A handful of people were cuffed and taken into police custody.
MINNEAPOLIS—Law enforcement officials arrested a handful of anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis on Friday after they did not leave the area when unlawful assembly was declared around 10:30 p.m. CT.
Multiple agencies were present at the demonstration at 3rd Street and Park Avenue, declaring that protesters leave or face arrest.
A handful of people were cuffed and taken into police custody just after 11:00 p.m. CT. The suspects did not appear to resist arrest.
A scattered crowd continued to move throughout the area for several hours, prompting unlawful assembly multiple times throughout the night and into the early morning hours.
Friday night’s police presence in downtown Minneapolis was much different than the scene at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal earlier in the day when federal law enforcement officers deployed non-lethal bullets and chemical agents on hundreds of protesters.
Tensions started to rise around 1:00 p.m. CT, when a truck carrying cement barriers and two trucks carrying large wire fences arrived on the federal property.
Minutes after federal agents placed the cement barricades, a verbal dispute erupted between a female protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and a male pro-ICE supporter.
The woman, who was holding a red heart balloon and wearing a gas mask, attempted to stop the man, holding an American flag, from sharing his support for ICE agents on the ground.
The verbal dispute caused agents on the ground to fire a series of non-lethal bullets into the crowd.
The crowd quickly moved back, as some of the protesters and members of the media were hit during the scuffle, including Epoch Times photographer John Fredricks.
Fredricks was hit by a non-lethal round in the shin, and another independent journalist was wounded in the foot.
Others on the scene briefly dispersed as they coughed from the gas that filled the air.
It’s not clear how many protesters and members of the media were injured during the incident.
As night fell, so did the crowd.
By 8:00 p.m. CT, numbers dwindled down to around a dozen protesters.
By Jacki Thrapp, Savannah Hulsey Pointer, John Fredricks and Nathan Worcester
