On January 5, 2026, Jacob Frey was inaugurated to his third term in Minneapolis. The administration has said they will focus on “three core priorities”: economic opportunity, housing and safety. These are admirable, if tangled and complex, ideas but it’s worth focusing on just one here: safety.
In a statement on the same day, Frey said: “A city that works requires a city that is safe. Every other goal — from economic development to housing — depends on both the perception and the reality of safety, and over the next four years, we will deliver both.”
This is a tall order, as recent federal-agent activity in Minneapolis underlines.
On January 6, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wrote on social media that they were deploying their “largest operation to date” — about 2,000 federal agents — to the Twin Cities. Less than 24 hours later, an agent working on behalf of ICE shot and killed a woman in South Minneapolis during an enforcement operation.
This follows a December 2025 effort by ICE focused on Somali immigrants living in the area, which used claims of health-care fraud to unfairly portray a whole community as fraudulent and criminal.
An emailed update released by the City of Minneapolis in the following hours says that “the presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city and making our community less safe.
“Mayor Frey is demanding ICE leave the city and state immediately,” it continues. “We stand by our immigrant and refugee communities — know that you have our full support.”
ICE, as an agency, is currently focused on a highly specific vision of “safety”: one that prizes hard-and-fast power over judicial equity. This runs in a stark counter to Frey’s assertion that “safety” is both about feeling safe and being safe — two related but nevertheless distinct ideas.
As it currently stands, the United States’ chief immigration enforcers are frequently found wearing balaclava masks and driving unmarked vans; there is little to obviously distinguish them from a disgruntled civilian militia. If this is the appearance of safety, it’s safety strictly targeted at disrupting the racial and socioeconomic status quo.
This approach has troubling ramifications: if agents can don plainclothes for their efforts and vehicles can be left blank, then every plain vehicle can implicitly threaten deportation. Suddenly, the feeling of safety that Frey (rightly) claims as important dissolves — just not for everyone.
“Inside the Deportation Machine,” a December 2025 New York Times analysis of ICE’s activity throughout 2025 written by Raj Saha, Zach Levitt and Albert Sun, claims “Many of the people ICE is now targeting entered legally in recent years.” This is of particular concern in Northeast, where racial diversity is a point of pride.
Northeast Minneapolis, according to 2023 data, has an approximate population of 42,000 people that includes about 5,500 Black residents; approximately 4,500 Hispanic or Latino residents; 2,500 mixed-race residents; and 1,500 Asian residents.
On a more anecdotal level, a stroll down Central Avenue underlines the area’s cultural range: the Ecuadorian Consulate sits near Mediterranean, African and Hispanic restaurants; businesses outfit themselves with signs in Spanish and English alike; and people of all stripes gather in spaces of worship.
Frey, at this point, is a seasoned politician; he has been Mayor of Minneapolis since 2017, and he has said he plans for this to be his final term. This puts him in a position to put up a real fight for his agenda, including keeping the city as safe as possible. Unfortunately, as agents in the streets have made clear, that job just got a lot more complicated.
In its crackdowns across the country, as well as on Garfield and Central, ICE has predominantly focused on immigrants and legal observers, making their presence in Northeast especially concerning. If safety — real safety and the appearance of it — are important to Frey, it’s worth asking what, specifically, he’s going to do now that ICE has crossed the Mississippi.