Chaos has erupted in the streets of major cities all over this country, and it appears that we have reached a boiling point which could cause events to completely spiral out of control. We knew that there was no way that the Trump administration was going to back down on immigration enforcement, and we knew that there was no way that the left was going to back down and allow ICE to conduct mass deportations without resistance. In fact, the left now has “response teams” that literally operate like military units in cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis and New York City.
So it was inevitable that we would see more violent confrontations, and now another protester has died. The left is promising to fight back harder than ever, and President Trump is seriously considering invoking the Insurrection Act.
As both sides continue to raise the stakes, it is just a matter of time before this crisis ends with martial law in major U.S. cities.
Every time a protester dies, it is just going to make things even worse.
Following the death of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, enormous protests immediately erupted in Minneapolis, New York, Washington and Los Angeles…
Protests erupted in multiple U.S. cities after a U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37‑year‑old intensive care unit nurse, during a federal immigration operation in Minneapolis, escalating tensions over immigration enforcement and prompting Democratic lawmakers to demand that federal officers leave Minnesota.
Demonstrations broke out in Minneapolis, New York, Washington and Los Angeles, with hundreds braving subzero temperatures in Minnesota to confront federal agents in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting involving an ICE officer earlier this month.
Things got particularly crazy in Minneapolis.
James O’Keefe and his team were surrounded by hundreds of rioters, and he is claiming that they barely made it out of there alive…
It takes a lot of courage to venture into a situation like that in the first place, because the streets of Minneapolis are a war zone at this stage.
In a subsequent post, O’Keefe described how lawless things have become in the downtown area…
URGENT UPDATE: I’ve never experienced anything quite like today in my life. I’ve interacted with the Cartel and have witnessed some crazy things in the desert in ‘24. But what strikes me is how organized these agitators in Minneapolis are. They have spotters everywhere in the city and suburbs, on street corners, even 30 minutes away from downtown. They have people at hotels that work with them and signal to them which made it making it difficult for us to lose our tail once my cover was blown. Usually I lose a tail. Not this time. We switched locations THREE times. I recorded and posted this while leaving Wayzata, while they were STILL surveilling. We all agreed we must make the threats public ASAP, even if we had people still in the field with the hidden cams.
Earlier around noon, while @camhigby released his report on the Signal threads, I was inside what appeared to be a fully autonomous Zone. No police presence. The police were told to leave. I identified myself as Press and they said they will kill Press and will not let me leave. My skin was fully covered because it was so cold. But because they couldn’t verify who I was, they screamed and started throwing ice bottles at us. One hit, @SKRUCHTENMMA, a marine who was with me. They patted him down like THEY were the authorities, attempting to confiscate any weapons. They were set to destroy our vehicle before we even got to it. I will have a full video report shortly.
But the bigger picture here is more important. I am angry. But not at the agitators. I find myself already angry at the people who don’t understand what we’re dealing with and will do nothing about it. When I got to the suburbs I felt like I was in a simulation.
I believe the American people need to wake up. This moment is a warning about where we’re headed. Fear pushes people to care only about their money and their families—I get it. But when fear turns inward, when self-preservation and greed replace moral courage, evil goes unchallenged. And history shows that what we ignore today will come for all of us tomorrow.
In that post, O’Keefe mentioned a report that was released by Cam Higby.
Apparently Higby had infiltrated the Signal groups that the left is using to direct the activities of their “response teams”…
Let’s begin with citizen journalist Cam Higby’s bombshell reporting, who says he “infiltrated organizational signal groups all around Minneapolis with the sole intention of tracking down federal agents and impeding/assaulting/and obstructing them.”
“Each area of the city has a Signal group, or in some cases multiple groups. Let’s start with a screen recording of all members of the south side group,” Higby said.
Spotters on the ground flag license plates that are then run through a database of suspected federal vehicles, and if a match is found specific instructions are sent out through the Signal groups to units that are specifically tasked with impeding ICE…
Higby describes spending several days undercover deep within left-wing activist Signal groups that coordinate pressure campaigns against ICE agents. He notes that members use emojis to designate their specific roles and responsibilities.
According to Higby, the group’s core operations include organizing mobile patrols that continuously search for suspected federal vehicles. When a vehicle is flagged, its details are shared with designated “plate checkers,” who cross-reference the information against a database of known federal assets and update the records if a match is confirmed.
“Dispatch runs a maxed-out call all day, telling protesters where ICE has been spotted and how they can best be impeded,” he said.
These leftists are running a very sophisticated operation, and it appears that local police are cooperating with them on at least some level…
I have never seen anything like this before.
At one point some of the rioters decided to try to set up an “autonomous zone” in the part of the city where Alex Pretti was killed…
Left-wing rioters erected barricades in the streets of Minneapolis after Border Patrol agents fatally shot a man in possession of a gun Saturday.
