Trump’s ICE agent tries to storm Ecuador consulate in Minneapolis crackdown

An armed agent of US President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday tried to storm Ecuador’s consulate in Minnesota’s Minneapolis during the ongoing crackdown on the Democratic-run city. A consulate staffer blocked the agent for forcing his way inside.

In the video of the incident, the staffer is seen telling the agent that he could not enter the consulate as it belonged to a foreign government. In response, the agent threatened to grab the staffer. Eventually, the agent retreated.

Under the Vienna Conventions, the host country is not allowed to enter an embassy or a consulate without mission head’s permission. The conventions —the United States is party to Vienna Conventions— state that the grounds shall be treated as that country’s sovereign land and not that of the host country. In a statement, the Ecuadorian government said that an ICE agent tried to enter consulate at around 11 am.

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“Immediately, officials of the consulate prevented the ICE officer from entering the consular facility, thereby ensuring the protection of Ecuadorian citizens who were at the Consulate at that time and activating the emergency protocols issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility,” the statement said.

The Ecuadorian government formally presented a note of protest to the US Embassy in Ecuador “so that acts of this nature are not repeated at any of Ecuador’s consular offices in the United States”, the statement said in Spanish.

Trump has unleashed thousands of armed federal agents on Democratic-run cities like Minneapolis in the name of cracking down on illegal immigration. But critics have said that these are tactics to intimidate ethnic minorities and political opponents as several instances have been reported on a near-daily basis when masked armed agents have been reported to have harassed ethnic minorities with racial profiling-driven questioning and threats of arrests without warrants.

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These federal agents have killed at least two civilians in Minneapolis. But Trump and his Republican allies have continued to stand by ICE and their crackdown on Democratic-run cities that have been criticised as being unnecessarily violent.

This is the moment an ICE agent attempted to enter Ecuador’s consulate in Minneapolis but was prevented by consulate staff. The incident prompted Ecuador’s foreign ministry to send a note to the US embassy, demanding that such incidents “not be repeated”. pic.twitter.com/emdP5TXp4M

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 28, 2026

In Tuesday’s case, witnesses working in retail shops near the consulate told Reuters that they saw federal agents try to enter the building.

“I saw the officers going after two people in the street and then those people went into the consulate and the officers tried to go in after them,” said a woman.

The agents “weren’t able to enter the consulate, from what I could see”, the woman added.

Trump has unleashed around 3,000 ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on Minneapolis. In his second term, Trump has explicitly stated that he would use unleash armed personnel, including the US military, to “straighten out” Democratic-run cities. He has said that he would use the Democratic-run cities as “training grounds” for the US military. And, indeed, he has deployed federal armed agents, National Guard, and military to over a dozen cities, such as Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Pheonix, etc.