Students and teachers abandoned classes from California to New York on a national day of protest, which came amid mixed messages from the Trump administration about whether it would de-escalate Operation Metro Surge.
Under a national immigration crackdown, President Donald Trump has sent 3,000 federal officers to the Minneapolis area who are patrolling the streets in tactical gear, a force five times the size of the Minneapolis Police Department.
"No work. No school. No shopping. Stop funding ICE," ran a slogan on the organisers' website, nationalshutdown.org, that listed 250 sites for Friday's protests across 46 states and in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.
Protesting the surge and the tactics used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), several thousand people gathered in downtown Minneapolis in sub-zero temperatures, including families with small kids, elderly couples and young community activists.
Katia Kagan, wearing a "No ICE” sweatshirt and holding a sign demanding that the agency leave the city, said she was the daughter of Russian Jews who immigrated to America seeking safety and a better life.
"I’m out here because I’m going to fight for the American dream that my parents came here for,” she said.
Kim, a 65-year-old meditation coach who asked that her last name not be used, said she was at the protest because of "basic compassion” for her fellow residents of Minneapolis.
"Democracy is what’s at stake in Minnesota. This is a full-on fascist attack of our federal government on citizens,” Kim said.
Marchers have lauded how peaceful the protests have remained despite fury over masked federal agents' arrests and killings.
"We learned so much from the Floyd protests. We had a bunch of cops that were rogues – white supremacists,” said protester Mary, 67. “They had warrior training. Now we have a wonderful police department and now I think people... know to speak up and to act peacefully."
The Midwest's largest city, Minneapolis saw prolonged unrest after the 2020 murder by police of George Floyd, a black man whose killing sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
At the protest on Friday, police were barely visible as tens of thousands of people turned out under the banner of "National Shutdown", with Minneapolis police telling AFP that there were no arrests, and no reports of injuries or property damage.
Ahead of the protest, President Donald Trump accused Alex Pretti, shot dead by federal officers in Minneapolis while helping women who had been pepper sprayed, of "abuse and anger" after video emerged of him in a heated exchange with agents.
Mary, who declined to give a last name, said she was horrified by how federal officers including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, have executed their push to round up undocumented migrants across Minnesota, a deployment that has seen officers shoot dead two US civilians.
"They're scooping up anybody,” she said. “You know, there are innocent people getting scooped up right and left, and it's far more terrifying than when George Floyd was here. I think it's important for our voices to be heard."
There have been daily noisy protests at the Whipple federal building where ICE agents stage ahead of raids.
On Friday morning, sheriffs deputies ran into a hostile crowd of activists and dragged away one of the demonstrators, AFP saw.
One gloved protester held up a widely shared image of a federal officer deployed to the city skidding on ice, captioned "baby's first winter", while another clutched a sign reading "gnomes in, Noem out" – a reference to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – at Friday's protest.
Sporting a giant papier mache head modeled on Noem, protester Connie described the official and Trump as "the criminals at large that are really causing so much trouble”.
She said the peaceful demonstrations since the start of the sprawling immigration raids were a strength of the movement galvanizing against the raids.
"We're just trying to get them out of here. That's all we want...They say, 'Oh, you want all these criminals?' Yeah, we'll take them. You just get out of here. You're the criminal,” she said. "We have 2,000, 3,000 ICE here – they're the criminals."
She added that she was "100%" sure federal officers were seeking to provoke local people.
"(ICE) are extremely aggressive, very intimidating. They're out to cause trouble," she said.
Native Minnesotan protester Paul Chouinard said he thought Trump would "probably love for it to turn into something more so he could make an example – but that's not what Minnesotans want."
"You don't fight force and guns with violence, you know? We're gonna use our voices in the right way and make our opinions known to hopefully change this."
Nearby a child screamed "ICE out of Minnesota" into a bullhorn to huge cheers from the crowd, many of whom wore ski gear to brave the temperatures that hovered around 1° Fahrenheit (-17° Celsius).
There were protest actions and marches in cities across the United States including New York, Boston and Los Angeles.
Protester Shushta Santhana, 24, whose parents emigrated to the United States 30 year ago, said "it's really cool to see the community come together”.
She pointed to "grassroots organisations pulling together to get groceries to people and protect (migrant) people when they're leaving work and leaving the courts and all sorts of things”.
"We've done a good job here. I'm very proud to be a Minnesotan right now."
Retiree Lisa Schmid told AFP that Minneapolis would become known as "the city that stood up for freedom”.
