this is a Series of field reports From Minneapolis.
As masked men in war gear surrounded the car my friend Patty and I were riding in, all I could think about was the moment that led to the death of my neighbor Renee Goode. “I’m not angry with you,” she told the killer. These agents, who I have to assume are from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (they never reveal their identities), are already banging on our windows and documenting us. They then sprayed pepper spray into the car’s air intake. They must be very angry with us.
“You’re under arrest!” the agents shouted. Terrified, I raised my hands in the air, waiting for instructions. Instead of giving me anything, they broke our window and pulled me out. I was roughly handcuffed and shoved into the back seat of an unmarked Subaru.
I was recently a volunteer with a neighborhood group that organized to observe and report on ICE after Operation Metro Surge began in Minnesota a few weeks ago. Those efforts have only increased since Goode was killed. In community chats, suspicious ICE sightings are reported, and their license plates are checked against a constantly updated public spreadsheet. If confirmed, people drive to the scene to document what agents are doing and use car horns and whistles to warn people that ICE is in the area. Recording is a legally protected act that occurs on public streets.
Most of the time, commuting (as it’s known in activist circles) is boring. You usually drive in circles on familiar streets. Volunteer dispatchers will help coordinate where people should go, but often they just recommend staying in areas with a lot of brown people: restaurants, community centers, the places that make Minneapolis vital. Commuting has become so popular recently that it’s common to hear dispatchers asking listeners to “hang up the phone if you’re not actively commuting.” There is limited room for signal calls.
But sometimes, commuting can be scary. “Haven’t you all learned?” an agent defiantly asked a legal observer in a video circulated among volunteers two days after Goode was killed. Her response: “What did we learn here?” Infuriated him, and he tried to snatch her phone away. Agents are also known to follow commuters to their homes to intimidate them, meaning “he followed me to my house” has become another common refrain in Signal chats. On one occasion, I suggested that a woman on the phone drive to a nearby gas station to meet me because an ICE vehicle was idling outside her house and she was visibly scared.
Shortly after starting my commute on January 11, I was detained by ICE. Someone in our neighbor chat reported that an ICE vehicle pepper sprayed an observer. Patty and I drove a short distance away. When we arrived at the scene, I was acutely aware of Goode’s death—it had been just four days and only a six-minute drive from where she was killed. This was the first time in my life that I saw an ICE agent (I wasn’t kidding when I said some commutes were boring) and that’s when they pepper sprayed the inside of our car and dragged us out of the car. Three minutes and thirty seconds had passed by the time the agents packed me into the unmarked SUV. We didn’t understand why we were taken away: we didn’t intercept their car or do anything beyond routine observation.
Patty, who was separated from me, was humiliated at the drive-in. They called her ugly, took pictures of her, and called Renee Goode “that lesbian bitch.” They took us to the Whipple Federal Building, where three local MPs had been denied entry the day before. They’ve been trying to find out what’s going on inside. As I was processed, shackled, and led into the cell, I wondered if I would be able to report to the outside world what was going on inside.
In a bare yellow cell, I tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I could hear screaming and crying coming from deeper inside the facility. My requests to use the bathroom or drink water were generally ignored and only accommodated after I knocked on the one-way glass of my cell and requested the agents directly.
Only when I was finally able to go to the bathroom did I see the other detainees—presumably the other people ICE was here to hunt. The look on their faces scared me. Through the observation mirror, I saw a dozen people crowded in the cell, which seemed to lack vitality. They stare at the ground or walls. They didn’t talk to each other. One man presses his face against the one-way glass, either wanting to see outside or simply craving any stimulation.
Elsewhere, I looked through the viewing mirror and saw a woman using the bathroom. She wore a dress to maintain modesty, but it didn’t protect her from three leering agents who stood chatting and laughing. She cried in the toilet.
I was lucky – after eight hours in detention, I was released without charge. It was very helpful that I had an attorney, Emanual Williams, who my family contacted while trying to piece together what happened to me.
When I got out, I called Williams to say thank you. I asked him if it was difficult for him to come and talk to me. Legal counsel should always be allowed into the building, even if it is closed. Things were changing at Whipple, he told me. “We are starting to see a process that is more dangerous for American citizens being detained, charged and sent to federal prisons,” he said.
Often, whether a detainee can see a lawyer simply depends on who is working that day. “Some people at the door said it was impossible to see anyone else unless someone kept us,” Williams said. “At one point, I drove up to the guard post outside the Whipple Building and they told me the guard post was closed. One of the mail carriers – I think they were part of the police force – approached my car with pepper spray.”
Video of the arrest of my cellmate, a legal resident named Dennis, shows his body bent forward into an unmarked van as two agents try to force him inside. Dennis’ expression was calm. A third agent tried to help, fumbling with pepper spray on his tactical vest.
“Want me to squirt you?” he asked, pushing it an inch from Dennis’s eye.
“Don’t spray him, don’t fucking spray him,” the agent from the front of the car scolded his partner, slapping the pepper spray from Dennis’ face.
“I told him, ‘Go ahead,'” Dennis told me, laughing in his cell.
Patty and I were not the only people detained for trying to alert people to ICE’s presence and filming agents. We have since met four other people who had similar experiences. I have never been charged with a crime; I now believe my detention was intended to prevent me from documenting the actions of ICE officers.
Efforts to intimidate observers continue, but they are not discouraged. The observer response in Minneapolis was so methodical that the agency increasingly expanded its activities into surrounding areas, where not as many residents mobilized, alerted to their presence and photographed them. ICE officers don’t want people to see what they’re doing, which is why documenting these actions is more important than ever. The arresting agent stole my whistle. After it came out, I bought another pack of 24.
