MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In the streets surrounding a drab federal office complex next to the Minneapolis airport, the beleaguered resistance to President Donald Trump found its footing.As U.S. immigration agents staged at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building for a monthslong deportation campaign, protesters with whistles and cellphone cameras assembled to oppose them. Two were shot and killed in the city’s streets before Trump pulled back under pressure. Months later, those confrontations remain the backdrop to Minnesota’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, which features establishment-backed U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and the more progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. The immigration debate is an added schism in a race that otherwise echoes many of the other left versus center divides that have played out across the United States this year.
Craig voted for tighter enforcement soon after Trump returned to office last year, only to later express regret for her decision after the Republican president sent a surge of agents into Minneapolis. She backed a resolution that condemned antisemitism after a 2025 firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, and expressed thanks for law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Those votes may turn out to be some of the most fraught of Craig’s eight-year career in Congress, decisions that Flanagan has highlighted while trying to portray her rival as unwilling to fight an unpopular administration in Washington.
