Federal agents get an ice-cold reception in Minneapolis
Powerful stories of residents fighting back
Federal agents descended on Minneapolis last week after Donald Trump’s racist comments about the Somali people who make up a large and vibrant community there.
The city’s response has been inspiring.
Watch this video of South Minneapolis neighbors chasing away federal agents who had detained an East African man. A crowd of people is seen blowing whistles, filming the officers, and chanting “leave our neighbors alone”. The federal agents, some of whom carried rifles, eventually left without taking anyone into custody.
Listen to Lucia Webb, who was on her second day doing ICE watch -- following immigrations agents in her car -- when she was boxed in by four SUVs and surrounded by masked men. One agent threatened her with arrest for “impeding.” “You cannot do what you’re doing,” the agent said. “Yes, I can,” Webb replied.
“There’s a lot of us. There’s more of us than there are of them,” Webb said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio. “People underestimate the power that is already in their community and in their networks. We’re all here. We’re all doing it.”
Consider what happened at the Hola Arepa restaurant, where general manager Naomi Rathke confronted the federal agents who had entered her restaurant — and made them leave. Watch the video.
“They said, ‘We don’t need a warrant.’ I said, ‘Yes, you do,’” Rathke told WCCO news. The restaurant’s owner later shared tips for restaurants visited by federal agents on Instagram.
Read this article from Minnesota Public Radio:
A 55-year-old woman who is an American citizen was arrested early Tuesday after confronting ICE officers over the arrests of three of her neighbors in the Willard Hay neighborhood of north Minneapolis.
Susan Tincher was awakened a little before 6:30 a.m. by alerts on her phone that an ICE arrest was happening in her neighborhood. She walked over alone and asked one of the officers across the street from the home that was being raided if they were ICE. She said the officer told her to “get back.” Tincher refused, and said multiple agents approached her.
Tincher, a white woman in her mid-50s who stands 5’ 4” tall, insists she was at speaking distance from the agent and said that she did nothing to “impede” their actions.
“Pretty soon they were throwing me on the ground and handcuffing me and putting me in their unmarked truck,” Tincher said, estimating that the whole interaction just took a few seconds. “There were other watchers, who were asking me what my name was and everything, so I identified myself to them, then I started yelling, ‘Help!’ because I was being kidnapped.”…
Tincher has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours, where she saw about seven other detainees.
Tincher said she’s even more motivated after her arrest to volunteer to support immigrants in her community.
“I’m just so concerned about our neighbors, our peaceable neighbors, being abducted, and the worries their families are going through,” Tincher said. “I just don’t want this to be happening in our country.”
Students and staff at Augsburg University in Minneapolis tried to stop ICE agents from detaining a student in a university parking lot on Saturday. The agents pulled weapons and threatened the students and staff with arrest, Augsburg University President Paul Pribbenow told Minnesota Public Radio.
Here’s video of students at Burnsville High School, just south of Minneapolis, walking out of classes, chanting “No more ICE.”
Unicorn Riot, a non-profit media organization based in Minneapolis, has a wonderful rundown of resistance actions. It includes this video by independent journalist Louie Tran showing residents confronting ICE agents in the parking lot of an apartment complex. The agents tried to drive away amid heavy snow, got stuck in traffic, and used pepper spray against protesters – and the videographer -- as they tried to get away. Here’s another angle, which also shows a protester getting hit by an ICE SUV.
The Associated Press reported that “Federal agents used pepper spray to push through an angry crowd that blocked their vehicles as they checked identifications in a heavily Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis on Tuesday.” In fact, an AP photographer captured it all on video.
City Council Member Jamal Osman, a Somali American, told the AP that federal agents also went to a city-owned senior housing complex. “There, he said, a group of mostly white young people he called ‘heroes’ blew whistles to sound the alarm and confronted the agents, who responded with pepper spray.”
“Thank God so many people showed up there,” Osman told the AP. “(The agents) couldn’t get out of there because people showed up with their cars and whistles.”
Surveillance and Anger in New Orleans
Federal agents in New Orleans are evidently alarmed. They’re now watching the people watching them. The AP reports:
State and federal authorities are closely tracking online criticism and protests against the immigration crackdown in New Orleans, monitoring message boards around the clock for threats to agents while compiling regular updates on public “sentiment” surrounding the arrests, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Associated Press.
That same article includes yet more evidence that agents are not targeting “the worst of the worst”:
DHS and Republican leaders have framed the crackdown as targeting the most violent offenders. But the records reviewed by the AP identify only nine of the 38 people arrested in the first days as having criminal histories that rose beyond traffic violations — information the intelligence bulletins warn “should not be distributed to the media.”
New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said the stated goals of the operation to arrest violent offenders did not align with the reality of what is taking place.
“There’s literally no information being given to the city of New Orleans whatsoever,” Morrell said. “If the goal was for them to come here and augment existing law enforcement, to pursue violent criminals or people with extensive criminal histories, why wouldn’t you be more transparent about who you’ve arrested and why?”
