MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — For days, Luis Ramirez had an uneasy feeling about the men dressed as laborers he’d seen outside his family’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Minneapolis.
They wore high-visibility vests and immaculate white hard hats, he noticed, even when they were parked in their vehicle. His search for the Wisconsin electrician posted on the car doors turned up no results.
As their Nissan backed into the lot outside his restaurant on Tuesday, Ramirez, 31, filmed his confrontation with the two men, who hide their faces as they approach and appear to be wearing heavy tactical gear under their yellow vests.
“That’s what our taxpayers’ money is going to: renting these vehicles with fake tags to come sit here and watch my business,” Ramirez yells in the video.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about whether the men were federal immigration officers. But encounters like Ramirez’s have become increasingly common.
As Minnesota’s massive immigration crackdown continues, legal observers and officials say they’ve received a growing number of reports of federal agents eyeing construction workers, delivery drivers and, in some cases, anti-ICE activists.
Not all of those incidents have been verified, but they have heightened fears in a state already in crisis, adding to concerns among legal groups about the Trump administration’s dramatic reshaping of immigration enforcement tactics nationwide.
“If you have people fearing that the electrical worker outside their home could be ICE, you’re taking public mistrust and confusion to a much more dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, director of immigration advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s what you do if you’re trying to control a population, you’re not trying to do a professional law enforcement routine.”
A “more extreme degree” of deception
In the past, immigration authorities have sometimes used disguises and other deceptions, which they call tricks, to gain entry into homes without a warrant.
The tactics became more common during President Donald Trump’s first term, lawyers said, sparking an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration agents of violating the U.S. Constitution by posing as local law enforcement during home raids. A recent settlement restricted the practice in Los Angeles. But ICE scams remain legal elsewhere in the country.
Still, the undercover operations reported in Minnesota appear to be “a more extreme degree than we’ve seen in the past,” Shah said, in part because they appear to be taking place in plain sight.
Where past tricks were aimed at deceiving immigration targets, the current tactic may also be a response to Minnesota’s sprawling networks of citizen watchers who sought to draw attention to federal agents before making arrests.
At the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building in Minneapolis, the city’s central hub of ICE activity, activists told The Associated Press they saw agents drive away in vehicles with stuffed animals on the dashboard or Mexican flag decals on the bumpers. Pickup trucks with lumber or tools in their beds were also frequently seen.
In recent weeks, federal agents have repeatedly shown up at construction sites dressed as workers, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer for the local immigrant rights group Unidos MN.
“We’ve seen an increase in cowboy tactics,” he said, though he noted that the raids have not resulted in arrests. “Construction workers are good at identifying who is a real construction worker and who dresses like one.”
Using vintage plates
Since the Minnesota operation began, local officials, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, have said ICE agents have been seen changing license plates or using fake plates, a violation of state law.
Candice Metrailer, an antiques dealer in south Minneapolis, believes she witnessed such an attempt.
On Jan. 13, she received a call from a man who identified himself as a collector, asking if her store sold license plates. She said she did. A few minutes later, two men in street clothes entered the store and began rummaging through her collection of vintage plates.
“One of them says, ‘Hey, do you have anything recent?'” Metrailer recalled. “Immediately, alarm bells went off in my head.”
Metrailer went outside as the men continued to browse. A few doors down from the store, he saw an empty Ford Explorer with tinted windows. She memorized her license plate, then quickly plugged it into a multipurpose database used by local activists to track vehicles connected to immigration enforcement.
The database shows an identical Ford with the same plates was photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and was reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks earlier.
When one of the men approached the register holding a white plate from Minnesota, Metrailer said he told him the store had a new policy against selling the items.
Metrailer said it reported the incident to the Minnesota Attorney General. A DHS spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
A response to the obstacle
Immigration crackdown advocates say Minneapolis’ volunteer army of ICE stalking activists has forced federal agents to adopt new methods to avoid detection.
“Of course, agents are adapting their tactics to stay one step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, former deputy director of enforcement and operations for ICE in New York City. “I’ve never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”
In nearly three decades of immigration enforcement, Mechkowski said he also has not seen an ICE agent disguise himself as uniformed workers during arrests.
Earlier this summer, a DHS spokesperson confirmed that a man wearing a high-visibility construction vest was an ICE agent conducting surveillance. In Oregon, a natural gas company published guidance last month on how customers could identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.
In the days after his encounter, Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he was on high alert for undercover agents. He recently stopped a locksmith who he feared might be a federal agent, before quickly realizing he was a local resident.
“Everybody’s mad about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “It feels like I’m everywhere.”