cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/18266
Federal immigration enforcement agents on Wednesday swarmed a high school in Minneapolis, where footage and photographs showed them handcuffing school staff members and firing chemical irritants at students.
According to a report from KSTP 5 Eyewitness News, the agents descended upon Roosevelt High School on Wednesday afternoon, mere hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good.
A witness who watched the raid described seeing administrators and staff trying to get the agents away from the building to stop them from apprehending students.
The witness also said that the agents began deploying pepper spray after some students started protesting against their presence on school property.
A Roosevelt High School official confirmed to MPR News that agents wearing US Border Patrol uniforms pepper sprayed students, while also firing pepper balls at them.
Video footage taken from the scene shows agents deploying chemical irritants at demonstrators.
An official from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis told MPR News that armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came onto school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people; they handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders. pic.twitter.com/171JUUfew8
— CAIN (@XTechPulse) January 8, 2026The school official also told MPR News that the agents handcuffed two staff members at the school, and they described getting into a physical confrontation with an agent as they were trying to tell them to leave school property.
"The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” the official said. "They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
Meanwhile near where they killed Renee Good ICE was terrorizing a high school — and now Minneapolis has canceled school for the week.
None of this is about safety. A lawless regime with no guardrails. pic.twitter.com/H8l2nXn2FQ
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 8, 2026In the wake of the raid on the high school, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that it would be canceling all classes for the rest of the week “out of an abundance of caution,” citing “safety concerns” for faculty and students.
Celia Mejia, a Minneapolis woman whose daughter attends the Green Central Elementary School in the southern part of the city, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she had to pick up her daughter on Wednesday after the school went on lockdown after federal immigration agents were spotted in the area.
“That was way too close to school to feel comfortable,” Mejia said.
Julia Haas, another local resident who picked up her child at the elementary school after it went into lockdown, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she was “very” frightened by the ordeal.
“Nobody should have to deal with this ever,” Haas emphasized.
The reasons for the raid on the high school were unclear, and the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KSTP Eyewitness 5 News’ or MPR News’ requests for comment.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
EDITED TO ADD: This is a 22-hour old account, whose only content is the above comment containing a misguided pastiche of current and historical points designed to produce an emotional response. This is exactly the kind of larper Americans need to be aware of.
Sometimes? No, always. The cost is ALWAYS blood. People have ALREADY died. It’s you who are naive.
I just posted the court order: BECAUSE Portland did not resist violently, the National Guard is no longer there.
Getting violent because someone is trying to get you to become violent is the most stupid thing you can do.
It’s not hard to run on rage. What’s infinitely more difficult is to suppress the rage until you know your enraged actions will have the maximum benefit. Right now, non-violence is having the maximum benefit.
It helps to have enough education to know that the last five minutes of world history are not the only ones that matter, and if you can’t stretch that far, tell me what got the British out of India after hundreds of years of brutal repression and subsequent uprisings.
History is NOT on your side. If you REALLY want to make a difference, then stop. Learn your enemy. Wait. Then act.
Hell, that’s what your enemy did. They built Cop City in Atlanta just for this time. You don’t have shit.
And son, we ALREADY know we have fascists on our streets. The only ones who don’t know are the ones sticking their fingers in their ears going la la la la la la doing everything in their power to avoid knowing.
You avoided the primary question - what’s the line them? It honestly doesn’t even really matter, since the whole premise of your post is that there is a line and that you eventually have to strike and use force. Our only disagreement is where that line actually is.
Besides, acting like Portland was some grand victory is just silly. OK - the national guard is out of Portland for the moment. They just moved on to their next target. They flood the zone and move fast so the legal system can’t keep up. The damage was already done and they just moved to sow chaos in a new location with a different militarized force. What a win.
Peaceful protests are an important tool to the fight, but these people only fear consequences. Physical, emotional, reputational or financial harm. It’s a multi-faceted fight, but that’s what it is - a fight. If they think they can best you through physical force alone, that’s what they will do. You can’t let them think that. You need a stick to respond in kind with.
Maybe you should read up on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association or the Indian National Army. They both played major roles in Indian independence. Ghandi is a great story, but guess who he had as a counter balance? The stick.
And that’s just a lie. The legal system IS keeping up. The National Guard is NOT being redeployed. Hell, the NG isn’t even in Menneapolis, though Gov. Walz has put it on standby as is his prerogative as governor.
Then you should go back and reread that story, because “the stick” was hundreds of years worth of the British coming down on Indians with absolute brutality, the Indians rising up again with massive brutality of their own, and then the British coming back across with escalations like Amritsar.
What got the British their asses handed to them after hundreds of years of this bloody back and forth was a line of non-violent protesters who simply went to the beach to make salt. Thousands of them. Who at the end of their march walked straight into billy clubs without ever raising a hand or a stick.
You literally do not know the history you to seek to (mis)represent here. Hundreds of years of what you propose did nothing; it only secured the British power more firmly than ever. And it’s not just India; we have some semblance of civil rights here because of Martin Luther King, Jr. doing the same thing.
The line of violence is not for you to propose to others. It is for you to choose for yourself, and stop trying to get others to bleed in your stead.
