RICHMOND, Va. β As tensions rise in Minneapolis following the killing of Renee Good by federal immigration enforcement, a Virginia Commonwealth University policing expert is raising concerns about the clash between federal agents and local communities.
Criminal Justice Professor William Pelfrey, who has spent years studying policing techniques and public safety, said the situation in Minneapolis has been made worse by the massive ICE presence that is unwelcome by both local residents and law enforcement. The federal teams often arrive masked and wearing what appears to be full military gear.
Pelfrey said the different training federal agents receive compared to local law enforcement makes every interaction dangerous.
"Local law enforcement get lots of training on de-escalation. Crisis intervention training, working with suspects who are stressed, who are in difficult circumstances, who are experiencing a mental health crisis or a drug-related crisis. Federal law enforcement doesn't get nearly as much training as local law enforcement on that front because they don't deal with the same population," Pelfrey said.
The professor noted that ICE has expanded dramatically in the past year, doubling from 10,000 agents to 20,000 in 2025. At the same time, the agency cut training requirements nearly in half, reducing the program from 13 weeks to eight weeks.
"So now these federal agents who are frequently very new on the job with very little training and the wrong training for this work are confronting suspects who are sometimes angry, sometimes they're dealing with civilians who are really resentful of their presence, and then bad things are happening," Pelfrey said.
Pelfrey pointed out that Minneapolis officials, like Richmond's police chief and mayor, have said they will not cooperate with federal agents in terms of sharing individual or license plate reader data. This non-cooperation makes tensions even more difficult to manage, and he says we can expect such animosity to spread..
"I expect that in cities that are unhappy about the presence of ICE, such as Chicago and Atlanta and Boston and Minneapolis, there's going to be a lot of resistance, far more than there was last week," said Pelfrey. "There are going to be protests. There's going to be people standing in the path in the way of ICE agents, trying to intercede as they do their work. That's going to create conflict. And local law enforcement are going to be stuck in the middle. Just like today, when they were protesting Minneapolis, local law enforcement had to come in and deal with angry citizens who were not angry at them, but they were angry at ICE. But if you're wearing a uniform, then they're angry at you."
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