Amid ICE Raids, Minneapolis Climbers Abandon Their Climbing Goals to Protect Each Other

Somewhere in Minneapolis, an ice climber waits behind closed doors, too afraid to step outside.

Alejandro*, who speaks with Climbing on the condition of anonymity, is an all-around climber in his mid-thirties who has been living in the Twin Cities for 10 years. In 2020, during quarantine, he picked up a book about climbing and became obsessed—not with one style, but all of them. “The same season I started rock climbing, I started ice climbing,” he says. “I love all the disciplines.” After making friends with a visiting mountain guide from Mexico, he learned how to multi-pitch on Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, and swung his first ice tools in Ouray, Colorado. “Since then, I’ve dedicated my existence 100% to climbing,” he says. Today, his lifelong goals are lofty and diverse: onsight 5.12 trad, send 5.13b sport, and boulder V10.

Taylor Krosbakken, a 36-year-old adventure climber and former president of the Duluth Climbers Coalition, remembers meeting Alejandro at Sandstone Ice Park, just north of the Twin Cities. “He was just an absolute bundle of joy and energy,” Krosbakken says. “He was my favorite person to run into. He’s been doing multi-pitch ice in Colorado and all sorts of really cool, big stuff in the last couple of years. I never thought to ask about his immigration status.”

This winter, Alejandro’s main goal was to onsight a WI5+ ice route: Killer Pillar (WI5-6 M5+ R) in Ouray, Colorado. Besides that, he wanted to get more confident on WI5 routes and push his mixed climbing grade to M9 or M10. His ultimate dream is to gain the all-around mountain skills necessary to attempt iconic summits like Patagonia’s Cerro Torre. “When I’m talking about [wanting to get more confident on] WI5s, I mean onsighting on a multi-pitch, in an alpine environment, at high altitude, and with a backpack on,” he says. “You have to onsight. Onsight or die—that’s my phrase.”

But instead of training for Killer Pillar, bouldering at the gym with his friends, or even working his day job, Alejandro has spent the past 30 days sheltered in his house for fear of being targeted by ICE agents, who have proliferated across his city. Outside, helicopters keep the city on alert with their incessant buzz. Now, more than ever, Alejandro is aware of the immediate risk of being deported to Mexico. Any encounter with immigration enforcement agents, who regularly demand proof of citizenship from people on the street, could cost him everything.

“You won’t believe me, but the feeling is like the German Nazi era,” he says. “I’ve been so frustrated, honestly, because when you don’t climb, after three or four days you’re like, ‘What’s going on? I have to go to the gym.’ I feel a lot of anxiety when that happens. My sleep schedule has been altered … My goals, obviously, are fucked.”

An “intense energetic shift”

The same question seems to emerge every time climbers rally around a political issue in a climbing context: Why do we make climbing political?

For Minneapolis climbers, the answer to that question arrived in full force about two months ago when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched Operation Metro Surge on December 1 in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. One month later, on January 6, DHS sent an additional 2,000 ICE agents to the Twin Cities in what ICE Director Todd Lyons called “the largest immigration operation ever.” The Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLauglin, stated that the purpose of the operation was “to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” citing a lack of cooperation from Minnesota law enforcement. On January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed a mother and poet named Renée Good on January 7, videos of the controversial killing reached more than eight in 10 Americans and sparked more than 1,000 nationwide anti-ICE protests. The next week, ICE and Border Patrol agents, including agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, attacked, disarmed, and fatally shot ICU nurse Alex Pretti. The second killing occurred just one block away from the Vertical Endeavors Minneapolis climbing gym, which temporarily closed the following Monday.

Hans Adamsson, a full-time routesetter at Bouldering Project, says he’s witnessed an “immense energetic shift” in the Minneapolis community as a whole and its climbing community. Today, he says, everyone carries their passports and proof of citizenship to the gym, despite the fact that U.S. citizens are not legally required to provide identification to ICE agents. Still, this precaution doesn’t guarantee safety. “[ICE] has shown that they don’t really care about that,” says Adamsson. “Even when presented with papers … They’re taking just about anybody that they want into captivity.” In one high-profile case in December, ICE officials detained Musahir Hussen, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen who testified to Congress that ICE refused to look at his passport card before forcing him into an SUV.

Adamsson has seen Minneapolis climbing gyms evolve from lighthearted training areas into staid organizing spaces. “There’s very much a somber attitude now,” he says, “and most discussions are surrounding resistance and helping each other engage in community involvement—in working food drives and coordinating shifts for observing the streets.”

