Barack Obama sat down with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday to deliver his most direct public endorsement yet of the demonstrators who have mobilized against ICE operations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The former president framed the protests as a patriotic act — American citizens standing up for their values — and characterized federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota as lawless and unaccountable.
It was a carefully staged moment. Not a press conference, not a statement through a spokesperson, but a lengthy interview with a friendly progressive media figure, designed to reach the activist base that once powered Obama's own political machine.
And the message was unmistakable: Obama wants the resistance to continue.
Obama's rhetoric escalated well beyond vague disapproval. He described ICE operations in the Twin Cities as "unprecedented" and rattled off a series of inflammatory claims about federal agents' conduct. In the interview, he said:
"It is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, St Paul, the way that federal agents, ICE agents were being deployed, without any clear guidelines, training, pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try to bait their parents, all the stuff that we saw, teargassing crowds simply who were standing there, not breaking any laws."
No sourcing for those specific claims. No investigation cited. No official finding referenced. Just Barack Obama's characterizations, delivered with the calm authority of a man who knows his words will be repeated without scrutiny by every legacy newsroom in the country, as The Guardian reports.
He then cast the protests in the broadest possible terms — not as opposition to immigration enforcement, but as a test of national character:
"Right now, we're being tested, and the good news is, what we saw in Minneapolis and St Paul, and what we're seeing in places across the country, including here in Los Angeles, has been the American people saying no. At least a good number of the American people saying, we're going to live up to those values that we say we believe in."
And his bottom line:
"As long as we have folks doing that, I feel like we're going to get through this."
"Get through this." As though enforcing federal immigration law is something the country must survive rather than something it chose through an election.
This isn't the first time Obama has weighed in. Last month, he and Michelle Obama released a joint statement calling the death of Alex Pretti — one of two people who died in connection with federal operations in the Twin Cities — "a heartbreaking tragedy" and "a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault." The statement also accused federal law enforcement and immigration agents of not operating "in a lawful or accountable way in Minnesota" and claimed the tactics employed by ICE and other federal agents seemed "designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city."
That language does real work. It doesn't just criticize specific incidents — it delegitimizes the entire enforcement apparatus. When a former president tells the country that federal agents are operating unlawfully, he is providing moral permission for obstruction. He's telling local officials, activists, and ordinary citizens that resisting federal law enforcement is not just acceptable but noble.
The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in connection with federal operations deserve scrutiny — every use of lethal force by government agents does. But note what Obama did not do: he did not call for an investigation. He did not call for due process. He did not wait for facts. He rendered his verdict and wrapped it in the flag.
There's a particular irony in Obama positioning himself as the champion of lawful, accountable government. His own administration deported millions of illegal immigrants. His own DHS conducted workplace raids and interior enforcement operations. The infrastructure he now decries didn't materialize from nowhere.
But the deeper problem isn't hypocrisy — it's strategy. Obama knows exactly what he's doing. By elevating Minneapolis as a model of resistance, he's signaling to Democratic mayors, progressive DAs, and activist organizations across the country that confrontation with federal immigration enforcement is the path forward. He referenced Los Angeles in the same breath as Minneapolis, drawing a line from the Twin Cities to every blue city in America.
He also offered what amounts to a theory of political change:
"The reason I point out that I don't think the majority of the American people approve of this is because ultimately, the answer is going to come from the American people. We just saw this in Minnesota, in Minneapolis."
The framing is deliberate. Obama wants the public to believe that street protests represent the majority opinion — that the crowds in Minneapolis speak for America. This is from the man who watched his party lose the White House in an election in which immigration enforcement was a central promise to voters.
Border czar Tom Homan said this week that the Trump administration would draw down its immigration operations in Minnesota following the two deaths. Many have credited the protests as the reason for the pullback, and Obama clearly wants that narrative cemented.
But the administration's decision to scale back in a specific locality after two deaths connected to federal operations is not the same as capitulation to protest movements. Operational adjustments happen. The conflation of a tactical drawdown with a political retreat serves Obama's narrative, not reality.
What the protests in Minneapolis have actually demonstrated is something different: that a sufficiently mobilized local population, backed by sympathetic city and state officials, can create enough friction to complicate federal enforcement. That's not a values victory. That's obstruction with better branding.
Obama closed his interview with hope for the next generation of American leaders — the kind of gauzy optimism that made him famous. But strip away the rhetoric, and the picture is stark. A former president of the United States is actively encouraging citizens to resist federal law enforcement operations targeting illegal immigrants. He's doing it from a platform designed to maximize reach among the activist left. And he's doing it while casting the agents carrying out those operations as rogue actors operating outside the law.
That's not a call for accountability. That's a call to arms — wrapped in the language of values so it goes down easier.
The American people spoke on immigration. They spoke in November. Obama just didn't like what they said.
