Police arrested several demonstrators Saturday outside a federal building just south of Minneapolis, breaking up a protest marking the one-month anniversary of a Minnesota woman’s death at the hands of an immigration officer.

Renee Good was killed on 7 January as she was driving away from immigration officers in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Her death and the killing of another Minneapolis resident, Alex Pretti, just weeks later have stoked outrage nationwide over Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Scores of protesters gathered across the street from the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building around midday, throwing bottles and sex toys at a line of police guarding the property. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that officers arrested a handful of protesters after the crowd starting throwing chunks of ice. A deputy was hit in the head, and a squad vehicle’s windshield was smashed, according to a statement the newspaper obtained from the Hennepin county sheriff’s office.

Police declared the gathering unlawful and ordered protesters to leave. Many complied, the Star Tribune reported, but about 100 remained in a standoff with deputies, state troopers and state conservation officers.

Video circulating on social media shows several protesters being forced to the ground and taken into custody. One person, as they appear to be placed in handcuffs, says: “I was here delivering pizza for the protesters. I had no idea that this was happening. I moved to the side of the curb when they started rushing everyone and now they’re arresting me. I am a peaceful protester delivering pizza and they’re arresting me.”

No one from the sheriff’s office responded to email, voicemail and text messages from the Associated Press on Saturday afternoon requesting a copy of the statement and inquiring about how many people were arrested, whether anyone was injured and what led up to the arrests.

Meanwhile on Saturday, hundreds of people gathered on a snow-covered field in a Minneapolis park to honor Good and Pretti. Event organizers echoed recent criticisms of the immigration crackdown across Minnesota, characterizing it as a federal occupation.

A Lakota spiritual leader, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, led a ceremony at the front of the crowd filled with people holding signs and American flags. Others shared music and poetry to honor the two people who have become central figures in the polarizing immigration debate in recent weeks.

A federal immigration officer shot and killed Good , a 37-year-old mother of three, in her car in Minneapolis on 7 January. Three agents surrounded her Honda Pilot SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from Good’s home. Bystander video show an officer approaching the SUV, which was stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle.

The vehicle began to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulled his weapon and immediately fired at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moved toward him. The Trump administration has painted Good as a domestic terrorist who tried to run over an officer with her vehicle. State and local officials have rejected that characterization.

Pretti was killed on 24 January during a scuffle with immigration officers on the street. Bystander video shows a half-dozen officers taking Pretti to the ground. One spots Pretti’s gun, which he was licensed to carry, and shouts: “He’s got a gun.” Two officers then open fire.

The Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, on Wednesday announced the administration would pull 700 immigration officers from Minnesota – roughly a quarter of the officers deployed to the state – after state and local officials agreed over the past week to cooperate by turning over arrested immigrants. Homan did not say when the administration would end its crackdown in the state, however.

Good’s wife, Becca Good, issued a statement Saturday saying that the immigration effort is hurting people in Minneapolis and no one knows their names.

“You know my wife’s name and you know Alex’s name, but there are many others in this city being harmed that you don’t know – their families are hurting just like mine, even if they don’t look like mine,” Becca Good said in the statement. “They are neighbors, friends, co-workers, classmates. And we must also know their names. Because this shouldn’t happen to anyone.”

Marina Dunbar contributed reporting.

A growing “unsung army” of 1 million people with full-time caring responsibilities needs better support, according to a report that found one in three unpaid carers from poorer backgrounds were unable to work because of their duties.

The trend is the result of an ageing society and rising ill-health and disability concentrated in the poorest half of the country’s working-age families, the Resolution Foundation’s research found.

Almost one in three working-age adults in lower-income families had a disability, compared with fewer than one in five in better-off families, the thinktank said.

It added that in homes of modest means, 1 million people had caring responsibilities of 35 hours or more a week – the equivalent of a full-time job – making it challenging to secure paid work.

Mike Brewer, the deputy chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain is getting older and sicker, while a greater share of its population has a disability. While these trends affect the whole of society, they are starkest in the poorest half of working-age families across the country.

“While we talk a lot about the effects of ageing and ill-health, the implications on demand for unpaid care is largely absent from political debate.

“That’s despite Britain having an ‘unsung army’ of 1 million people who do at least 35 hours of unpaid care work every week – equivalent to a full-time job.

“It is time to provide better support for these carers and their families, just as we have done with working parents in recent decades.”

In response, a government spokesperson said: “We understand the huge difference carers make, as well as the struggles they may face.

“That’s why we’ve delivered the biggest ever cash increase in the earnings threshold for carer’s allowance, whilst unpaid carers can also receive support, including short breaks and respite services, through the Better Care Fund.

“Alongside this, we are reviewing the implementation of carer’s leave and considering the benefits of introducing paid carer’s leave.”

In 2024, a Guardian investigation revealed that tens of thousands of unpaid carers, most of them already in poverty, had received large bills for overpayments that ran into thousands of pounds as a result of failures by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Those affected unwittingly fell foul of earnings rules despite a promise in 2019 by the DWP’s permanent secretary, Peter Schofield, that new technology would eradicate the problem of overpayments.

In the five years after the verify earnings and pensions tool, known as VEP, was presented as a solution to the problems of carer’s allowance, more than 262,000 overpayments totalling in excess of £325m were clawed back from carers, and 600 carers were prosecuted and received criminal records, according to the National Audit Office.