About two-thirds of gym climbers have abandoned their personal climbing goals, Adamsson explains, in order to focus on community support. “Life is not normal right now, so we cannot continue as normal. I’ve seen people canceling trips, not climbing outside … It certainly feels like an ‘all hands on deck’ moment.”

From the routesetter perspective, after Ross shot Good, there were still a few people in his personal sphere who remained apathetic. But after Ochoa and Gutierrez shot Pretti, everything changed. “Pretty much immediately after the awful Alex Pretti shooting, there was a very palpable shift in most folks that seemed to be on the fence,” he says. “The larger gravity of what is happening really sank in for those people. And that is the precise moment where I think that two-thirds of the climbing community shifted.”

Climbers join the resistance

For the past few months, Minneapolis-based Kaegan Recher had been working toward one vision: Locking his ice axe into the chiseled limestone of the Stanley Headwall, 500 feet above ground in the Canadian Rockies. He’d first climbed on the legendary Headwall last year, scoring an ascent of Nemesis (WI6) in below-zero temperatures, and couldn’t wait to get back.

“This year, I really wanted to climb Nightmare on Wolf Street,” he says, referring to another WI6+ M7+ line that appears in the 2021 film The Alpinist. “But I told [my partner], ‘Hey, I can’t commit to anything right now. Everything’s off until this occupation is over.’”

During the first month of Operation Metro Surge, Recher didn’t get involved in any sort of community watch or activism. “I’m not a politically outspoken person 99% of the time,” he admits. Instead, he spent his free time recruiting his friends to go ice climbing at one of the three ice parks nearby. “I was mostly focused on getting in ice shape to go out to the Canadian Rockies and do some big stuff.”

He’s a world away from that now. “I haven’t thought about that in weeks.”

When Ross shot Good, Recher felt like a line in the sand had been crossed. His Canadian Rockies trip suddenly seemed frivolous. On January 23, Recher launched a GoFundMe for groceries for families in hiding, hoping to raise $500. It has raised more than $11,000 to date. Soon after, he joined a group of legal observers who track ICE activity and broadcast warnings to Minneapolis residents. On a normal day, he’ll drive around with a crew of mostly other climbers. “We’re recording; we’re being loud to alert neighbors and vulnerable community members of ICE’s presence,” he says.

While Recher says his group does not break any laws, his routine doesn’t come without danger. ICE agents have repeatedly contested the line between observation (legal) and obstruction (illegal), sometimes violently attacking observers who follow their cars. “The consequences are very clear,” says Recher. “There are federal charges for peacefully protesting.” He compares being in the presence of masked gunmen to being 20 feet runout above your last bolt. “It’s fucking scary,” he says. “Just forcing yourself to relax and not overgrip—it’s kind of the same thing.”

A different kind of danger

Back in 2001, Recher and his friend, Taylor Krosbakken, each climbed El Capitan within a week of each other—Recher on the Salathé (5.9 C2; 3,500ft), Krosbakken on the Nose (5.9 C2; 3,000ft). Fifteen years later, the two climbers found themselves 1,700 miles away, in negative-10 degree weather, walking side-by-side toward a very different kind of danger. It was January 24, and 100 ICE agents stood around the block where Ochoa and Gutierrez had killed Pretti just hours before.

“We showed up at the scene to protest,” said Krosbakken, “and were a block south of the murder. There was a clear yellow police line to not cross. And nobody crossed it. And they shot us with tear gas, with pepper spray, and threw concussion grenades at us … That was a group of people that were peacefully protesting and were attacked by the federal government. It was something I never thought I’d see in my life.”

Recher says that he was among those tear gassed. In addition, an unidentified ICE agent shot Krosbakken’s leg with a rubber bullet, which hit his iPhone in his pocket, destroying it. He speculates that if the bullet had missed the iPhone, it would have broken skin.

“Everyone has a role”

Long before he cofounded USA Ice Climbing, Minnesota-born Carter Stritch spent two years on the road, rotating seasonally between Moab, Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne, Squamish, and Calgary. Today, he’s a veteran of the competitive ice climbing scene, and often teaches at Minnesota’s winter festivals. In mid-January, Stritch was preparing to attend this year’s Sandstone Ice Fest when he got word that an ICE agent had killed Good.

Within hours, he decided to get involved. “My goal is not to stop them from deporting illegal criminals and rapists or whatever words like Pam Bondi and the woman who shot her dog are saying,” he says. “It’s really just documenting and stopping them from stepping on our Constitutional rights and hurting my neighbors. I look at it as self-defense.”

