In yesterday afternoon’s Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column, James Freeman asks the question: “Who watches the ‘ICE watchers’?” The answer to Freeman’s question is Christina Buttons/City Journal. Another answer to the question is not the Star Tribune. That much I can tell you.
I’m afraid Freeman would include the Star Tribune publisher, editors, reporters, and columnists among “the incurious media” to which he refers at the top of his column. That does not do justice to the phenomenon.
Ms. Buttons reports on what she found watching the ICE watchers in her City Journal column “Inside Minneapolis’s ICE Watch Network.” I cited it yesterday in “Don’t Defend the 612 news desert.” Freeman performs the service of taking us through the Buttons column.
I trust that someone out there in law enforcement, if not the local Minnesota media, is paying attention. Below is Freeman’s account of the Buttons column (links omitted):
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The answer to the question in the headline is: the fearless investigative team at City Journal, standing out impressively among a largely incurious media. People seeking to interfere with officers enforcing federal law in Minneapolis are not merely expressing their opinions. They are going way beyond exercising their right to political speech.
Christina Buttons reports for City Journal:
In less than a month, two “ICE watchers” have been shot and killed by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis. On January 24, a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse. His death follows that of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was killed on January 7.
Both Pretti and Good participated in “ICE watching,” an anti-immigration-enforcement tactic that can involve tracking ICE agents, filming arrests, and alerting other activists of enforcement actions. While participants frame ICE watching as a “community safety” measure, these tactics often place untrained civilians in direct, high-stakes confrontation with armed federal agents.
In Minneapolis, one key organizer of these activities is “Defend the 612.” The group, the membership of which apparently included Renee Good, oversees a massive network of Signal chats dedicated to monitoring and protesting ICE activity. It has become the beating heart of the city’s resistance to federal immigration enforcement. (The group’s name refers to the Minneapolis area code.)
City Journal reviewed Defend the 612’s trainings, entered its Signal network, and traced its organizational support. Our reporting reveals that members and related officials have encouraged protesters to impede law enforcement; pushed civilians toward legally and physically risky confrontations; and helped mobilize a counterprotest that turned violent.
Ms. Buttons, who reports that Defend the 612 declined a request for comment, shares details on the group’s chats on Signal, an encrypted messaging platform:
Each group’s Signal description contains reference links that help Defend the 612 members better surveil federal immigration enforcement. Some chats link to instruction documents that train members how, for example, to follow suspected ICE officers’ vehicles. Others link to crowdsourced logs, which include a running database of more than 4,800 license plates of confirmed and suspected ICE vehicles; a log of deportation-related travel; and a list of nearly 70 hotels where ICE agents have been known to stay.
The City Journal reporter describes one of the chats:
… “Communications,” is dedicated to crafting an “external narrative-shaping strategy” for the ICE-watch movement. Members characterized their media work as “propaganda” and insisted on the need to “maintain control of your narratives.” To that end, participants discussed the need to condition their speech to journalists on retaining editorial control over how stories are written.
That would certainly explain a lot of the media accounts coming out of Minneapolis. Ms. Buttons has more:
In other Signal groups, members discuss how best to disrupt federal immigration enforcement… One participant described getting arrested as a tool to divert agents from “vulnerable community members,” and encouraged other participants “to be super annoying and waste” law enforcement’s “time and resources.”
Members repeatedly referenced the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” an activist handbook that members used to generate ways to impede ICE. Members discussed throwing urine at agents, praising one such incident as “mvp” behavior. A daily update account called “The Report Card” encouraged participants to “annoy” agents with constant noise. They view “noise making and interrupting their meals and bathroom breaks” as essential, noting these tactics “serve a critical role in draining their morale.”
These Signal networks have also functioned as an organizing hub for an aggressive counterprotest. In the days leading up to a demonstration by right-wing influencer Jake Lang in Minneapolis earlier this month, members in Defend the 612’s “Phillips and Powderhorn” chat circulated a post about a “defensive counteraction.” They posted an image of a hanging Klansman and tactical guidelines instructing members to mask up, wear goggles, and not film attendees. One accompanying graphic marked as “false” the statement, “Nonviolence is the only strategy.”
(City Journal’s pseudonymous account made the suggestion that the demonstrators take a nonviolent approach. An administrator removed our account from the group.)
… Following a violent clash that Saturday, group members circulated videos of Lang being dragged into a mob and struck over the head, gloating over the images as evidence that their counterprotest had been effective.
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The City Journal column with its many links can be accessed here. It is must reading. The author’s thread on the column can be accessed by clicking on the X post below.
Minneapolis’s “ICE watch” network did not arise organically. My 3.5-week investigation for @CityJournal found that a well-funded group of professional activists implemented the operation, deploying a model now being used in cities across the US. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/RPpf6unfNS
— Christina Buttons (@buttonslives) February 3, 2026