As a result of the investigation, Labour set up an independent review of the allowance and raised the earnings limit for those claiming it.

After the Sydney Harbour Bridge was swarmed by 40 or so ebikes and e-motorcycles on Wednesday, the Australian government said the country faced a “real emergency”.

“[Illegal ebikes] are a total menace on the road,” the health minister, Mark Butler, said on Friday.

“Kids have done stupid things on bikes ever since the penny-farthing [but] the injuries that are coming into our hospital emergency departments are absolutely devastating.

“We’ve got to make sure we stop these things coming into the country [and] police are given the powers to crack down, to take them away, to crush them, to destroy them.”

Ebikes have been hailed as a climate-friendly solution to city traffic congestion, transport emissions and even youth social media addiction, offering Australians a means to get more exercise and save money.

But they have come with a cost – and even taken lives.

The state of New South Wales recorded 226 injuries related to ebikes in 2024. In just the first seven months of 2025, that had already to surged to 233 injuries plus four deaths.

The rest of Australia has faced the same issue, with legal ebikes involved in 239 crashes in 2025 in Queensland, four of which were fatal, according to preliminary police data.

For teenagers such as Ben Boucher, 16, ebikes have become a source of independence. Boucher bought his in late 2025 with savings from a part-time job. Most of his grade has started riding to school, cutting commutes to just 10 minutes, he says.

“It’s just easier to get around,” the Manly student says. Suddenly everyone seems to have one: “[there’s] so much hype”, he says.

But he is also aware of the dangers. “I see these tiny kids riding them and I think that’s dangerous because they don’t understand road rules or anything,” Boucher says.

Francisco Furman, owner of Manly Bikes, in Sydney’s north, says sales began to surge in 2022. But after yet another death in December, this time on a rental-share ebike, the normally busy Christmas period went quiet.

“We had a lot of cancellations, which is really affecting our business in a big way, we hold less stock,” he says.

‘Close the barn door’

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has said governments are “trying to close the barn door” on the ebike boom, with close to a million of these machines already on Sydney streets.

Industry experts attribute the boom partly to the federal government’s relaxation of import standards in 2021. Those standards were tightened again in late 2025, meaning road-legal ebikes will be required to have motors that only activate when the rider is pedalling and are restricted to speeds of 25km/h and power of 250 watts. NSW, which had permitted power as high as 500 watts, has cut that back to 250 watts.

But retailers, such as Tadana Maruta, owner of Pedl bikes in inner Sydney, doubt the power limits will have much effect.

“You put the drugs into the community and now people have tasted it, and now you want to take it out,” Maruta says. “It’s too late.”

He says ebikes can still be tuned to run at higher speeds, like cars, regardless of their engine’s wattage.

“All it takes is one clever kid, and there’s always one clever kid that will be able to do that,” he says.

Customers could also continue to buy ebikes that are illegal on public roads but permitted on private property: that go faster than 25km/h, and have high-powered throttles or no pedals at all.

Such products outsold the 25km/h road-safe versions, Maruta says. Retailers warn customers not to take them on streets but those warnings are widely ignored.

Illegal bikes and e-motorbikes joined the Harbour Bridge rideout, and accounted for more than half of the ebikes intercepted in a Melbourne police operation in August.

“There is a clear lack of understanding, or blatant disregard, for compliance,” the Victoria police assistant commissioner Glenn Weir said at the time.

Enforcement and education

Calls have also grown to crack down on “rideouts” like that on the Harbour Bridge, at a north Sydney golf course and through Melbourne’s Docklands district.

Group cycling events grew popular in Australian cities amid the Covid pandemic, often run for and by urban teenage boys and promoted on social media. Attendance swelled from dozens to hundreds.

Natalie Ward, the deputy leader of NSW’s opposition, has demanded “ebikie gangs” be barred from the streets.

Regular riders such as Brookvale couple Kieran and Elle sympathise with this view.

“They’re giving us a bad name,” says Kieran, travelling to dinner with his four- and one-year-olds strapped into the kids’ seats.

“We would never go over around 20 km/h, we just want to come down for a cruise on a Friday night.”

Daz, who works with rideout organiser Bike Life Australia, says police had started surrounding gatherings to issue move-on orders and fines in bulk.

“There’s an energy when you ride in a pack like that, doing tricks with your friends,” says Daz, who declined to share his surname. “The boys need it, it helps them get out.”

Bike Life is working to coordinate more closely with police, Daz says.

Heavy-handed enforcement should be the last resort, according to Bicycle NSW, which is calling for teenagers, parents and retailers to be taught the laws. The advocacy organisation is trialling an education program in hundreds of schools with the aim of rolling it out across the state.

Max*, a 15-year-old Sydney student, recalls a class where he cracked one egg with a model helmet, then another without, and observed the difference.

“I was just like, ‘man, I don’t want that to be my head’,” says Max, who asked to remain anonymous.

He unlocked his DiroDi Gen 4 fat tyre bike as soon as he got it in January but says he does not ride at high speed out of concern for his safety.

He says that concern is not shared by some of his classmates or their parents.

“I’m just wondering, like, do these people’s parents know they’re giving their 14-year-old kid a bike that can go over 50 km/h?” he says.

* not his real name