MINNEAPOLIS — Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is applauding students and staff at Roosevelt High School for standing up for freedom and America, and subtly hinted that he may once again be interested in running for the state’s top office.

“I did one term. I am owed a second,” he told reporters on Jan. 8. “I was leading a nice quite life. You’ve injected me back into this and will probably make me the governor of Minnesota.”

Ventura spoke with TV reporters when he stopped by Roosevelt, his alma mater, in the wake of recent events that included an ICE agent fatally shooting a woman on Jan. 7, and detaining a Minneapolis Public Schools employee at Roosevelt later that day.

The chaos at Roosevelt captured on video appeared to show a confrontation on school property as classes dismissed for the day with ICE agents deploying tear gas at the scene.

Ventura, a 1969 graduate of the school, said he did not see the video, but paid a visit to the south Minneapolis high school to show his support.

“I am proud of what they did in keeping ICE off this campus,” Ventura said. “We don’t need federal troops coming in here without warrants. Good for these people that stood up. They are teaching students that we have to be a country of law and a country of the Constitution. Go Teddies.”

Ventura called the killing of Renee Good a “tragedy” and did not hold back, warning that the United States is fast becoming a third-world country where the military does police work in cities.

“This is what happens in a dictatorship,” said Ventura, who was governor from 1999 to 2003. “Wake up. Read your history of Germany and start comparing tactics of what happened in 1930s Germany to what is happening here.”

Ventura, who said he had not watched the news in a very long time, stopped short of saying if he will make a bid for the state’s top office now that Gov. Tim Walz has said he won’t seek re-election.

“Somebody has to clean up what the Democrats and Republicans constantly wreck,” he said. “Freedom is not arresting people without a warrant. We have a system here called the Constitution.” But the Republicans, he said, “they could care less about it.”

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