Local Minnesota Paper Runs Front-Page Pic of ICE Agent Pepper-Spraying Face of Protester Pinned to the Ground

Screenshot via X from @StarTribune. The Minnesota Star Tribune credits Richard Tsong-Taatarii

On Friday, the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune featured an image of two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pinning a Minneapolis protester to the street as one agent aimed a canister of pepper spray directly in his face.

The Tribune’s Richard Tsong-Taatarii took the image on Wednesday, as demonstrations continue across Minnesota in response to the presence of “several thousand federal agents” in “the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history,” according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The image ran above a story about ICE tactics raising questions about the agency’s training of its officers.

Earlier this month, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. A preliminary private autopsy found that she was shot at least three times. Federal officials continue to defend the agent’s actions as self-defense, claiming the agent felt Good was trying to ram him with her car, despite footage that shows space between the vehicle and the officer.

Despite initially calling Good a “professional agitator” who “ran over the ICE officer,” President Donald Trump admitted last week that the video of the event “can be viewed two ways.”

On Tuesday, federal agents took a five-year-old boy and his father into custody in the driveway of their Minneapolis home, just as the child was returning from preschool. According to the family’s lawyer, the father and son presented themselves to border officers in December of 2024 to apply for asylum. They are now being held at an ICE facility in Texas.

Along with the image by Tsong-Taatarii, The Minnesota Star Tribune’s front page features a picture of the five-year-old, Liam Conejo Ramos, with the headline, “Children as young as 5 detained,” adding that this is “the fourth time a student from [Ramos’s] district has been detained by federal agents in recent weeks.”

Also mentioned was testimony from Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old U.S.-born Somali American who was “forcibly arrested and detained by immigration officials for two days,” according to The Tribune. She was interviewed with “bandages still covering scrapes on her forehead.” Ahmed also claims the agents used a “racial slur” during her arrest.

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