MINNEAPOLIS — The video shows a young employee in a reflective vest being hauled away by federal agents from the entrance of a Target store in a Minneapolis suburb.

“I’m a U.S. citizen!” the worker shouted as the armed agents shoved him into an SUV on Monday, after he had directed expletives at one. “U.S. citizen! U.S. citizen!”

In and around Minneapolis in recent days — in quiet residential neighborhoods and busy shopping districts, at gas station and big box store parking lots — similar chaotic scenes are unfolding, an escalation of tensions between residents and federal agents as the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown in Minnesota following the killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer last week.

“It feels like our community is under siege by our own federal government,” said state Rep. Michael Howard, a Democrat whose district includes Richfield, where the Target employee and another colleague were seized Monday.

Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear Tuesday if the employee was charged.

Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find immigrants lacking legal status with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hardworking friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.

The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-wracking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.

Department of Homeland Security officials have made roughly 2,400 immigration-related arrests in Minnesota since Nov. 29, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the department. Some of those immigrants have been convicted of sex crimes, armed robbery, drug crimes and other offenses, federal officials said. But it was not clear how many people immigration agents had arrested had criminal records. The number of arrests does not include protesters.

As the surge has intensified, so have the efforts among activists, community volunteers and livestreamers to document federal agents’ aggressive tactics. Federal officials and local residents both say the presence of the other on the street is making the situation worse.

Local concerns over the federal government grew on Tuesday when six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Good and questions over whether the shooter would be investigated.

Images circulating on social media over the past two days and verified by The New York Times show agents approaching a car at a gas station, seeking out the immigration status of the driver and demanding that he open the door. When he doesn’t, they break the window of the car and remove him. Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, yells at bystanders to back up.

In another video, Elliott Payne, president of the Minneapolis City Council, is seen being shoved by an agent.

Payne said in an interview Tuesday that federal agents with assault rifles and combat gear were patrolling the streets in convoys. At night they shine lights from the vehicles onto pedestrians, he said.

“This is a military occupation, and it feels like a military occupation,” Payne said.

According to Payne, federal agents scream obscenities at residents and repeatedly holster and unholster their weapons. “It’s like living in a war zone,” he said. The federal presence was not ubiquitous. Residents said the federal agents were concentrated in areas with large immigrant populations and were absent in others.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that federal agents were in Minnesota to remove “convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals.”

Trump wrote on social media that “THE DAY OF RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION” is coming for Minnesota, without elaborating.

On Monday, DHS said Minnesota was not cooperating with the federal government and said 1,360 illegal immigrants were in Minnesota prisons. The department demanded that they be handed over to the federal authorities when released.

Howard, the state representative, said federal agents for the most part did not have warrants and were staging in the parking lots of stores and apartment complexes and targeting people of color, asking for proof of citizenship.

“Nothing about that is making our communities more safe,” he said. “We have many people in our community that are undocumented, but they are valued members of our community.”

For many in Minneapolis, where 70% of people voted Democratic in the 2024 presidential election, the resistance from neighborhood groups and community volunteers has felt empowering in what has felt like a hopeless time, residents said in interviews.

But even some of those in favor of the community defense efforts were on edge that protesters could go too far. Residents said they were worried that with the number of agents patrolling the area and heightened tensions, weapons would be fired, deliberately or by accident.

“It’s just a matter of time before something else occurs. Another person shot. ICE agents injured,” said Maurice Ward, 54, who runs a social justice organization.

On Monday afternoon, a few blocks away from the site where Good was killed, witnesses recounted how a group of federal agents crashed their vehicle into a car that they had been trying to stop. As officers spoke to the driver, a crowd began to swell. Neighbors rushed out and groups of activists who have been following and filming the agents arrived, many whistling and shouting.

“Get out of our city!” they yelled.

Some threw snowballs at the officers and pelted their vehicles with water bottles. The agents deployed pepper spray and tear gas, sending residents scattering.

In an interview later, Christian Morales, 40, said he had been driving to his mechanic shop when he noticed what could be federal agents sitting in a vehicle in an alley. They began to follow him, he believed, solely for looking Hispanic.

He said he was grateful for the community volunteers and neighbors who came out, some in sweats and pajamas, to document the scene, and he believed their presence was why agents ultimately left him alone. But he also worried whether some of the volunteers shouting obscenities at agents emboldened them.

“It makes them act different, like they have more power,” he said.

Payne said he was encouraging residents to take video of federal agents, which he said could be used as evidence in legal action that state and local officials are pursuing against the federal government over the deployments.

A lawsuit filed Monday by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul asked a judge to block the federal government from “implementing the unprecedented surge in Minnesota.”

The lawsuit said “thousands of armed and masked D.H.S. agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional stops and arrests.”

On Monday night near a fast-food restaurant in south Minneapolis, whistling began to fill the air, a warning by volunteers that federal agents were in the area. Two immigrant workers locked the doors of the restaurant. Muna Ahmed, 37, who had walked in to order a sandwich, was grateful for the signal. A former hospital interpreter of Somali heritage, Ahmed was in disbelief over the hostility of federal officers on the streets.

“This is not the America I know,” she said.

Federal immigration agents in recent days have arrested dozens of refugees in Minnesota who had passed security screenings before being admitted to the United States, according to their lawyers and immigrant rights advocates.

