ICE Agents Tackle Photographer at Minneapolis Protest — Watch Him Throw His Camera Rather Than Lose the Shot
“Save the Images”: Photographer Tackled and Blinded by Federal Agents Throws Camera to Colleague in Desperate Act to Protect the First Amendment
In the heart of Minneapolis, just across from the imposing Whipple Federal Building, the air was thick not just with the sub-zero chill of a Minnesota winter, but with the acrid, stinging scent of chemical irritants. What began as a veteran-led protest quickly devolved into a scene of tactical aggression that felt more like a combat zone than a city street. At the center of this storm was John Minchillo, a professional photographer whose only weapon was his lens. His experience that day—being tackled, gassed, and blinded by federal agents—has become a visceral symbol of the escalating tensions between the press and federal enforcement agencies operating on American soil.
The incident occurred as agents in green tactical gear lined up in a strict military formation, preparing to move against the crowd. Minchillo was positioned across the street in the entrance of a parking lot, a vantage point intended to capture the scope of the federal response. Without warning, he was tackled to the ground by two or three agents. Face down on the pavement, Minchillo found himself in a state of sudden, absolute subjugation. Agents began screaming at him, leveling accusations that he had been “bear spraying” people—a claim Minchillo immediately denied.
As the agents pinned him down, a tear gas canister was activated mere inches from his head. “I could literally barely breathe,” Minchillo recalled, describing the moment as one of pure, existential fear. In that moment of suffocating darkness, his thoughts turned to the images he had just captured. He knew that if he were pulled into the federal building, his equipment and the visual record of the day’s events might disappear forever. In a final act of professional instinct and defiance, he yelled his name, shouted “I can’t breathe” to alert bystanders, and threw his cameras toward a fellow journalist.
That colleague, a fellow reporter named John, locked eyes with Minchillo and caught the gear. While the press is traditionally expected to maintain a strict neutrality, the urgency of the moment transcended professional distance. “I just thought, I’m going to grab this and then do my best to get some images that covered it,” the reporter noted. The images saved in that exchange are a testament to the aggression Minchillo faced; one photo captures an agent’s hand reaching out, inches from Minchillo’s eye, preparing to discharge a canister of bear spray directly into his face.
The spray worked with brutal efficiency. Minchillo was blinded, his eyes erupting in a searing pain that made it impossible to see the world around him. Handcuffed and led into the federal building, he was processed while suffering from chemical burns and multiple wounds on his legs caused by pepper bullets—non-lethal projectiles that nonetheless leave significant physical and psychological marks. Even after his release, Minchillo’s commitment to his work remained unshaken; he refused to seek hospital treatment until he had successfully recovered his cameras from the colleague who had sheltered them.
When he finally looked at the photos days later, Minchillo was stunned by the raw intensity of the images. They depicted a level of aggression against individuals exercising their right to speak that felt entirely foreign to the Minneapolis he knew. “It appears like they can do what they want and there’s no repercussions,” he observed, reflecting on a “boiling point” that the city and the country seem to have reached.
Minchillo is quick to point out that while his experience was harrowing, it is only a fragment of a larger, more devastating pattern. He spoke of “rapid response networks” alerting citizens to agents tearing fathers from the arms of their children and the sight of small children being grabbed in federal sweeps. His story, and the story of the cameras he threw, isn’t ultimately about his own physical trauma; it is about the fundamental right of the public to witness the actions of its government.
“That photo really isn’t about me,” Minchillo said. “It’s about freedom of the press… people’s freedom themselves. How do you fight back against this? It deserves to be seen what’s going on around here.” As Minneapolis continues to be a flashpoint for federal enforcement and civil rights, the images saved in that parking lot serve as an immutable record of a moment when the line between law enforcement and state-sanctioned intimidation became dangerously blurred.