Agency & Resilience is a work of documentary photojournalism chronicling the ICE shootings in Minneapolis and the weeks of community response that followed on the city's streets.

On January 7, 2026, Renée Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration enforcement operation that had descended on the Twin Cities. Seventeen days later, on January 24, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and lawful gun owner with no criminal history, was shot by federal agents on Nicollet Avenue while coming to the aid of a bystander who had been pushed to the ground. What happened next became one of the most sustained expressions of civic grief and resistance in the city's history. Vigils. Marches. Memorials that grew and were rebuilt. Neighbors who kept showing up, week after week, refusing to let either death pass unwitnessed.

Trench was there with his camera. Across 168 pages of unflinching photographs, Agency & Resilience documents not a single event but a duration: the way a community metabolizes loss, organizes anger into purpose, and insists on being seen. These are images of candlelight and cardboard signs, of faces in cold Minnesota air, of the ordinary people who make up an extraordinary response.

The book is framed at the intersection of two formidable thinkers on photography: Susan Sontag, who questioned whether images of suffering numb us or move us, and Susie Linfield, who argued in The Cruel Radiance that photographs of political violence can be acts of solidarity rather than exploitation. Agency & Resilience takes up their debate in practice, asking what it means to watch, to record, and to act when the people killed were neighbors, one of them shot for the simple decency of helping someone in front of him.

A Minneapolis-based photojournalist and documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on PBS, Amazon Prime, and in Gannett publications including USA Today, Trench brings nearly a decade of protest photography, tens of thousands of frames made since 2017, to this account of his own city.

Readers of this book will find:

• Documentary photography from months of vigils, marches, and memorials in Minneapolis, from the January 7 shooting through the March 6 benefit concert
• A visual record of community response to Operation Metro Surge and federal immigration enforcement
• An engagement with the ethics of witnessing, in the tradition of Sontag and Linfield
• A portrait of a city, its neighborhoods, its winters, its people, in a moment of reckoning

Agency & Resilience is for readers of photobooks and photojournalism, for those who follow questions of civil liberties and immigration policy, and for anyone who believes that paying attention is a form of action.

Trench is an award-winning cinematographer and photojournalist whose work lives at the crossroads of documentary practice and visual storytelling. His images and films have appeared on PBS, Amazon Prime, Chicago Institute of Art, NPR, National Park Services, numerous Colleges / Universities and Gannett publications.

Across more than three decades behind the camera, in film, television, and editorial photography, he has covered subjects ranging from presidential campaigns to the Rolling Stones, and has produced hundreds of interviews in the health care arena and for EarthSayers, including conversations with Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, environmental policy leader Judith Enck, and a series of interviews on witnessing with author Paul Hawken, Chris Jordan and Regan Rosburg.

Trench began photographing political protests in 2017. That long-running documentary practice, nearly a decade of work in the streets of the Twin Cities and beyond, is the foundation of Agency & Resilience, his first photojournalism book.

He is the co-director and director of photography of the feature documentary Dodging Bullets: Stories from Survivors of Historical Trauma, which earned:

• Best of Fest at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival
• The Samuel Sprynczynatyk Storyteller Award for Best Documentary Feature
• Best Cinematography at the Covellite International Film Festival
• The Audience Award at the Queen City Film Festival
• Best Documentary at the Bigfork Film Festival

His broader career spans film and still imagery, motion graphics, and editing, with images and productions appearing through clients and outlets including Fortune 500 companies, universities, Health Care and nonprofits.

Trench is a producer and director based in Minnesota.

"The community response to ICE terror in Minnesota inspired people nationwide.

Agency & Resilience is a necessary record of the power of solidarity in confronting state violence." — Nina Berman, Photojounalist

"Agency & Resilience is a story of resilience and collective strength in the face of ICE enforcement—where fear meets courage, communities stand together, protect one another, and refuse to surrender their voice, freedom, or sense of belonging." — Name withheld, Minnesota Immigrant

"Agency and Resilience offers a powerful and compassionate look at how communities respond to trauma and injustice, using the Minneapolis ICE shooting as a vivid and emotional backdrop. The book highlights the strength, dignity, and determination of those affected, showing how ordinary people can transform fear into meaningful action. It's a moving, insightful read that leaves you inspired not only by the resilience of ordinary people but the need to fight back against oppression in our own Country." — GLA, Veteran

"History is often remembered through the people who chose to stand in its path. Agency & Resilience bears witness to the faces, voices, and acts of solidarity that filled the streets of Minneapolis." — MN, Immigrant

"Agency in Resilience is a heartbreaking and deeply important book.Through extraordinary photography and documentation, Trench bears witness to what happened in Minneapolis—the last words of Renée Good and Alex Pretti juxtaposed with 911 calls and images capturing the grief, outrage, fear, and aggression in the streets. It is difficult to look at because so much of what it captures feels unnecessary and cruel.And yet, this is also a book about what emerged in response: people gathering, grieving, protesting, caring for one another, and standing together as a community. Amid the violence, we see resilience. Amid the grief, hope.This is an important book at this moment in history because it preserves the reality of what happened and refuses to let us look away. Its impact is made even more meaningful by proceeds helping families affected by ICE.Some moments in history demand witnesses. Agency in Resilience is an act of witnessing." — SLT

"A beautiful and important documentation of the horrendous ICE surge our Twin Cities experienced." — Name withheld by request, Minnesota Witness

"Agency and Resilience is a powerful documentation of one of the most horrific moments in our nation's history. A picture speaks a thousand words. These images burn in my soul with both rage and compassion for the courage shown by my neighbors in Minneapolis." — Larry Long, Smithsonian Recording Artist

"Agency and Resilience is a dedication to Seeing, to Recognizing A Moment that Reveals: What's Real-It's,We the People with Courageous Love in Action, that Leads Our Way Forward — We Know it" — Barry

"Agency & Resilience so accurately captures the reality of the ICE raid in Minneapolis. It's a historical piece that will remind us all of the nightmare we endured." — Name withheld by request, Minnesota Witness

"Agency & Resilience provides an opportunity to more intimately experience a sad situation, and to move towards courage and hope." — Richard