Alex Pretti, 37, was killed during what a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement described as a “targeted” enforcement operation at 9:05 a.m. local time, triggering riots. Jorge Ventura, reporting for the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), posted video of one such barricade made with dumpsters and trash cans Saturday afternoon.
“Protesters have blocked and barricaded multiple streets near the shooting, many people from out of town are starting to arrive here in Minneapolis and despite the massive amounts of tear gas used by authorities, the crowd is only getting bigger,” Ventura says.
Ventura told the DCNF that Minneapolis police and the Minnesota State Patrol “are letting them take to the streets” and not making any effort to remove the barricades. The Minneapolis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
It is difficult for me to put the chaos that we are witnessing into words.
Fox’s Garrett Tenney was on the scene as these rioters were setting up the “autonomous zone”, and he was quite shaken by what he saw…
We’ve got a couple thousand protesters here, just completely filling this entire area. And one of the chants you heard them saying, for the last few minutes, is “Keep this block.” They’ve set up barricades blocking off this entire area that were removed by police initially. They have now moved those garbage trucks, the tables, the chairs, and they’re saying that they are going to keep this almost making it an autonomous zone.
They were chanting before that, “Whose streets? Our streets.” And that is significant, because, as we’ve talked about, Governor Tim Walz said, we have the forces that we need to secure this area; we don’t need the federal agents here. We saw, though, what happened as soon as the federal agents left this area, local and state police were completely overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of protesters that were here and got driven out of this area altogether. So, clearly they did not have the forces they needed to secure this area, then. The question is going forward into tonight, when things tend to get a little dicier, will they have the forces to control and to secure the city as a whole, or is it going to be a repeat?
The local police are pretty much standing down and allowing the rioters to do whatever they want.
Apparently some of the rioters were even brandishing guns…
We keep being told that the protesters are “peaceful”, but they aren’t peaceful at all.
They physically confront ICE officers wherever they can find them, and these confrontations often turn violent.
In fact, we just witnessed one incident in which an ICE officer had his finger bitten off…
In a disturbing incident amid ongoing anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officer had his finger bitten off by a rioter, according to a post from Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
McLaughlin shared graphic photos on X, showing the injured officer sitting in a vehicle, his uniform caked in mud, as a gloved hand tends to his mangled finger.
One image shows the severed fingertip, bloodied and raw, and another shows it preserved in a small plastic container, presumably for medical evaluation.
McLaughlin confirmed that the officer will lose the finger.
We all knew that there would be more violence.
Read More: Snyder: All Over America, Thousands Of Radicals Are Being Recruited For “Rapid Response Teams” That Are Designed To Swarm ICE
Of course there is no way that the Trump administration will back down and allow the left to claim victory.
That is not the way that President Trump operates.
And after everything that has transpired, there is no way that the left is going to back down either.
So a lot more violence is coming.
It probably won’t be too long before President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act.
But that certainly won’t be the end of it either.
Ultimately, I believe that we will see martial law in major U.S. cities, and that will be extremely unfortunate.
Written by Michael Snyder for the Economic Collapse ~ January 25, 2026
This is cause and effect – pure and simple.
One side seeks to enforce the law, while the other vehemently opposes it as an infringement of civil rights and constitutional liberties. The identities of the parties involved are irrelevant. Each side believes its cause is righteous, while the other views it as bogus. Each side DEMANDS its constitutional rights regardless of what the document actually says. They both reserve the right to interpret the language to support their point of view, applying the requisite liberal biases. No one is willing to admit they might be wrong because their cause is righteous.
Convictions are powerful motivators, tricking the believer into questionable, life-altering, and possibly life-ending decisions that, once acted upon, cannot be undone.
Unfortunately, we jump to conclusions like violent protest when passion drives our actions. I remind everyone that passion creates babies, gets people killed in violent protests, and ruins reputations – lives forever. You cannot unscrew anything.
Once it’s screwed, so are you.
We must carefully examine the language used and understand the rationale and implications of words such as Nazi, Gestapo, murder, captivity, unwarranted, and invasion. These are powerful words that imply hatred. They cannot be unheard once spoken, and in a heated, volatile context, they can incite more violence and even murder.
Who will stand to account for the next loss of life? Will it be the killer or the one who incited the violence with hateful rhetoric? Or will it be the innocent victim, unfortunately in the way, like the eight-year-old little girl on the school bus with a fractured skull? Or the unfortunate Somali population, now painted as a race of pirates by a few flippant remarks and innuendos of fraud by a tiny percent of their population?
There are a thousand platitudes and axioms that fit this situation, but the best is – Look before you leap.
I’m sorry people died. They should have thought it through and left passion in the bedroom.
Strong feelings are important, but clear thinking is critical to the viability of any culture or society.
Again, passion is great for making babies, but it has little place in a functioning society, where sanity and critical thought are required for it to prosper. It’s up to those of us with cooler heads to cut through the fog of emotion and insist that we stop this foolishness before it’s too late.
Think!