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Paper short abstract

In winter 2025-6 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invaded my hometown of Minneapolis. I consider the ensuing state violence and public protests both as an eyewitness and through the anthropological-historical lens of midwinter considered as a time of masking and ritual license.

Paper long abstract

Across the northern hemisphere, winter has long been associated with masked and costumed figures, often identified as otherworldly visitors, whose appearance triggers a temporary suspension of the everyday order. In winter 2025-26 my adopted hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota was subjected to a different kind of visitation by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Targeting Somali and Latinx communities, ICE raided homes and workplaces, kidnapping and detaining people with no semblance of due legal process. When Minnesotans turned out in peaceful protest, ICE responded with further violence, culminating in the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good. I discuss these events both as a sometime eyewitness and through the anthropological-historical lens of midwinter considered as a time of masquerades and ritual license. Anonymizingly masked ICE agents, acting on behalf of an authoritarian government, deployed law-flouting violence to spread terror and enforce obedience, recasting winter as a time to expel those deemed not to belong. Protesters seeking to impede them often had recourse to whistles, loud music, or animal masks and costumes. Meanwhile, outdoor cultural events in parks or on frozen lakes came to be coded as acts of defiance, collective expressions of joy and creativity taking place despite ICE’s stultifying presence. Were such actions not least a performative assertion of openness staked against the politically and ontologically constricting imperatives of state violence? If so, could it be said that Minnesotans were defending both our immigrant neighbors and winter itself as a season of receptivity to visitors from other worlds?