As ICE tactics draw Minneapolis protests, people in greater Minnesota offer nuanced views
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Kay’s Kitchen has served up popular breakfast fare — eggs, pancakes, hash browns and toast — in the small city of St. Joseph for more than half a century. Customers range from retirees and farmers to students and faculty from the two nearby colleges, the college of St. Benedict and St. John’s University.
The clientele skews conservative in Stearns County, where the majority of residents tend to vote overwhelmingly for Republicans. But two weeks after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis — and with no end in sight to the supercharged federal immigration actions in Minnesota, nor the intensifying protests against them — opinions here are expressed in shades of gray, not Red and Blue talking points.
Take Jim Curtis, a retired heavy equipment operator from St. Cloud who believes ICE’s enforcement has gotten out of hand. “They come up and they grab them and they rip them right out of their vehicles,” he said.
But at the same time, he believes protesters have also gone overboard by “taunting” ICE agents. “It’s alright to protest, but not the way they’re doing it,” said Curtis.
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That schism was a common refrain heard from many people outside the Twin Cities who spoke to MPR News. Many feel protesters have gone too far. But so has ICE, they say. One breakfast diner at Kay’s said agents were acting like “storm troopers.”
“What they’re doing in Minneapolis is horrible,” said Gene Kiffmeyer, a retiree from nearby Sartell.
“The methods they’re using are atrocious,” Kiffmeyer continued. “Finding the criminals and taking them out is fine, but do it the right way. Get a warrant, go arrest individuals. Don’t just pull people off the street.”
Kiffmeyer calls the fatal shooting of Renee Macklin Good “totally unwarranted.”
Darlene Kiffmeyer, Gene’s wife, said she supports deporting immigrants with criminal records. But she also believes activists should heed messages from Gov. Tim Walz and protest peacefully.
“I think they’re asking for a lot of the trouble they’re getting, by the way they’re acting,” she said.
At a nearby table, Bill Schepers echoes that sentiment. If people are here illegally, he says, they need to leave. Schepers is also from Sartell, who recently retired from a lifetime of work at a paper mill.
“I’m a rule guy. I follow the rules,” Schepers said. He conceded he doesn’t like how ICE is doing things, but says they have a job to do. And protesters should stay out of their way.
“And if you’re down there, in their face, harassing them, there’s gonna be trouble. I don’t want to see anyone get shot, like that gal that got shot,” Schepers said. But he says Good didn’t help the situation by partially blocking the ICE agents’ path on the road.
Among people in greater Minnesota who spoke to MPR News, there was broad support for detaining immigrants who are in the country without legal documentation, especially those with criminal records. But people also expressed strong support for immigrants in Minnesota who follow the rules.
Anita Schwinghammer, a retired dairy farmer from Avon, says there are important jobs that only immigrants are willing to do.
“What happened to the middle ground?” she asks. “There is no compromise nowadays at all. You’re either a Trumper or a Democrat. And they don’t talk to each other.”
Some fear that heated political rhetoric overshadows the important contributions immigrants make to the state.
“The concern I have is that our immigrants who are positive in southwest Minnesota are getting painted with the same brush that those people have committed crimes that ICE is trying to deport or apprehend,” said Greg Raymo, chair of the board of BankIn Minnesota, the nonprofit organization that represents independent community banks around the state.
Raymo said there are a large number of people in the Worthington area whose families have immigrated from Mexico and throughout Central and South America — people who play an important role in the region’s agricultural economy, who have opened thriving businesses and integrated into the community.
“It hurts to see how Minnesota is being painted as a state,” Raymo added. “It’s painful to watch the division.”
Some say those divisions are fanned by incendiary rhetoric on both sides, from Gov. Walz calling the ICE operation a “campaign of organized brutality,” to the Trump administration’s investigation of Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly interfering with federal agents.
“I wish I could get them all in a room and say, ‘Here’s where we’re going to go from here,’” said conservative talk radio show host Al Travis of Blue Earth, who makes it a point to bring Republicans and Democrats on his program.
Travis believes there’s broad agreement on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records, especially those who have been convicted of violent crimes.
“‘OK, that’s one step. Here’s how we want to go about doing it. What are your thoughts?’ And obviously, no one wants 2,000 people with masks on running down the street and grabbing people. How can we do this together?”
But with both sides dug in, retreat can be seen as weakness, said retired Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken. Tusken believes it’s up to the federal government to take a step back, to help ICE agents gain the trust of Minnesotans.
“Let’s evaluate what we’re doing. Let’s evaluate the number of ICE agents we have in the state. Is there a way we can turn down the temperature here? And I don’t think that shows weakness. That’s just tactically being very smart.”
In the small town of Dilworth, just outside Fargo, Micah Tysver has watched the turmoil playing out in Minneapolis. He’s watched and read with alarm the political division expressed by Minnesotans reacting to the conflict.
So he wrote his own social media post, “to try to encourage others to ‘drop the sword.’”
“I’m a conservative,” he wrote, who believes there’s been massive fraud. But he also wrote how he’s concerned about government overreach, due process and the impacts of ICE enforcement on families.
"We’re never going to get through this effectively or efficiently or without harm, as we have seen, if we don’t have some compromise, if we don’t understand the stance and the perception of the opposite side of the political aisle — what they’re seeing, what they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing,” Tysver told MPR News.
His post struck a nerve. He’s heartened by the thousands of people who have liked and shared it.
It might seem pollyannish in this moment. But Tysver still believes it’s possible to find common ground with compassion and dignity, “for the betterment of society, for the betterment of each other, for the betterment of our state.”
