A Minnesota photographer has been capturing the consequences of sanctuary policy in the Twin Cities for weeks. Chris Birt joined Liz Collin on her podcast to share what he calls the real story—how Minnesota’s largest city has become a proving ground for lawlessness and socialist insurgency.
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Birt first spoke out publicly about his work in the summer of 2024 after Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and candidate for vice president. He called what he captured in 2020 “totalitarian violence designed to destroy the system.”
Birt took his camera back to the anti-ICE protests and riots for weeks and watched his photos go viral and even propped up from behind the White House podium.
He shared with Collin his insights that he hopes will serve as a wakeup call.
“Unlike some of the leaders in the city … I spent the last three weeks covering what I’m seeing on the ground because I was worried, just like the George Floyd riots, that maybe the whole story wasn’t going to be told,” Birt said.
Birt believed the George Floyd riots felt more like organized anarchy.
“This time around, when I heard that Renee Good had been shot, I was down on the scene I think maybe 20 minutes later … But the characteristic of the protest then was it seemed more locally generated. It was heavily Somali-based. I would say probably 80% of the protesters were Somali. There was also a Hispanic element. And the leaders of the protest were both Somali and Hispanic. And the chants were ‘Down with ICE, F— ICE,'” he said.
“Things started to shift after the second shooting where an officer shot a man in the leg after he had been assaulted with snow shovels and broom handles. And that was anarchy returns to Minneapolis. That’s where the Latin Kings were involved in that. There were also other gang influences. The ICE agents’ cars had been abandoned and they were left like carcasses to be picked apart and totally desecrated. The image was one of like a third-world country, but even more than that, there were no police anywhere,” Birt said.
The White House then shared several of those photos from behind the podium during a press briefing.
Birt also believes there is a story to tell in the graffiti left behind.
“Near the [Alex] Pretti memorial there was graffiti that had been sprayed on a building directly across from that memorial and it said, ‘Death to Amerika.’ I’ve never seen that in the United States before. I’ve never seen it in Minneapolis. And I found that curious,” Birt said.
“Then when I went to the march last week, I was shaken to my core. I have seen the face of communism. I have been in China and looked at people that have been at the border being sent back to China. It’s the look of the living dead. What I was hearing in Minneapolis were chants that are the exact same chants that were used in the revolution of 1917,” he explained.
“It’s the same chant that Lenin has, which is all power to the Soviets. It was ‘All power to the people,’ followed by ‘Down, down with deportation, up, up with liberation.’ Every time you see or every time you hear that kind of language in a mass setting, you realize that it is the language of socialism,” Birt continued.
“What’s happening in Minneapolis right now is a tightly-organized, highly-focused ground game that is designed to serve as the battle royale between socialism and the American way of life,” he said.
Birt also pointed out how “liberation means eradication. It means eradication of our way of life. It means eradication of capitalism and its replacement by collectivism. That’s what I’m seeing now, and that’s why it’s so scary.”
“I went to liberal progressive colleges. They’re my friends and I’m worried that they don’t understand what it is they’re marching for,” he concluded. “The people that are in the trucks leading these marches are asking for deportation to go away and for a nation to not have borders because that’s what it means. You have to be able to deport people that are in the country illegally … you have to have that because a country without borders is not a country. And then they’re into eradicating society as they know it. In my pictures you’ll see this.”
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis" and "Minnesota v We the People."