I mostly don’t disagree with you but it seems the executive branch has moved on from deploying the national guard to instigate violence and instead is just outright committing acts of violence on its own. Will the legal system keep up with that? -I don’t know for certain but I’d put a fiver on these agents never sitting opposite of a prosecutor in a courtroom.
You’re not wrong. That’s exactly what they are doing. But they are doing it out of desperation: if they get us to the midterms and states (all voting in the US is regulated by the states, not the feds) have elections, this administration becomes powerless and Trump is in the same danger he was in prior to regaining office, but now with a pissed off nation that wants him gone.
For myself, it’s too soon to tell whether this administration will succeed in overthrowing the legitimate government and substituting its own form of fascist authoritarianism. This is in progress; it is anything but complete. Plus, states have their own authority as well, and today, the Minnesota AG told the feds that the goon who shot Ms. Good can be prosecuted for murder by the state. So it may not be up to the feds after all. I guess we’ll see.
What a fantasy land you are living in.
Even if you were right about the legal system keeping up (you’re not), it is failing so hard is other ways, it doesn’t even matter. Do you remember Citizens United where the Supreme Court allowed endless and unchecked amounts of money to flood our political system accelerating us down this path of division? How about SC giving our president complete immunity to do whatever he wants in office? Or the Trump appointed judge that intentionally derailed his prosecutions so no one could hold him accountable? Or how about the SC justice that retired early so his son could get a cushy job in return for Trump being able to appoint another justice? That legal system? Yea, it’s functioning great. A real bulwark there.
Secondly, you really believe that was this one series of peaceful protests the ONLY and driving factor behind Indian independence? Not the fact that the British had a failing empire and needed funds to rebuild after WWII? How about the fact that they had their hands full in the middle east and China at the same time? Or that they no longer had the forces, resources or will to contunue to fight the armed resistance in the country? Chalking up a remarkably complex series of events and outcomes to a single factor shows how little you understand about the world.
No one is asking anyone to bleed for anyone. I just don’t have blinders on and can see what is coming. I also have a deep enough understanding of history to understand how freedom is obtained and maintained. Sorry that offends you, but it really seems like a personal problem. Have fun with that.
The difference here is that none of what you are writing about is currently relevant: successful non-violent protest is.
Instead of addressing that, and absolutely avoiding the actual court order I posted with all your larping might, you’re diving into the weeds of how we got here, like Citizen’s United has anything DIRECTLY to do with choosing as an individual to hold your ground, think it out, and choose your own arena in which to most effectively fight.
As to the rest, I think what I think because many more educated and reasoned individuals than yourself have already researched the strategy of non-violence in topping unwanted regimes. I don’t need a misguided larper to rewrite history for me; I’ve already studied it, and many better than yourself have offered studied, intelligent analyses of both positions.
There’s a reason non-violence works, and a reason why you keep posting in defense of violence, while accusing me of non-specifics even as you pointedly ignore your own.
If you wanna get out on the streets and fight ICE, no one is stopping you. But I note you’re not. You’re posting here to incite others to do it for you.
Comical edit. Can’t actually respond with substance, so you try to misstate the position you cannot rebut and undermine it will a silly ad hominem attack because I haven’t used a forum for as long as you. Classic.
Let’s be clear - I wish the world didn’t work the way it does, but you can’t argue with millenia of human history. Even your own examples of idealisn were so paper thin, they couldn’t stand 5 minutes of scrutiny. I would honestly love to live in a world where reason and intellect were sufficient to win the day. Unfortunately, whenever we start down that path, it always seems to get blown up by bad actors that would rather see the world burn than lose power. Burying your head in the sand about reality doesn’t help anyone.
Bad actors are in charge. They have no respect to our current system or the people in it, and they are actively trying to destroy it for their own personal gain. We can either let them, or we can do something about. If seeing and understanding the magnitude of our current situation makes me a “larper”, so be it. I’d rather be that than whatever you are, or are pretending to be.
Good luck to you out there. Sounds like you are going to need it.
I did respond with substance; you chose to reply to a different comment. You are the one without substance: all general urgings toward violence – “We can either let them, or we can do something about [it]” – but nothing specific. I referred to very specific points in history, and when and why they worked, while you blew right past that to be able to remain in your generalities.
But what I’d really like you to explain, which you cannot and never will, is how and why it is a winning measure to respond to provocation with violence when your violent response is exactly what they want, and will absolutely be used to cement their power further.
I just posted the court order that literally says the National Guard were posted to Portland, Oregon to quell existing violence. They got kicked out based on the fact there was no violence.
Your answer to this is to call others, not yourself, to unspecified violence.
So I’d say we’re not on the same team, regardless of what you write or how old your account (or you) are, because what you propose will only set cities on fire and cement this administration’s hold on power. As actual history shows.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re just writing because you already know this crew is drowning under the weight of their own unpopularity, and you are terrified they will get thrown out before they really get cemented in. Or like some others, you really do want to see American cities burn. Or like even others, you’re terrified because you left your regional and national security to the US for far too long and never took action to secure yourselves against the neighbor in your own backyard (Putin).
Whatever you’re writing to prove, you’ve failed. And yeah, your 22-hour old account is kind of a dead giveaway that this isn’t your battle to fight – or rather, to get others to fight for you.