Large crowds have gathered in downtown Minneapolis and at the city's airport. The message is in unison: "Down with ICE."
"What ICE is doing here is clearly immoral," says Elizabeth Barish Browne, a pastor from Wyoming, who is participating in the protests despite the cold winds driving the temperature down to around minus 34 degrees.
"It's definitely cold, but the kind of ice that is dangerous is not the kind that is weather-dependent," she tells AP.
Closed stores
In downtown Minneapolis, the demonstration was peaceful in the morning, local time. At the airport, about a hundred priests were arrested, according to police, for entering an area they were not allowed to enter.
More than 700 businesses, shops, museums and restaurants are closed in solidarity with the protests on Friday, and CBS and ABC, among others, are reporting that private individuals and cafes are providing protesters with warming coffee and tea instead of working or staying open.
Ahead of Friday, which has also been designated a day of mourning for the ICE shooting death of Renee Nicole Good, anger has been fueled by the detention of a five-year-old boy who was arrested with his father in the driveway of the family's Minneapolis-area home on Tuesday.
Two-year-old taken into care
On Friday, it was also announced that immigration police had taken into custody a two-year-old girl the day before; she was taken with her father as they were on their way home from a grocery store in Minneapolis. The circumstances of that case are still unclear.
Since Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7, daily protests against immigration enforcement have taken place in Minneapolis and neighboring Saint Paul. But Friday's demonstration is the largest yet. And by early afternoon, local time, the number of protesters continued to grow. Amal Ahmed, who is marching in the protest, told NBC she was surprised by the turnout.
"Today is the coldest day of the year in Minnesota, and we have gathered for the largest protest yet. That must mean something."
