Chatting The Pictures: Eleven Neighbors with Phones vs. ICE: How One Image Spoke for a City

This photo by Leila Navidi for the Minneapolis Star Tribune captures St. Paul residents on February 11, 2026, using their phones to confront militarized immigration enforcement. On a Cathedral Hill sidewalk, neighbors stand shoulder to shoulder, recording heavily armed agents and, together, shaping a counternarrative to state power. At the center is Minnesota Public Radio News reporter Sam Stroozas, still in her bathrobe and slippers after realizing the ICE raid was unfolding just blocks from her home. The image provides a new level of visibility for community witness and observation networks.

In the video, we explore how the public’s organization and solidarity made this moment resonate—and the small but striking details that helped it go viral, from the bathrobe to the collective presence of the camera as a democratic eye.