Morrell and other officials have said the crackdown appears to be a dragnet focused on people with brown skin.
Other city leaders are furious, too. Another AP article reports:
New Orleans’ mayor-elect said Friday that a federal immigration crackdown launched this week is already causing harm as encounters between masked agents and residents, including some caught on video, has prompted public backlash in the blue city.
Frustrated city officials pointed to the case of Jacelynn Guzman, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen who was walking back to her Louisiana home from a trip to the grocery store on Wednesday when a truck pulled up beside her and two masked federal agents approached her, according to security footage obtained by The Associated Press.
Independent journalist Hamilton Nolan reports on what he calls “a fairly spectacular underground intelligence service” in New Orleans run by the immigrant support group Union Migrante.
Every day they blast out multiple sightings, photos, and videos, all verified and confirmed. Over time, it is likely that this kind of community intelligence will save lives and prevent some families from being torn apart. And, on a much shallower level, it is just satisfying to watch a video of an activist filming agents desperately trying to be inconspicuous in a parked SUV, walking by them and drawling, “I’m with Neighborhood Watch. You guys good? You guys need any help?”
The View from New York
Hunter Walker writes for Talking Points Memo about his two months spent reporting on the effect of Trump’s mass deportation agenda in New York:
Across the city, there is something of a modern underground railroad with programs offering services to migrants including food, clothing, and free clinics that provide advice and assistance with legal proceedings. Volunteers are also accompanying migrants as they face the gauntlet of masked ICE agents waiting in the halls of the courts downtown.
New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani shot a must-watch public service spot over the weekend. “We can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights. If you encounter ICE, these are the things that every New Yorker should know,” he said. He proceeded to explain them as clearly as I’ve seen anywhere.
Mamdani added: “New Yorkers have a constitutional right to protest, and when I’m mayor, we will protect that right.”
This was the scene at one of two huge training sessions for New Yorkers on how to protect their neighbors from ICE on Saturday.
And the New York Times reports that “Hundreds of people gathered at a Queens playground on Sunday to protest the federal government’s forced separation of a 6-year-old migrant boy from his father after the two were arrested last month amid President Trump’s deportation crackdown.”
Nativity Scenes Spark Controversy
I noted in last week’s newsletter that a Catholic church in Dedham, Massachusetts had replaced the baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in its nativity scene with a sign saying “ICE was here.”
The Archdiocese of Boston was not pleased. It told CBS News on Friday that “The Church’s norms prohibit the use of sacred objects for any purpose other than the devotion of God’s people. This includes images of the Christ Child in the manger, which are to be used solely to foster faith and devotion.” The archdiocese called for the display to be removed because of its “divisive political messaging.”
But as the New York Times reported, the Rev. Stephen Josoma of the St. Susanna Parish is standing firm, for now.
And at a news conference, the Boston Globe reports, Josoma responded to the archdiocese by saying that “any divisiveness is a reflection of our polarized society, much of which originates with the changing, unjust policies and laws of the current US administration.”
ICE acting director Todd Lyons also criticized Josoma’s nativity scene, telling Fox News that it was “absolutely abhorrent.”
Meanwhile, Josoma has been outdone. The Chicago Tribune reports on the nativity scene at the Lake Street Church of Evanston. It depicts:
Mother Mary wearing a respirator mask to protect herself from tear gas. Baby Jesus with zip-tied hands, wrapped in a thin blanket that looks like aluminum foil. Masked centurions with sunglasses and green vests labeled “ICE.”
In The Courts
A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to end the deployment of California National Guard troops in Los Angeles. Judge Charles R. Breyer wrote: “The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one. Six months after they first federalized the California National Guard, Defendants still retain control of approximately 300 Guardsmen, despite no evidence that execution of federal law is impeded in any way — let alone significantly.”
Public Citizen is suing to stop the Trump administration from completely defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that notifies users of ICE sightings, is suing the Trump administration for violating its free speech rights by demanding that Apple remove the app from its store.
CBS News reports: “A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed assault charges against a manager of the Laugh Factory comedy club in Chicago stemming from a confrontation with Border Patrol agents in Lakeview, after federal prosecutors revealed a grand jury refused to indict him.”
End Notes
Illinois has a new law on the books that restricts immigration enforcement outside state courthouses and makes it easier to sue federal agents who have “knowingly violated Constitutional rights during civil immigration enforcement operations.”
Der Spiegel profiles Louisiana lawyer Christopher Kinnison and his lonely fight against Trump’s deportations.
This video shows federal agents pepper-spraying a crowd that included newly-elected Rep. Adelita Grijalva, as she confronted ICE agents who were raiding a Mexican restaurant in Tucson. They also fired some sort of munition at her feet. The Washington Post has more.
And here’s a handy boycott list from USA Today: “These are the companies that rolled back DEI amid Trump backlash.”