A Sky correspondent has been caught up in tear gas fired by masked immigration officers as they clashed with a group of protesters in Minneapolis.
Demonstrations have persisted against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US city, a week after an agent fatally shot a woman.
Protesters were angered by another incident on Wednesday in Minneapolis, when a federal officer shot a man in the leg after being attacked with a shovel and broom handle.
Sky’s Martha Kelner said clashes happened outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a local branch of the US Department of Homeland Security, which ICE is part of.
Kelner began by describing the scene: “The police officers… trying to establish a bigger perimeter outside the federal building… you can hear some flash bangs going off… there’s tear gas too, and people panicking trying to get away from the tear gas.
“They’re firing tear gas… a massive load of tear gas coming out… [coughs].”
At that point, we see a cloud of tear gas pass the camera and Kelner, her nose and mouth covered by a mask, is unable to speak and continues to cough. She eventually manages to recover.
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“Apologies… that tear gas really, really catching in the throats of everyone here. We’re going to move now and get the proper gas masks on.”
In the background, people can be heard coughing and struggling to compose themselves.
“As you can see, a scene of utter, utter chaos here. People protesting, police pushing back and using these crowd disbursement techniques to do so.”
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There are roughly 3,000 federal agents on the ground in the Minneapolis area making immigration arrests, a federal law enforcement official told Sky’s US partner NBC News.
It includes more than 2,000 ICE officers and agents, hundreds of Border Patrol agents and some from Justice Department agencies.
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Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made a direct appeal to Donald Trump in a post on X.
“Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are,” he wrote.
His plea came after the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives him authority to deploy the military domestically without prior congressional approval.
