“ICE is still around,” chef Sean Sherman tells TODAY.com from Minneapolis.

“They’re not being as aggressive as they had been the past eight weeks, so we’re not seeing them breaking people’s car windows and dragging them out and beating them up on the streets,” he continues. “But we are still seeing people following school buses. We’re seeing ICE agents following people delivering food out there.”

Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota Sioux, is the James Beard award-winning owner of the restaurant Owamni in Minneapolis. Although the eatery and other typically vibrant spots around the city are usually bustling with hungry patrons, Sherman says foot traffic at restaurants is down across the board.

“We know that they’re hitting a lot of smaller towns and a lot of suburbs, and targeting Mexican mercados and restaurants and things like that,” he says.

Since Dec. 1, when government officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) touched down in Minneapolis, residents have been on high alert.

Nearly 3,000 federal agents have been deployed in the city, which has a population of less than 450,000, in what the Department of Homeland Security has dubbed “Operation Metro Surge.”

A little over two months after ICE’s deployment, tear gas has been used on protesters, children have been detained and many businesses have been closed. On Feb. 4, border “czar” Tom Homan said the Trump administration was removing 700 federal immigration agents from Minnesota.

From the start, Sherman has been an early voice sounding the alarm, particularly regarding ICE’s effect on the city’s food culture: as he’s also founded North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS), an organization dedicated to re-establishing Native foodways, he’s particularly attuned to how the agency’s presence is affecting the city.

On Dec. 18, he penned an essay bluntly titled, “F*ck ICE.”

“I’m seeing it everywhere in Minneapolis. Inside our kitchens. In staff meetings. In restaurant group chats that used to be about city and state policies, employee recommendations, connections, and operations, but are now filled with uncertainty and questions about employee safety,” Sherman wrote, adding that “fear is moving through our city in real time.”

Weeks later, on Jan. 7, Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE officer, sparking nationwide protests. And on Jan. 24, the killing of Minneapolis man Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents escalated tensions in the city even further.

Since ICE arrived in Minneapolis, it has arrested more than 2,400 people — including one of Sherman’s own employees on Jan. 26.

“Three of my employees were ride-sharing, and they came into work, and as they pulled in, they realized they’d been followed, and four ICE agent cars surrounded them,” Sherman says. One of his employees told him they “had guns drawn on them right away.”

He says agents claimed to be looking for someone, “who just happened to be a young man with brown skin,” and one of the three employees matched the description, Sherman says, adding the employee is legally in the U.S., has a work permit and a Social Security number.

“They just said, ‘Well, if he checks out, we’ll bring him right back,’” he says. “As we scrambled to try to figure out what was going on with them, we found out that he was immediately moved to Texas before the morning came.”

Sherman says because ICE moves detainees to far-flung locations, often without informing anyone, it “became a struggle” to find and get him back.

“We pretty quickly were able to have a judge order that he be returned to Minnesota, and then eventually, got a judge order to have him released, but it took days,” Sherman says.

The employee hasn’t fully shared his experience of being detained in three different holding facilities, says Sherman. “He’s just a young person who’s traumatized.”

TODAY.com reached out to ICE for comment on the detainment of Sherman’s employee but did not hear back.

“We’re just setting ourselves up to be able to try to take care of any of our employees that feel vulnerable or unsafe because we’re predominantly Native,” Sherman says. “It puts a lot of fear and anxiety into a lot of our Native staff, and we do have staff from places like Mexico and Ecuador and South America and various parts of the Americas that we just want to continue to protect.”

After his employee’s release, Sherman traveled to Washington, D.C., to hand-deliver a petition with more than 3,000 signatures from prominent Minnesota chefs — like Andrew Zimmern, Gavin Kaysen, Ann Kim, Gustavo Romero and Karyn Tomlinson — and other food industry workers, urging Minnesota junior senator Tina Smith and the rest of Congress to force ICE out of Minneapolis.

“The strength behind our industry comes from people of diverse heritage and skillsets — which is why the American food scene is considered one of the greatest on the planet,” reads the petition. “No industry built on human labor can function under terror.”

On Feb. 12, the Trump administration said it is ending its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Homan said “a significant drawdown” of federal agents will begin this week and will continue into next week.

In response to this announcement, Sherman’s rep says he “will be paying attention to what happens next, but believes accountability is still needed after the lawlessness of Operation Metro Surge.”

Sherman hopes to testify before Congress before it decides whether to fund DHS to prevent a shutdown on Feb. 14.

When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he announced a crackdown led by ICE and provided the agency with a $75 billion supplement to be spent over four years, in addition to its $10 billion base budget, which it can continue to access in a shutdown, per NBC News.

“Our main core is just trying to have healthy, indigenous foods be accessible out there but we’re forced to pivot because we’re in this particular situation,” Sherman says. “We just hope we can make enough noise and raise enough awareness that Congress will hear us and that they will not make this a reality for any other city in America.”