The arrests of the refugees, who are mainly from Somalia and include children, come after an announcement last Friday that the Trump administration would “reexamine thousands of refugee cases through new background checks,” focusing on people who have yet to obtain green cards after arriving in the United States in the last year or so. But that announcement, by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not say that the refugees would be subject to arrest and transfer to immigrant detention facilities.

Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to emailed questions on Tuesday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detained the refugees, according to the lawyers, also did not respond.

Michele Garnett McKenzie, executive director at the Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis, said most of the detainees were being transferred to facilities in Texas. She estimated that at least 100 people had been detained.

“It’s happening very fast,” she said, adding, “It’s devastating the community.”

Among the cases she cited was one of a Somali mother who was detained, leaving behind a toddler, and another family in which a mother and two adult children were detained.

President Donald Trump closed the United States to refugees from around the world on his first day in office. In November, he began targeting refugees in Minnesota, a blue state with the country’s largest Somali population, amid reports that some Somalis there had defrauded the state, collecting millions of dollars in social services that were never provided.

Last week, his administration said that it was launching a “sweeping initiative” to conduct new background checks and intensive verification of refugees to check for fraud and other crimes.

“The initial focus is on Minnesota’s 5,600 refugees who have not yet been given lawful permanent resident status,” said the announcement from Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration separately moved to end Temporary Protected Status for a small number of Somalis who entered the country without first obtaining humanitarian protection as refugees.

The detained refugees, like all people admitted through the U.S. Refugee Program of 1980, were legally admitted under the law passed by Congress.

Before the U.S. government extends an invitation for someone to receive safe haven, the applicants must undergo rigorous vetting abroad by the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies. They must prove that they have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of their race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a particular group.

Once admitted to the United States, refugees must apply for permanent green cards within a year. They have sometimes delayed doing so because of cost and red tape, but they have never been arrested or threatened with deportation.

“This has never happened, that you arrive as a refugee, and that on day 366, if you are still not a green card holder, you are deportable,” said Tracy Roy, legal director at Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. “That has never been the way the statute has been interpreted.” She added that none of the cases she had been contacted about involved a refugee who had committed a crime beyond traffic violations.

Roy noted that aside from Somali refugees, people from Myanmar and Eritrea had also been detained.

The refugee arrests follow days of unrest in Minneapolis fueled by the deadly shooting of an American citizen by an ICE agent this month. The Trump administration has said that the woman, Renee Nicole Good, 37, was trying to ram her vehicle into the agent, but state and local officials, including Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, have disputed the government’s account.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have described a brazen and sprawling fraud scandal in which people stole millions and possibly billions of dollars from state social service organizations. Of the 98 people who have been charged in connection with the fraud, 85 are of Somali descent, according to the White House.

By GRAHAM LEE BREWER

The president of Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota on Tuesday called for the immediate release of tribal members who were detained at a homeless encampment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota last week.

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Three of the four Oglala Sioux Tribe members who were arrested in Minneapolis on Friday have been transferred to an ICE facility at Fort Snelling, President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement released with a memorandum sent to federal immigration authorities.

“The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s memorandum makes clear that ‘tribal citizens are not aliens’ and are ‘categorically outside immigration jurisdiction,’” Star Comes Out said. “Enrolled tribal members are citizens of the United States by statute and citizens of the Oglala Sioux Nation by treaty.”

Details about the circumstances that led to their detention were unclear.

In the memorandum sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Star Comes Out said the when tribal nation reached out to the agency it was provided with only the first names of the men. Homeland Security refused to release more information, unless the tribe “entered into an immigration agreement with ICE.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.

Star Comes Out said the tribe has no plans enter an agreement with ICE.

In a post to his Facebook page, Star Comes Out said that the four detained tribal members are experiencing homelessness and living under a bridge in Minneapolis. One of the members was released from detention.

In the press release, he demanded information on the status of the three men in detention, the release of all tribal citizens in ICE custody and a meeting between the tribe and the government.

By CEDAR ATTANASIO

SEATTLE (AP) — Six puppies in rural Washington state will soon be up for adoption after being revived after a suspected drug overdose — and some of them might go home with the fire-station staff who saved them.

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Two people dropped off three of the sickened puppies at Sky Valley Fire, about an hour’s drive northeast of Seattle, on Sunday. Officials believe the animals either breathed or ate fentanyl.

Firefighters sprayed the anti-overdose medication naloxone up their noses, and also treated them with oxygen and even performed CPR. It wasn’t long before their tails started wagging, Battalion Chief Brandon Vargas said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies tracked down the people believed to have dropped off the dogs and found three more puppies that also needed treatment. An animal cruelty or neglect investigation is underway. The pair claimed they were caring for the puppies temporarily, authorities said.

There have been a number of other cases nationally where pets have been saved after being exposed to fentanyl or other opioids.

The puppies have a clean bill of health, but are being quarantined for about one more week before being released for adoption, said David Byrd, manager of Snohomish County Animal Services.

The Everett animal shelter that has been monitoring their health has been overwhelmed with adoption offers, and asked people to not call the shelter with questions about the puppies.

“We definitely have some personnel that are interested in wanting to adopt those,” Vargas said.