For years, the rhetoric from the activist Left has been that Immigration and Customs Enforcement represents some uniquely authoritarian force, routinely caricatured as modern-day secret police stopping people at random and demanding to see their papers. That framing has been repeated so often it has hardened into dogma. Yet events unfolding in Minneapolis suggest that the script has not merely flipped—it has been grotesquely inverted.
Video circulating from Minneapolis shows anti-ICE protesters establishing homemade checkpoints in public streets, complete with roadblocks fashioned from pallets and hand-painted signs declaring opposition to both ICE and the Minnesota State Police. Vehicles are stopped without legal authority. License plates are run. Drivers are interrogated. In one clip, protesters stop a Somali Uber driver and explain that they flagged him because his plate allegedly came back as ICE-related. The casualness with which this is done is striking, as though a self-appointed group of activists has simply assumed the powers of law enforcement without objection.
NEW: Leftists are OUTRAGED after a group of rioters got TEAR-GASSED by federal agents, despite having a 7-year-old human shield
If you bring your child to a riot, you should be arrested for FELONY CHILD ABUSE
Using your child as a shield for vioIent rioters is DEMONIC pic.twitter.com/OQytdJGbBQ
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 2, 2026
The question that immediately arises is not rhetorical, but foundational: how is this being allowed? Blocking public roadways, stopping vehicles, and impersonating traffic enforcement are not minor infractions. They are serious violations of the law, precisely because of the risks they pose. Yet the footage suggests a permissive environment in which activists feel comfortable acting as de facto authorities, confident that no meaningful intervention will occur.
The imagery is unsettling for another reason. Signs declaring areas hostile to state and federal law enforcement evoke uncomfortable memories of the CHAZ/CHOP experiment in Seattle, where activists attempted to carve out an “autonomous zone” free from U.S. law. That episode ended not in utopia, but in violence, chaos, and ultimately a $30 million judgment against the city after a teenager was killed. Minneapolis would be reckless to assume it is immune from similar consequences if it tolerates parallel behavior.
Submitted from south Minneapolis – Agitators have set up roadblocks and are checking people’s ID who try to pass through the area from 32nd to 34th and Cedar Ave.
This is absurd.
Contact @MayorFrey and @MplsPDChief and tell them to shut this down.… pic.twitter.com/nXJugdeMv8
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) February 1, 2026
There is also a bitter irony at work. The very activists who have spent years condemning border enforcement as immoral are now constructing their own border, complete with checkpoints and document checks. They are doing exactly what they claim to oppose: restricting movement, demanding identification, and deciding who is allowed to pass. The difference, apparently, is that they believe their cause sanctifies their actions.
Mayor Jacob Frey’s silence only compounds the problem. Cities cannot selectively enforce the rule of law without eroding it entirely. When activists are permitted to set up illegal roadblocks and police the public, it sends a clear message that authority is contingent on ideology. That is a dangerous precedent, and one that history suggests does not end peacefully.
Here is the left-wing activists checkpoint on Cedar Ave , stopping vehicles , checking ID’s and running license plates in their ‘database’ , we didn’t see any local law enforcement on scene , then I and my photojournalist @photoswitherik were assaulted for documenting their… pic.twitter.com/tCwb3dZy4P
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) February 2, 2026
