THE SIDEWALK FOUGHT BACK
A flag-draped provocateur came looking for dominance outside ICE headquarters. He found cold concrete, consequences, and a crowd that refused to become the villain.
Minnesota cold doesn’t creep. It occupies. It seeps out of federal concrete like a hostile memo, reminding you that buildings like the Whipple Federal Building were designed less for public service than for emotional frostbite. Everything about the place says: comply quietly, or don’t bother existing here at all.
So naturally, people showed up.
They gathered outside ICE headquarters after Joseph Boman was arrested for the unspeakable crime of observing federal agents. Watching, apparently, now qualifies as suspicious if you’re not armed with a badge, a vehicle, and a bottomless sense of entitlement.
The protest was calm. Purposeful. Sharp. Satirical signs. Costumes mocking power. People standing where they were allowed to stand, saying things they were allowed to say. No blocked doors. No charges. No chaos. Just dissent doing what dissent has always done best: irritating authority by refusing to disappear.
Enter the counter-protesters.
Late arrivals. Loud energy. Zero ideas. One wrapped himself in a flag like it was a security blanket soaked in cable-news rage. Face partially covered. Gloves padded, because nothing says “peaceful disagreement” like showing up dressed for a street fight you swear you’re not planning.
The photos, shot by Chris Juhn, document the escalation with surgical clarity. The edging into people’s space. The repeated boundary testing. The exaggerated gestures. The fake swings that stop just short, the universal signal for I want to hit someone but I need to feel righteous about it later.
No one obliged.
So the counter-protester escalated anyway.
Real punches landed. Bodies collided. A protester went down hard. Another staggered. Wet pavement turned treacherous. Flags tangled uselessly, discovering that nationalism does not, in fact, function as body armor. The sound changed from shouting to impact, which is always the moment when bravado finds out it’s been writing checks it can’t cash.
This wasn’t confusion.
This wasn’t chaos.
This was a man choosing violence because intimidation wasn’t feeding his ego fast enough.
And then came the part that absolutely ruins the narrative.
The protesters stopped it.
Not with a swarm. Not with retaliation. Not with the revenge fantasy people in power keep praying for. They pulled people apart. They created space. They checked on the injured. They de-escalated a fight that had been dumped into their laps by someone who thought aggression automatically makes you important.
When the guy who had been throwing punches started panicking about a missing phone, protesters helped look for it. One of the people he had just assaulted stayed nearby to make sure he didn’t get hurt.
That’s not weakness.
That’s discipline.
That’s what adults do while amateurs throw tantrums in public.
Law enforcement arrived once the adrenaline had already burned off, the way referees always do after the damage is done. Statements were taken. One counter-protester was arrested. The other retreated, presumably to somewhere he could tell a very different version of the story to people who already agreed with him.
The protest did not implode.
The protest did not spiral.
The protest continued.
Which is the part ICE and its unofficial street-level hype squad cannot stand.
Their entire worldview depends on protesters being unhinged, violent, and out of control. Outside the Whipple building, that fantasy face-planted. Loud men looking for dominance ran into people who refused to give it to them. A flag didn’t confer authority. Padded gloves didn’t inspire fear. And the sidewalk kept receipts.
This wasn’t a protest that “turned violent.”
It was a protest that absorbed violence and refused to become it.
EPILOGUE: THE PHONE, BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE WAS A PHONE
After the scene cooled, while protesters were giving statements, officers asked for the missing phone to be returned. Not because it was evidence. Not because it was personal property. Protesters say they were told it needed to be returned because it was federal property.
That sentence landed softly and echoed like hell.
Maybe it was a misunderstanding.
Maybe someone misspoke.
Or maybe a guy pretending to be a random counter-protester just happened to lose a government-issued device while throwing punches in front of a federal building packed with ICE agents.
Whatever the explanation, it’s the kind of detail that doesn’t evaporate. It lingers. It nags. It makes powerful people deeply uncomfortable, which is usually how you know it matters.
If you want the version of this story that doesn’t flinch, doesn’t sanitize, and doesn’t pretend power deserves politeness, that’s what subscribing gets you. Closer to the Edge doesn’t do press releases in paragraph form. We show up, we document, and we keep receipts. Subscriptions keep our writers and photographers on the street, keep these stories independent, and keep us answering to readers instead of institutions that prefer their sidewalks quiet and their questions unanswered.
Thanks for the documentation and restraint. Fighting hate with more hate just doesn't get us anywhere as a nation. Your courage will be remembered and is much appreciated. ICE, not so much. Have a blessed night and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!
That moment when you realize you could have been duped by a pseudo counter-protestor, but instead, ICE confounded itself by admitting it had a pair of goons to provoke violence!
Sometimes, a cellphone is just that. Sometimes it's evidence of an insidious plot to make an amoral point.