MIRAC — the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee — reports.
At 7:20 a.m. Monday morning, July 15, 2019, MIRAC members got notice that ICE was outside a home around 42nd and Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis. Three of us arrived there within minutes to witness two unmarked all-black SUVs and 1 pickup stopped in the far left lane blocking traffic surrounding a car.
We were too late. This person was most likely following the ‘know your rights’ advice that has been given to the community and did not open his car door. The ICE officers then proceeded to bust out the back window of his car to reach in, unlock the doors and drag this man to the ground.
An observer was across the street, yelling over two lanes of traffic, telling ICE that she wanted to see the warrant. The ICE officer moved his hand over his holster and told her not to dare to cross the street or move any closer to them. At one point the man told the ICE officers to please give his car keys to the observer and ICE told her that if she wanted to see any paperwork to meet them at their “office”.
After ICE left, we talked to a neighbor who witnessed the entire incident. He was very distraught and kept repeating himself, “So this is really happening…” We then took pictures of the damaged window on the car of the man who had been detained. You can see how all the glass fell into the car filling his child’s car seat. He left his work bag in the front seat and his coffee mug in the holder still steaming with hot coffee.
The widely reported ICE raids that President Trump has promised are reported to be targeting 2,000 families with existing removal orders. It is also being reported that there will likely be collateral arrests of individuals in proximity of targeted individuals.
What we witnessed in Minneapolis this morning may or may not have been part of a broader ICE operation. Minneapolis was not on the list of cities that were supposed to be targeted. But this is an important reminder that ICE takes people away every day in our communities, not just when the president publicly announces it. And it’s an important reminder that everyone should know their rights, and everyone has the right to not say or sign anything before talking to a lawyer.
TAKE ACTION:
1. Share ‘know your rights’ information on social media and in your neighborhood and with people you know. Here is good information in multiple languages: http://bit.ly/conocetusderechosndlon
2. Consult this guide before posting about ICE operations on social media to avoid spreading unclear or false information: https://www.facebook.com/…/a.56963099638…/2716313601715498/…
3. Contact local mayors and police chiefs to ask them to reiterate their commitment to refuse to participate or in any way coordinate with ICE operations, and ask that they immediately inform the public if they receive notification that ICE operations will be carried out in their jurisdiction.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey
612-673-2100
Twitter: @Jacob_FreyMinneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo
Phone: 612-673-2735
Twitter: @MinneapolisPD
Email: policepio@minneapolismn.govHennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson
Phone: 612-348-3744
Twitter: @HennepinSheriff
Email: Sheriff@hennepin.usSaint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter
651-266-8510
Twitter: @mayorcarter_Saint Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell
Phone: 651-266-5588
Twitter: @ToddAxtell
Email: Todd.D.Axtell@ci.stpaul.mn.usRamsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher
Phone: 651-266-9333
Twitter: @RamseySheriff
bob.fletcher@co.ramsey.mn.us
That “know your rights” info is a little discouraging, because it tells you all the things ICE is not allowed to do, yet as this example shows, they go right ahead and do them anyway.
Knowing your rights only matters if the other side is willing to respect the law. ICE and the president are both quite contemptuous of the law.
I designed a new logo for ICE last year…
https://twitter.com/TabbyLavalamp/status/1013870577457610752
These are the tactics and methods of Gestapo.
@Tabby Lavalamp
Sehr gut!
First they came for …
Tabby Lavalamp @2: Brilliant.
Where are the complaints by the conservatives now that “Jack-Booted Thugs” are literally operating in the US?
Uh, yeah, duh. This is why it was so important to have stopped ICE under Obama — which of course didn’t happen. It was always the thin edge of the wedge, and Centrists failed us, just as they always planned to do.
First they came for …
Terrifying and it could happen here.
We have had some nasty episodes.
@ Vicar
More important than these atrocities is the warm embrace of smugness as you feel superior to those damn dirty centrists eh?
How come it is illegal to drive over Nazis when Nazis can drive over everyone else?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack
Let’s see how fast gun control gets passed when progressives start arming themselves. Rightwingers love playing dress up when there aren’t any consequences.
The Black Panthers taking up arms was what got Republicans to start being pro-gun control last time.
I think there are plenty of progressives armed.
@#10, Badland:
Yeah, yeah, I know. Why try to solve the problem by eliminating the cause, when you can just sit there and react in horror to how bad the problem is? Let’s all buckle down and moan about Trump some more, and then go and vote for Joe Biden so he can normalize everything Trump is doing right now and refuse to prosecute anybody, the same way Obama did for Bush.
The Vicar to Badland:
Whatever made you imagine “More important than these atrocities is the warm embrace of smugness as you feel superior to those damn dirty centrists eh?” was a proposed way to solve the problem by eliminating the cause?
(You are so very, very weak)
And every single South American junta that the US has backed since… And, even more relevantly, these are the tactics that the US and its allies have been using in the War on “Terror” – although extra-legally abducting people been somewhat de-emphasised in favour of simply blowing them (and anybody standing too close to them) up with drones in the last few years.
Sheesh. I was deliberately provocative and sorta wrongish, but no response.
(I get that “Let’s all buckle down and moan” is supposedly sarcastic, but with you, it seems literal to me, Vicar (the))
@John Morales:
Apparently unlike you, I don’t obsessively check for responses to what I say, so no, I don’t instantly respond to others except occasionally by chance.
You got my post exactly backwards: I am accusing Badland of wanting to just sit and moan about Trump, because step one in any practical plan for getting rid of Trump’s policies is to boot centrists out of the Democratic Party so that there’s actually a meaningful opposition to Trump’s policies. If Biden gets the nomination, then the concentration camps will stay no matter who wins the 2020 general. Trump will keep them as a matter of course, and if Biden gets in, the press and the Democratic establishment will decide that concentration camps are okay after all and that we have to show that Democrats Can Be Tough, Too, because enabling already-passed Republican policy is what centrists live for. It is their goal, it is the reason they want to have control of policy. It always has been.
And besides, centrists were key to the creation of the concentration camps. The Obama administration actually built an awful lot of them, and ICE was created in the first place — Homeland Security Act of 2002, if you care to look it up — with the support of, among others, Biden, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Schumer, even though the HSA of 2002 was pretty clearly a naked power grab by the right wing. Democratic opposition to the camps in a Biden presidency will evaporate, just like Democratic opposition to war evaporated once they were Obama’s wars instead of Bush’s, and like Democratic desire to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 meltdown evaporated once Debbie Wassermann Schultz took control of the DNC. And once it is established that both parties are pro-concentration camp, objecting to them will be considered a fringe issue in all public statements, like objecting to oil pipelines on land belonging to Native Americans, legalizing marijuana, or wanting to return to a pre-Reagan top marginal tax rate, all of which are policies centrists have dismissed in the last decade.
The Vicar, it’s nice to push the buttons and have the machine beep.
And accordingly, this very response is purely happenstance. Sure.
Heh. Your shallowness of thinking is here on display; another practical plan or getting rid of Trump’s policies is to make them be seen as unacceptable. And that does not exhaust the universe of possibilities.
Besides what? This is a non sequitur</>
The quotation at hand is “More important than these atrocities is the warm embrace of smugness as you feel superior to those damn dirty centrists eh?”, which has nothing to do with centrism or concentration camps.
Let’s grant all that as God’s own truth. But then, so fucking what?
What happened in the past via other protagonists has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening now with current protagonists.
Feel free to attempt to establish that.
[mutter– no, I did not preview]
Thank you so much for posting this dr Myers.