law by encouraging them to interfere with federal officers conducting legal law enforcement arrests.
In a 2024 poll, 54% of Americans supported mass deportation of all illegal immigrants in the country. About 1.6 million have self-deported and over 500,000 have been deported by the federal government. Once those actions started, a mainstream media frenzy highlighting a few occurrences of ham-handed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests swayed public opinion against ICE activities.
During some arrests, ICE agents have been fired upon in Texas, dragged by vehicles in California, slammed to the ground in Omaha, and physically attacked in Los Angeles and Chicago. As a result, like local police officers who occasionally face similar risks, ICE agents are armed yet like local police officers, most of their interactions do not involve firearms.
Minneapolis became a flashpoint when a number of its citizens organized as “Defend the 612” (Minneapolis’ area code) and outside activists began training them using a “Simple Sabotage Field Manual” to actively interfere with ICE agents. The tragic result: two citizens were shot and killed. Both had been foolishly encouraged to insert themselves into ICE arrest activities where tensions were already high.
Whether force was justified in these incidents is the subject of controversy but in both cases, the citizens had no business inserting themselves into an active law enforcement activity.
An excellent but lengthy article titled “Inside Minneapolis’s ICE Watch” in the City Journal, prepared by reporters who inserted themselves into “Defend the 612,” describes in detail how the organization works using encrypted texting. The Wall Street Journal summarized the article as follows:
People seeking to interfere with officers enforcing federal law in Minneapolis are not merely expressing their opinions. They are going way beyond exercising their right to political speech.
In less than a month, two “ICE watchers” have been shot and killed by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis. On January 24, a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse. His death follows that of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was killed on January 7.
Both Pretti and Good participated in “ICE watching,” an anti-immigration-enforcement tactic that can involve tracking ICE agents, filming arrests, and alerting other activists of enforcement actions. While participants frame ICE watching as a “community safety” measure, these tactics often place untrained civilians in direct, high-stakes confrontation with armed federal agents.
In Minneapolis, one key organizer of these activities is “Defend the 612.” The group, the membership of which apparently included Renee Good, oversees a massive network of Signal chats dedicated to monitoring and protesting ICE activity. It has become the beating heart of the city’s resistance to federal immigration enforcement. (The group’s name refers to the Minneapolis area code.)
City Journal reviewed Defend the 612’s training, entered its Signal network, and traced its organizational support. Our reporting reveals that members and related officials have encouraged protesters to impede law enforcement; pushed civilians toward legally and physically risky confrontations; and helped mobilize a counterprotest that turned violent.
Ms. Buttons, who reports that Defend the 612 declined a request for comment, shares details on the group’s chats on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform:
Each group’s Signal description contains reference links that help Defend the 612 members better surveil federal immigration enforcement. Some chats link to instruction documents that train members how, for example, to follow suspected ICE officers’ vehicles. Others link to crowdsourced logs, which include a running database of more than 4,800 license plates of confirmed and suspected ICE vehicles; a log of deportation-related travel; and a list of nearly 70 hotels where ICE agents have been known to stay.
The City Journal reporter describes one of the chats:
… “Communications,” is dedicated to crafting an “external narrative-shaping strategy” for the ICE-watch movement. Members characterized their media work as “propaganda” and insisted on the need to “maintain control of your narratives.” To that end, participants discussed the need to condition their speech to journalists on retaining editorial control over how stories are written.
That would certainly explain a lot of the media accounts coming out of Minneapolis. Ms. Buttons has more:
In other Signal groups, members discuss how best to disrupt federal immigration enforcement… One participant described getting arrested as a tool to divert agents from “vulnerable community members,” and encouraged other participants “to be super annoying and waste” law enforcement’s “time and resources.”
Members repeatedly referenced the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” an activist handbook that members used to generate ways to impede ICE. Members discussed throwing urine at agents, praising one such incident as “mvp” behavior. A daily update account called “The Report Card” encouraged participants to “annoy” agents with constant noise. They view “noise making and interrupting their meals and bathroom breaks” as essential, noting these tactics “serve a critical role in draining their morale.”
These Signal networks have also functioned as an organizing hub for an aggressive counterprotest. In the days leading up to a demonstration by right-wing influencer Jake Lang in Minneapolis earlier this month, members in Defend the 612’s “Phillips and Powderhorn” chat circulated a post about a “defensive counteraction.” They posted an image of a hanging Klansman and tactical guidelines instructing members to mask up, wear goggles, and not film attendees. One accompanying graphic marked as “false” the statement, “Nonviolence is the only strategy.”
(City Journal’s pseudonymous account made the suggestion that the demonstrators take a nonviolent approach. An administrator removed our account from the group.)
… Following a violent clash that Saturday, group members circulated videos of Lang being dragged into a mob and struck over the head, gloating over the images as evidence that their counterprotest had been effective.
This cycle reveals the core strategy of Defend the 612’s leadership: using casualties as a catalyst for further escalation. Organizers continue to push volunteers into unpredictable scenes, ensuring continued confrontations between residents and federal agents, while the professional architects of the chaos remain shielded from the consequences.
The long arm of the law reached out in June to prosecute those in Minnesota whose actions resulted in the two deaths. Federal prosecutors have charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, accusing them of conspiring against the federal government through a range of actions intended to block arrests and deportations.
Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen said the defendants “violently opposed the enforcement of federal law” by setting up blockades around government buildings, throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles and “stalking” agents as they moved through Minneapolis. He said the defendants were part of two groups that he characterized as “antifa,” an umbrella term for a diffuse movement of militant left-wing activists.
Even in progressive Minnesota, voters understand the basic utility and wisdom of cooperation. In response to the question, “Should state/local authorities help with immigration enforcement?” a double-digit majority of Minnesotans, 50%-36%, responded in the affirmative.
Despite a deluge of demonization and anti-enforcement propaganda, a Cygnal national survey also illustrates strong public support for anti-illegal immigration policies. According to the polling memo: “73% say entering the United States without legal permission is breaking the law. Americans support deporting those here illegally by a nearly 2:1 margin, 61%-34%; 54% want ICE to enforce federal immigration laws and remove illegal immigrants; 58% oppose defunding ICE, including majorities of independents and swing voters.”
In a court ruling that declined to halt ICE operations in Minneapolis, a Biden-appointed judge noted that “based on the record before the Court, a factfinder could reasonably credit that [the administration’s] sanctuary policies require a greater presence of federal agents to achieve the federal government’s immigration enforcement objectives than in a jurisdiction that actively assists ICE.”
Bottom line: Trump’s immigration law enforcement is legal and is supported by strong majorities of the public including Minnesotans and this author. Those who oppose enforcing the law are being manipulated by moneyed interests to intentionally create violent incidents, hoping to generate animosity toward the Trump administration.