The fight over Enbridge's Line 3 tar-sands pipeline across northern Minnesota produced roughly a thousand arrests in the summer and fall of 2021 — Anishinaabe water protectors defending wild-rice watersheds and treaty territory alongside thousands of allies. Prosecutors in rural counties charged lockdown protesters with felony theft and "obstruction of legal process," and some faced the state's new gross-misdemeanor trespass-on-critical-infrastructure offense.

What set Line 3 apart was the financing: a permit condition required Enbridge to fund a state-managed escrow account that reimbursed local police for pipeline-related enforcement, ultimately paying sheriffs' offices millions of dollars for surveillance, riot gear, and overtime spent policing the company's opponents. Civil-liberties groups called it a privately funded police force; most of the serious charges were eventually reduced or dismissed, but the arrests achieved their operational purpose — the pipeline entered service in October 2021.