They were wearing high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, he noticed, even while parking their car. His search for the Wisconsin-based electrician advertised on car doors yielded no results.

On Tuesday, when they Nissan returned to the lot outside his restaurant, Ramirez, 31, filmed his confrontation with two men, who hid their faces as he approached and appeared to be wearing heavy tactical gear under their yellow vests.

“This is where our taxpayer money goes: renting these vehicles with fake tags to sit here and watch my business,” Ramirez yelled in the video.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about whether the men were federal immigration officials. But encounters like Ramirez’s are becoming commonplace.

As the sweeping immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents posing as construction workers, delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ICE activists.

Not all incidents are proven, but it raises the fear of a state it’s on the edgeadding to the concerns of legal groups about the Trump administration dramatic change in immigration enforcement tactics whole country.

“When you have people fearing that the electrical worker outside their home is going to be ICE, you invite public trust and confusion to a very dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is what you do when you’re trying to control a population, not trying to do routine, professional law enforcement.”

An ‘extreme degree’ of fraud

In the past, immigration authorities sometimes used disguises and other tricks, which they called tricks, to enter homes without a warrant.

The tactics became more common during President Donald Trump’s first term, lawyers said, prompting an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration agents of violating the US Constitution by posing as local law enforcement during home raids. A new one SETTLEMENT restricted practice in Los Angeles. But ICE scams remain legal elsewhere in the country.

However, the undercover operations reported in Minnesota appear to be a “much worse than what we’ve seen in the past,” Shah said, in part because they seem to be happening in plain sight.

Where past tricks were aimed at deceiving immigration targets, current tactics may also be a response to Minnesota’s extensive network of citizen observers seeking to call the attention of federal agents before they make an arrest.

At the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, the central hub of ICE activity in the city, activists told The Associated Press they saw agents getting out of vehicles with stuffed animals on their dashboards or Mexican flag decals on their bumpers. Pickups with boards or tools in their beds are also often found.

In recent weeks, federal agents have repeatedly shown up at construction sites dressed as workers, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer for the local immigrant rights group, Unidos MN.

“We’re seeing an increase in cowboy tactics,” he said, though he noted that the raids have not resulted in arrests. “Construction workers are good at distinguishing who is a real construction worker and who is dressed as one.”

Use vintage plates

Since the operation began in Minnesota, local officials, including Democratic Governor Tim Walz, have said ICE agents have been seen exchanging license plates or using fakes, a violation of state law.

Candice Metrailer, an antiques dealer in south Minneapolis, believes she has witnessed such an attempt herself.

On January 13, he received a call from a man who introduced himself as a collector, asking if his shop sold license plates. He said it was done. A few minutes later, two men dressed in street clothes entered the store and began looking through his collection of vintage plates.

“One of them said, ‘Hey, do you have anything new?'” Metrailer recalled. “Immediately, an alarm bell went off in my head.”

Metroiler came out as the boys continued to browse. A few doors down from the store, he saw an idling Ford Explorer with tinted windows. He memorized its license plate, then immediately plugged it into a crowdsourced database used by local activists to track vehicles involved in immigration enforcement.

The database shows a similar Ford with the same plates was photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks earlier.

When one of the men approached the register holding a white Minnesota license plate, Metrailer said he told him the store had a new policy against selling items.

Metrailer said he reported the incident to the Minnesota attorney general. A DHS spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

A response to the obstruction

Supporters of the immigration crackdown say the volunteer army of activists tracking ICE in Minneapolis is forcing federal agents to adopt new methods to avoid detection.

“Of course agents are adapting their tactics so they’re one step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, ICE’s former deputy director of enforcement and operations in New York City. “We have never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”

In nearly three decades in immigration enforcement, Mechkowski said he’s also never seen ICE agents disguise themselves as uniformed workers in the course of an arrest.

Earlier this summer, a DHS spokeswoman confirmed a man wearing a high-visibility construction vest is an ICE agent conducting surveillance. In Oregon, a natural gas company published guide last month on how customers can identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.

In the days since his encounter, Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he has been on alert for undercover agents. He recently stopped a locksmith who he feared might be a federal agent, before realizing he was a local resident.

“Everybody’s worried about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “They seem to be everywhere.”