Dylan Alverson stood amid tear gas and flash-bang grenades, on the frozen street where Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE agents in January, when he got the idea for what he later called an “absurd business move.” He decided to stop charging for food at Modern Times, the south Minneapolis cafe he’s run for 15 years.

“For the remainder of the government occupation, we will function as a free and donation-based restaurant,” he wrote on social media, two days after the shooting. The original intent of the change was to stop paying sales taxes to a government he said was “actively inflicting daily harm on its citizens.” The pay-what-you-wish restaurant would also have a new name: Post Modern Times.

Mr. Alverson’s decision came in a moment of forceful, widely publicized local resistance to Operation Metro Surge, which brought 3,000 federal immigration agents, along with widespread unrest, to Minnesota last winter.

More surprising, though, is what ensued in the weeks and months that followed. Post Modern Times thrived, even as the number of customers who don’t pay for food now hovers between 40 and 50 percent.