A recent NBCNews clip of St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her has upset Minnesota citizens online for stating she now carries her ID and a passport card at all times because, as she put it, “I don’t know when I’m going to be detained, when I’m going to be approached” by immigration officers. What may have been intended as a candid expression of fear instead landed as an admission that their mayor feels powerless in the face of ICE activity in her own city.
A dominant thread running through the discussion is frustration with federal immigration enforcement and what many see as a vacuum of local leadership.
“Yea her literal message to the city she’s supposed to lead is that she’s terrified. Jesus. Christ.”
Others argued that by publicly stating she carries identification out of fear, the mayor unintentionally normalized the very behavior many residents find alarming: the idea that citizens should be prepared to prove they belong.
“Everyone who looks like her in Minnesota are keeping their ‘papers’ handy now,” another user wrote.
Several commenters pointed out that Her campaigned on standing up to ICE, making her current tone feel like a betrayal of the expectations she had set. As one user put it:
“She campaigned on standing up to ICE. Leadership is a burden, and she needs to stand up.”
Some Redditors went further, arguing that Her, precisely because she is the mayor, should be modeling defiance rather than caution. Others criticized the statement as overly self-referential, especially while residents without legal resources or public visibility face the same fears with far higher stakes.
“There are people in her constituency in custody right now… and she makes a self-referential anecdote to sound like she’s connected to the people?”
The sense that Minnesota lacks a coordinated pushback against ICE surfaced repeatedly. While state officials, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, have filed lawsuits against the federal government over immigration enforcement, many commenters felt that city leadership has failed to match that confrontational tone.
Not everyone piled on, though. A minority of commenters urged empathy, noting that Her is newly elected and uniquely vulnerable as a woman of color whose family has already been targeted.
“She does not need to be a political martyr,” one user wrote. “Why does she have to risk her safety because you want a stronger response?”
Still, even among those voices, the expectation remained that leadership requires more than acknowledgment of fear. As another commenter summarized:
“She doesn’t have to be a martyr, but she has to be a leader.”
The intensity of the response speaks to something larger than one mayor or one comment. Across the thread, Minnesotans expressed a growing sense of dread that ICE activity has crossed from policy dispute into everyday terror, and that elected officials are struggling to meet the moment.
Whether Mayor Her’s remarks ultimately resonate as honesty or weakness, Minnesotans are clearly demanding resistance in huge numbers.
