The Ecuadorian Foreign Affairs Ministry said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent tried to enter the country’s consulate in Minneapolis on Tuesday but was blocked by its staff.
“Consulate staff immediately prevented the ICE official from entering the consular building, thereby guaranteeing the protection of the Ecuadorians who found themselves in the consular building in that moment, and activating emergency protocols issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Movement,” the ministry said in a statement about the incident, which it says happened around 11 a.m.
In a video circulating on social media and geolocated by NBC News to the consulate, an employee is seen rushing to the door and opening it to a masked ICE agent. The agent tells the employee, “If you touch me, I will grab you.” The employee replies, “You cannot enter here. This is a consulate, this is a foreign government property.”
According to the video, after the agent leaves, the consular employee says he is making a call, and another employee says that the agents had followed people there.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry said it had issued “a note of protest” to the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador over what it described as an "attempted incursion," demanding such incidents “not be repeated."
The incident occurred during a mass deportation operation being conducted by some 3,000 heavily armed agents of ICE and the Border Patrol deployed to Minnesota under orders of President Donald Trump several weeks ago.
Neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the Border Patrol, immediately responded to requests from Reuters for comment.
Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry provided few other details. But eyewitnesses working in retail shops near the consulate said they saw immigration agents try to enter the building.
“I saw the officers going after two people in the street, and then those people went into the consulate and the officers tried to go in after them,” said one woman, who asked not to be named, citing a fear of retribution by the federal government.
The agents “weren’t able to enter the consulate, from what I could see,” she said.
Under an international treaty, a country’s embassies, consular offices and other diplomatic compounds are regarded as sovereign territory of that nation, protected under diplomatic immunity from unauthorized entry by agents of other governments.
Dubbed Operation Metro Surge, Trump’s immigration enforcement drive in Minneapolis has led to fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens on the streets of Minnesota’s most populous city, sparking weeks of protests there and across the country.
As political pressure for a de-escalation of tensions mounted, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, met Tuesday with the mayor of Minneapolis and the governor of Minnesota, seeking to defuse the crisis.
