With 1,500 troops reportedly on standby to deploy to Minnesota, tensions are rising in the state as protests continue against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. US officials say they are targeting the “worst of the worst” but critics warn migrants with no criminal record and US citizens are being detained, too.

“It could be anybody,” says Sunshine, as she drives around her neighbourhood, St Paul – one of the so-called Twin Cities, along with Minneapolis. Snow and ice swirl over the tarmac in the bitter wind.

Sunshine is not her real name – she has asked to use a pseudonym because of fears she could be targeted for her actions.

“I have decided for my own safety to give them more space,” she says, referring to the unmarked patrol cars ahead, driven by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents she is trying to track.

Each day, residents in loosely organised groups drive around their neighbourhoods trying to spot ICE agents and film them, they say, to hold them to account.

“I, we, have the legal right to drive on the streets of our own city and we have the legal rights to observe [the ICE agents], but they seem to have forgotten that,” Sunshine says.

The streets of Minneapolis feel like a battle of wills between a Republican president pressing the boundaries of his power and a Democratic city and state pushing back.

This week as the temperature plummeted, protests intensified against ICE agents outside the federal building hosting them.

Minnesota officials have urged protesters to stay orderly and peaceful, and local officials have said the majority have stayed trouble-free. But at times there have been clashes, with the authorities deploying tear gas and pepper balls to disperse crowds.

On Friday, a US federal judge issued an order limiting the crowd control tactics that can be used by ICE agents toward peaceful protesters in Minneapolis.

Judge Katherine Menendez said federal agents cannot arrest or pepper spray peaceful demonstrators, including those monitoring or observing ICE agents.

Trump has vowed to press on with his mass deportation drive in Minnesota, with thousands of federal agents deployed to the state.

Many of them were sent in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Minneapolis woman, Renée Good, 37, by an ICE agent on 7 January.

The circumstances surrounding her death remain contested, with the Trump administration saying the ICE agent who shot her acted in self-defence, while local officials argue the woman was attempting to leave and posed no danger. The FBI is investigating the shooting, but officials in Minnesota say they have been denied access to evidence.

Good’s killing has focused the minds of many members of this community who are determined to reverse Trump’s campaign.

In her car, Sunshine spots two unmarked vehicles with darkened windows containing ICE agents.

We follow them to a nearby neighbourhood, where the two cars proceed to drive slowly and repeatedly around the block in circles, in what is seemingly a diversion tactic to take Sunshine away from a shopping centre immigrants often use.

“This is the game. But if they’re doing this with me, they’re not putting their hands on someone,” she says.

“So, yes, it’s gas money and it’s my time and I’m okay with that.”

The week after Good’s death there was a second shooting involving a federal officer in Minneapolis.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said an officer shot a man in the leg in Minneapolis after being attacked with a shovel as he tried to make an arrest of a Venezuelan migrant who entered the US illegally.

After the incident, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agent was “beat up” and “bruised”, adding ICE officers were “following protocols that we have used for years” from before the Trump administration.

The man’s family has disputed the DHS’ version of events in an interview with the Washington Post, saying he was shot in the doorway and not during a scuffle in the street.

Minneapolis is the fifth major city to be targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown after his election pledge for the biggest deportation operation of undocumented migrants in history.

The campaign, which remains popular with most Republicans and especially Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) supporters, has sparked a fierce backlash in the Democrat-led cities where operations are taking place.

On Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators confronted and chased away a small group attempting to hold a pro-ICE and anti-Islam rally.

Counter-protesters converged on the event organised by far-right activist Jake Lang, who was pardoned by Trump after being charged with crimes related to the US Capitol riots on 6 January 2021. Lang had vowed to burn a Quran outside City Hall, however it is not clear if he carried out his plan.

Minnesota is home to the largest community of Somali immigrants in the US, the majority of whom are US citizens. The president has said they should “go back to where they came from” and described the community as “garbage”. He launched the immigration crackdown in December after some Somali immigrants were convicted in a massive fraud of state welfare programmes.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz recently said he would end his bid for re-election amid the fraud scandal. But he has accused Trump and his allies of seeking to take advantage of the crisis to play politics.

Against this backdrop, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 19th Century law that allows active-duty military personnel to be deployed for law enforcement within the US, to quell the city’s resistance to his immigration campaign.

On Friday the Justice Department opened a criminal probe into the Democrats Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of attempting to impede federal immigration operations. Walz said the move was “weaponising the justice system against your opponents”.

In a post on social media, Trump called protesters in the city “traitors, troublemakers and insurrectionists” and accused them of being “in many cases, highly paid professionals”.

In response to this characterisation, Sunshine says: “I’m definitely not being paid.

“I think that I’m doing what I’m doing because I love my neighbours and watching them being racially profiled in the streets of our own our city.”

She adds: “We have to protect one another.”

Federal agents have been accused of racial profiling by observers, something the Trump administration denies.

Near a Mexican restaurant, we stop the car and another observer who calls herself Misko gets out of her car, heading towards Sunshine, visibly distressed.

The two women embrace. Misko is struggling for breath as she recounts what just happened.

“Just around the corner. Two of them blocked me in, then they came out. [One agent] had an assault rifle. He was pounding on my window,” she says.

DHS officials did not respond to questions from the BBC about the incident.

Despite the encounter, Misko later tells me she won’t be deterred. With the president also renewing his threat to send in troops, Minneapolis feels in the grip of a deepening crisis, and no-one seems prepared to slow it down.