A few days later, Stritch pulled a yellow vest over his premium down layers—spoils from his time as a sponsored athlete—and drove to a neighborhood occupied by mostly Somali Americans. Standing on a street corner near the main road, he held a whistle, ready to warn the community if ICE drove in.

Everybody knew why he was there. “People were like, ‘Do you want samosas? Beef samosas?’” he says. “Then somebody else will be like, ‘Do you want tea?’” He remembers one woman stopping her car, then getting out to thank him, crying. “She was like, ‘You make people feel so much safer,’” he says.

Stritch, who only attended his first protest a month ago, emphasizes that there’s a job for everyone, regardless of how “political” they feel. “You can go and patrol, you can protest, you can be a plate checker,” he lists. “If you’re a project manager and you’re great with that sort of thing, you can be a dispatcher.” Less political actions include food delivery, meeting released detainees outside the Whipple Federal Building with winter coats and temporary rides, and sheltering animals left behind after raids. “There’s a role for you to play, no matter matter what your skill set is.”

Stritch recalls a memory from his days on the road as a roving climber. “I had a friend who was dirtbagging alongside me that ended up being here illegally,” he says. “I think about that a lot. I don’t know their legal status now; I assumed they’d figured something out, but they were here, working jobs, paying taxes, because they wanted to be a part of our society.”

Waiting out the storm

Still in hiding, Alejandro follows the news and observes the resistance put up by his neighbors and the climbing community. “In December, it was too early; I was feeling isolated by the community,” he says. “But right now I feel proud of the state, because the state has been fighting against this.”

Over the past decade, Alejandro has learned to keep his undocumented status a secret from most of his climbing partners. “When people ask me, I usually say I have legal status,” he says. In the past, when he’s shared his status with women he’s dating, they’ve ghosted him. “After a lot of experience, I made the decision to keep it a secret, because you don’t know people’s political opinions.”

Last year, he turned down a trip to Denali in Alaska, simply because he wouldn’t be able to fly without a Real ID. Whenever he gets invited on international climbing trips, he’ll find an excuse to decline. “Usually people are like, ‘Dude, we should go to El Potrero Chico. That would be amazing,’” says Alejandro. “Sometimes, I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ Or sometimes I’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s the ice climbing season.’”

Despite his status, Alejandro considers himself a local Minnesotan climber—and he hopes to eventually join the ranks of his heroes, many of whom are Latino immigrants. When I ask him for specifics, he launches into a long list of names, including Colombian alpinist Andres Marin (“This is a guy who makes his own way in the world”); Ecuadorian alpinist Joshua Jarrin (“His alpine draws all have the tiny Edelrid Nineteen G carabiners, and you have to use them with gloves”), and fellow Minnesotan legend Scott Backes (“He’s 65 years old, and he could kick everyone’s ass on drytooling or ice climbing”).

Returning to Mexico would mean taking a step back from his climbing goals, for both financial reasons and access reasons. “In Mexico, if you want to be a climber, you cannot be poor,” Alejandro explains. If he manages to find a high enough wage to afford a living—and pay for his climbing gear—he’d still be limited by Mexico’s lack of hard ice routes, which only exist on Pico de Orizaba’s high-altitude slopes. “It will be so difficult to get better on ice,” he admits. “So I feel a little sad about that.”

The alpinist has still not decided whether he will return to Mexico or stay in Minneapolis. In his isolation, both options seem equally viable—and yet, somehow, it’s an impossible choice. He confesses, “My biggest fear is that [ICE] will kill me. I’ve been observing, and I’ve seen that they don’t care.”

If he’s not deported, he says that he’d love to climb in Indian Creek next year. Not this year, obviously: if everything calms down, he’ll still need to work hard to make up for lost income. For now, he’s been selling his possessions just in case he does end up deported. But there are a few things he can’t bear to part with: his ropes, draws, cams, and ice tools.

“This is a little dumb,” he says, “but in my perspective, if I have my climbing gear, I’m okay. I can start from zero again.”

Editor’s note: On February 12, border czar Tom Homan announced that Operation Metro Surge has “yielded a successful result” and that most of the 2,000 ICE agents in the Twin Cities area will be withdrawn this week, leaving behind “a small footprint” of agents to “transition full command and control … back to the field office.” ICE has acquired leases for 150 new detention facilities in nearly every state, with most facilities to be established outside major metropolitan areas.

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