After the horrific shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis this past August, the state of Minnesota is once again in national news. On December 26, 2025, 23-year-old Youtuber Nick Shirley released a video in which he accused nine Somali-operated Minneapolis childcare centers of fraudulently taking federal funding without providing services. The daycares featured in the viral video received a total of $17 million from taxpayer funded programs in 2025, according to the State of Minnesota. It was also discovered that several of these daycares had connections to Feeding our Future, a nonprofit organization at the center of a fraud scheme that misappropriated $250 million taxpayer dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic. The video led to investigation by the state of Minnesota and sparked statewide outrage. On January 6, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services froze federal childcare and family assistance funding in Minnesota and several other states. Minnesota receives around $185 million in federal childcare funding, according to CBS News.
Minnesota governor and former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz has stepped down from running for his third term in office in the face of heavy national criticism over the fraud scandal.
In the wake of the fraud concerns, the Twin Cities have become the national center of the controversial immigration enforcement operations being carried out by the Trump administration. There are now a total of 3,000 agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E) in Minneapolis, according to a CBS News report on January 25. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called this deployment, entitled Operation Metro Surge, the largest in its history.
The heavy presence of I.C.E. in the Twin Cities has generated concern, outrage and general tension among St. Paul-Minneapolis residents. Junior biology and English major Elinor True is a resident of Mendota Heights, a southern suburb of St. Paul. She said to The Cor Chronicle: “I saw real manifestations of the tensions that have been building due to the increased I.C.E. presence in Minnesota.” True works at Guiding Star Wakota, a crisis pregnancy center in St. Paul. “I remember one day over break, a woman entered who was clearly distressed,” True said. “She told us in tears that her husband had just been seized by I.C.E. just around the corner from us and she didn’t know what to do. My heart ached for her and I could see how afraid she was.”
It is hard to go out in public in the Twin Cities without seeing some evidence of the I.C.E. presence, as many establishments in MSP have displayed yellow signs on their windows which read “Everyone is welcome here except ICE. We have the right to deny I.C.E. access to private areas without a judicial warrant. Members of our community are safe here.” Catholic parishes in the area have organized ways to get the Sacraments to parishioners who are afraid to leave their homes.
The unrest in the Twin Cities escalated on January 7, 2026 when 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an I.C.E. agent during an altercation. Good was in her car and appeared to be blocking the street where an I.C.E. vehicle was attempting to pass. The graphic video of the shooting has been widely circulated and sparked mass outrage and protests in Minnesota and nationwide. Said True: “Following that day [January 7], I saw protestors with signs everywhere: as I drove to work, to church, all along the highway. Usually, police cars aren’t far off.”
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on January 20, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis wrote: “The nation was poorly served by those who threw the border open. The flood of migrants overwhelmed local communities, eroded public trust and weakened the rule of law. Compassion divorced from order isn’t compassion at all; it’s negligence.”
On January 24, another fatal shooting involving federal agents occurred in Minneapolis when 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed during an altercation with Border Patrol agents. This second fatality in less than three weeks has caused an increase in protests and calls for President Trump to pull I.C.E. out of Minnesota.
Minnesotans are reminded of the upheaval in the Twin Cities as a result of the death of George Floyd in 2020, although the anti-ICE protests have not yet turned to riots of the same scale.
“I think everyone in Minnesota is remembering the violence of the 2020 protests as we’re seeing more violence again,” said True.
As tensions rose in the Twin Cities, Hebda wrote on January 25, urging Minnesotans to “rid our hearts of the hatreds and prejudices that prevent us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters created in the image and likeness of God.”