I am a Minnesotan and a Minneapolis resident. Over the past month, my state has been the center of national debate. But for residents here, our experience is vivid, and not theoretical. You may wonder why our community is fighting against the presence of immigration enforcement when they are operating within a legal mandate. I hope you will join me in understanding why.
We are not resisting because ICE is targeting illegal immigrants. Our concern is that immigration enforcement is employing racial profiling to detain visa holders, native Americans and citizens.
As a Minneapolis resident, I have experienced this. My first experience was when my child’s former daycare had two of their caregivers detained and separated from their families. Both employees had valid work visas. Weeks later, the first of these employees was released, but with a $30,000 bond. On top of this, they had to pay for legal fees and a plane ticket from a Texas detention center.
My second experience was with my favorite restaurant. When my family placed a pickup order, we received a distressing text telling us the business was closed and the workers were fearful. I learned a week later that an employee, again with a legal visa, had been detained and separated from his family. Volunteers now man the front door of the restaurant to guard against unconstitutional searches and seizures.
It is difficult for Minnesotans like myself to view ICE favorably when abuses are prevalent enough to impact your friends and businesses. Detention of legal immigrants and citizens is so common that some districts report a third of their students will not risk attending school. Districts are instituting e-learning because large swaths of parents are uncomfortable risking detention of themselves or their children.
If the prevalence is insufficient to sway Minnesotans, the severity is. Consider the case of Castañeda Mondragón, who was admitted to the hospital with eight skull fractures and a brain bleed. Agents claimed he ran into a wall. An entire volunteer force exists solely to pick up citizens who were detained and discharged from Whipple. These people have their phones confiscated, and sometimes their IDs. They are released in below zero weather without proper clothing, sometimes in the woods, with no means of contacting anyone.
Arrests are made without judicial warrants, and held at Whipple in poor conditions without legal counsel. Detainees are fast-tracked to Texas detention centers often against court orders. Once there, a lack of sanitation and overcrowding leads to disease. Reports of sexual abuse and beatings are also common. Minnesotans do not have to strain their imagination to draw historic parallels.
How should our state respond? Minnesota is being denied effective legal avenues to ensure justice when federal agents break the law. This is in contrast to often cited crimes with undocumented immigrants where the justice system has worked as intended. If you want to understand why Peggy Flanagan is advocating for protesting, it is because our best recourse is to sway public opinion. Our playbook is that of the civil rights movement.
There are limits to this approach, of course. Even in the era of Martin Luther King, the perception of visual evidence was heavily informed by entrenched beliefs. Nevertheless it was central to changing sentiment, as it is in the current moment.
What is an outside observer to believe? I recognize that there are those, across all walks of life, who have experienced crime, sexual abuse, or other tragedies. They are eager to prevent future harm. The spectre of millions of violent criminals may seem a compelling cause for action. But DHS has not found the violent criminals they say exist in our communities. To boost their numbers, many of whom they detain are already incarcerated and facing justice. My state, and you, are no safer due to these detentions.
Perhaps by the end of this article you are unmoved. You see personal anecdotes and view them as financed propaganda. You see the resignation of bureaucrats as a purging of the deep state, not as those with a conscience. You see the reports of farmers and nurses speaking out on local news outlets, but dispute them because they are too biased. You dispute our police officer accounts and our state government because you have been told they are non-cooperative. You see our detentions and presume guilt, because you cannot imagine otherwise.
If you find yourself in this position, ask yourself, what evidence would be sufficient to dispute the claims of this administration? Write it down. If and when that evidence arises, I challenge you to reconsider these reports. Minnesotans will do their best to document until you are ready to hear us.
