How Many Memorials Can One City Hold?

A moment of silence, a gathering of mourners, and a city negotiating grief and distrust two days after an ICE shooting

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The images are best experienced on a larger screen.

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I returned to the site of the ICE shooting at 10 a.m. to witness the moment of silence called for by Governor Walz. The street was quiet, the kind of quiet that settles after something irreversible. People gathered in small groups, standing close against the cold. Some cried openly. Others said nothing at all, looking down at the pavement or past the memorial, as if trying to understand how this corner of Minneapolis had become another place of loss.

Candles had been set out overnight. Flowers, flags, and handwritten notes formed a loose, improvised memorial. It felt familiar in an unsettling way—another collection of objects meant to hold grief when there are no words for it. People moved carefully around it, pausing, reading, adding what they could. The mood wasn’t confrontational. It was reflective. Heavy with questions about how the city keeps returning to moments like this, and why.

When police arrived, the atmosphere shifted, noticeably. Years of tension and mistrust surfaced. The crowd had grown beyond the narrow sidewalks and into the street. Officers moved to contain everyone to a single lane. For a moment, the situation felt fragile, as if it could tip in either direction.

It didn’t. The officers remained professional. Communication improved. People adjusted. Gradually, the tension eased. By the end, the scene had settled again—still marked by grief, still unresolved, but calm. The memorial remained, along with the sense that this moment was part of a longer story, one still unfolding.

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