Combining street-level filming, dashcam video and crowdsourced evidence, They’re Here, a 25-minute documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Rachel Lauren Mueller, follows immigrants in hiding and Minneapolis residents tracking down ICE teams across the city.
Warning: This story contains images some viewers may find disturbing.
The film received its world premiere on 7 September in Venice Open, an out-of-competition section of the Venice Film Festival.
They’re Here opens like a pursuit thriller, with ICE agents and neighbourhood observers engaged in a car chase. The film then moves between volunteer warning networks, unmarked government vehicles, confrontations on snow-covered streets and the placement of detainees aboard deportation flights.
🚨#BREAKING: Watch as Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents display an «ICE OUT NOW» sign toward protesters during a detention in Minneapolis a few days ago.
— AMERICA Q NEWS_X 🇺🇲 (@Q_NewsAmerica) September 4, 2026
Video by @ScooterCasterNY pic.twitter.com/R8Lrbuckn8
At its centre is Edén Villa, a pseudonym used to protect the identity of a Mexican man who is hiding from immigration authorities with the help of their son. Other participants remain anonymous.
Poitras said the intention was to use cinema to «denormalise» violence that can become routine when it is compressed into the daily news cycle. The film’s language is openly polemical: its official synopsis describes the ICE operation as a «paramilitary occupation.»
UPDATE: At 34th & Park in Minneapolis, during an ICE raid and active protest, federal agents forcibly removed a woman from her car after she attempted to pass through the area, saying she had a doctor’s appointment.
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) January 13, 2026
Eyewitnesses report agents smashed her windows, cut her… pic.twitter.com/yI9bwQklnU
Filming from inside the neighbourhood
Mueller herself lives in South Minneapolis, near the site where an ICE agent killed 37-year-old Renée Good on 7 January. She began filming the operation that month, recording residents who used whistles to warn immigrant neighbours that agents were nearby.
The production expanded by collecting videos from witnesses and volunteer observers. A researcher also monitored deportation flights from Minneapolis airport and combined that information with data from Human Rights First to map enforcement activity, according to Business Doc Europe.
Read more: Melania Trump urges calm after fatal ICE shootings in Minneapolis
Read more: Venice Film Festival 2026: McDonagh, Boyle and Herzog lead the lineup
Poitras chooses urgency over length
Poitras and Mueller chose the short form for They’re Here to release the material quickly. The film covers an immigration operation, its human effects, and the organised response, all in 25 minutes.
The film will screen at the New York Film Festival on September 29 and 30 with three other shorts in the Currents strand. Submarine Entertainment handles global sales, but a release date is unknown.
Citizenfour, Poitras’ real-time account of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the disclosure of classified US surveillance programmes, won the Academy Award for best documentary. Venice awarded her 2022 documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed a Golden Lion.
