The top spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security claims protesters are using the freezing conditions of Minneapolis to create icy conditions to hinder ICE agents during immigration raids—and says the tactic could be lethal.
Since DHS flooded the Minnesota city with thousands of federal agents, and with President Donald Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act against protesters, social media is awash with videos of angry masked men going head over heels.
On Thursday, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin—the main mouthpiece of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—claimed that protesters were dropping water to deliberately obstruct agents while out on their operations
When Fox News host Sean Hannity asked about the “acts of violence” being committed against them, McLauglin said: “Your viewers can see, uh, that that car was driving, uh, pouring ho- cold water on the ground so that it would freeze, uh, the ground in front of our federal law enforcement vehicles so that they would potentially slide, crash and potentially kill them.”
Skating over the fact that the only person who has been killed in the city since the operation started was unarmed mom Renee Nicole Good, 37—shot dead by an ICE agent as she drove away from a Jan 7. protest—McLaughlin added: “That is a federal crime that your viewers are seeing there.”
McLaughlin appeared to be referencing a video doing the rounds on social media that appears to show a blue SUV deliberately dripping water onto the road near an ICE facility in Minneapolis.
The weather in Minneapolis is around the freezing mark—about 32 F (0 C)—with flurries and snow, and temperatures often dip into the low 20s (minus 6 C). That has turned streets and sidewalks into slick sheets of ice, particularly in South Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE teams have been conducting traffic stops and raids.
McLaughlin made her comments as videos show ICE agents going head over heels on those same frozen streets—slipping on driveways, losing their footing while dragging protesters away, and skidding on iced-over roadways—have been widely mocked across social media, including by Minnesotans who say federal officers are out of their depth in the winter conditions.
Her allegations come against an increasingly explosive backdrop on the ground in Minnesota after the killing of Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, which the Trump administration blamed on Good, and has triggered nightly marches and street blockades outside ICE’s regional headquarters.
A second ICE-involved shooting in north Minneapolis on Wednesday, in which a Venezuelan man was wounded during a “targeted traffic stop,” has kept tensions sky-high and drawn in local, state, and federal investigators.
Trump, 79, responded on Thursday by threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act—a rarely used law that would allow him to deploy active-duty troops on Minnesota soil—if “corrupt politicians” in the state did not stop “professional agitators and insurrectionists” from “attacking the Patriots of I.C.E.”
Democratic leaders in the state have fired back. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used a televised address to urge residents to film “atrocities” committed by ICE officers and “carry your phone with you at all times” so that prosecutors will have evidence.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has condemned what he called “disgusting and intolerable” conduct by ICE, while simultaneously pleading with protesters not to take Trump’s “bait” by escalating confrontations on city streets.
McLaughlin has emerged as one of the key defenders of the crackdown. She previously argued that ICE remains in step with public opinion, pointing to polls that the department says show strong support for deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, reckons that the agency’s core problem is optics, not tactics: “I think we need to get better at messaging what we’re doing,” he said, blaming “lies” from other media outlets for the agency’s collapsing favorability amid images of tear gas, pepper balls, and gunfire on the streets of Minneapolis.
