MINNEAPOLIS — Local and state police allowed rioters to block roads and attack a hotel during demonstrations against immigration enforcement.
The Daily Caller News Foundation saw protesters block streets with objects on Saturday and crowd a block outside a hotel on Sunday and vandalize it with little law enforcement response for hours. Federal officials have publicly criticized what they see as a lack of local help in quelling the unrest, which escalated after immigration agents fatally shot two activists accused of impeding their operations on Jan. 7 and Saturday. (RELATED: ‘WHERE IS THE LOCAL PD?’ Anti-ICE Rioters Violently Attack Minneapolis Hotel)
Protesters smashing windows and vandalizing a hotel here in St. Paul, local authorities have not arrived on the scene and it’s been chaotic for over an hour now. Just a lone officer on the scene at the moment @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/HySc0Ql38H
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) January 26, 2026
The Minnesota State Patrol (MSP) arrested three protesters on Friday at the Whipple Building in Minneapolis for alleged obstruction of legal process, unlawful assembly and public nuisance, an MSP spokesperson told the DCNF. They were released with citations. The agency also arrested one person on a riot charge in the area of 26th Street and Lyndale Avenue on Saturday.
The MSP did not report any other protest-related arrests in comments to the DCNF despite the barricades on Saturday and Sunday and the hotel riot. The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
The DCNF observed the crowd protesting at the hotel for more than two hours while blocking the road with debris. The MSP and DNR was about to “encircle the group for arrests,” but “federal agents arrived without communication and deployed chemical irritants, clearing the group,” the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) said in an X post.
“Where is the local PD?” an armed federal agent shouted while guarding the Minneapolis hotel and bleeding from his face and hands. The DCNF only saw one local police officer on scene in the hotel’s lobby.
A day prior, rioters used trash cans, dumpsters, chairs and other debris to form a barricade surrounding an intersection on Saturday night, creating a law-enforcement-free-zone reminiscient of Seattle, Washington’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) riot in 2020. Police were seen on video clearing the roads Sunday morning, journalist Brendan Gutenschwager reported.
TENSE moment last night as federal agents arrived on the scene in St.Paul after protesters attempted to enter a hotel where ICE agents were possibly staying.
Should local police take stronger action against rioters blocking streets in Minneapolis?Tear gas was deployed, which cleared out some of the crowd.
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 26, 2026
TENSE moment last night as federal agents arrived on the scene in St.Paul after protesters attempted to enter a hotel where ICE agents were possibly staying.
: A surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis has “heightened citywide policing demands, increased protest-related deployments, and subjected our members to extended tours of duty, multiple days off being cancelled, and multiple emergency recalls,” the MPD said in a Friday statement, echoing previous comments. The MPD force is down by about one-third from its peak amid a longstanding staffing crisis, the department said.
Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino criticized MPD’s response to protesters in a Thursday press conference, CBS News reported.
“Minneapolis Police Department’s been called on several situations that they have not responded,” Bovino told reporters. The MPD later claimed that it had no record of such a request from the Trump administration.
One Friday anti-deportation protest that attempted to block traffic at Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP) International Airport was dealt with swiftly, with around 100 arrests by the MSP Airport Police Department, an independent law enforcement agency.
President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act on Jan. 15 if Minnesotan officials refused to protect federal agents — a threat he also made during nationwide Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has his state’s National Guard on standby to assist, The Herald Times reported.
Trump said in a Monday Truth Social post that he and Walz had a “very good” phone call on how to work together on law enforcement operations in the North Star State.
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