“They were just using a lot of force to arrest me, and I was screaming, I was crying, I was so scared, I’ve never been arrested in my life.” (Nasra Ahmed, a U.S. Somali-American citizen)
“We are in total crisis here in Minnesota with this ICE surge. Thousands of agents are terrorizing our communities, not just Minneapolis, but across the state. They are tearing apart families. They say that they’re here to round up the worst of the worst, but we know with our own eyes that is absolutely not true.” (Martha Blackwell, pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis)
“… If I was looking at this from the ICE perspective, I’d say, look, we’ve had three agents-involved shootings in the last three weeks. … What can we learn from these incidents? This is ultimately about the sanctity of human life. … the other side of this that you’re endangering the ICE agents, too. People will look at that and say, well, we need to figure out a way to ratchet down the tension. What do both sides need to do? And I think it starts with, you know, a tactical pause, stepping back and trying to assess tactics, deescalation … if this were a local police department, they would be reaching out to the community. They would say, we need you. We need to build trust. But when you have federal agents coming into a community, they can sometime come off as an occupying army. And in American policing, that’s not what we’ve learned. We know, you know, communication, trust, all of those things are essential.” (Chuck Wexler, director Police Executive Research Forum)
“The administration has called these operations targeted, that they’re going after undocumented immigrants, undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Is that what you’re hearing from teachers, bus drivers, hospital workers?” (Leila Fadel) “Absolutely not. Every single one of our unions have a story about a member, whether they were at work or not, who have been illegally detained—folks who are here working legally with their papers. … they are still being arrested and whisked away to a camp in the middle of Texas within hours of being arrested. … And it’s just causing havoc and fear, widespread fear across all kinds of industries.” (Chelsie Glaubitz Gbiou, Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation)
“… His (Alex Pretti’s) parents asked us to tell the truth about their son because the Trump administration chose to call him a domestic terrorist … They said, ‘Alex was a kind-hearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans who he cared for as an ICU nurse at Minneapolis VA Hospital.’” (Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar)
“We want Liam back … I’ve spoken with his mother and I am heartbroken that he’s under the weather right now in that detention center. At the same time let him be a symbol for all the children. The other students of mine that have been detained, two of whom are also in a detention center in Texas. And the ones who are getting harassed right now this morning. I know for a fact right now behind our high school in the park, there are ICE agents looming and they’ve been circling my schools again this morning, parked outside of my middle school. … It’s not my job to talk to a 16-year-old child like I had to do this morning and talk them down and listen to them about their experiences where they had to show their passport to masked agents … They’re all very fearful. You know, the older students are able to articulate and understand the racial profiling and the targeting that’s happening. The younger children, regardless of where they were born or what they look like, are all afraid they they’re going to be taken.” (Zena Stenvik, Superintendent of north Minneapolis school district)
--I think that all of us find some of what we’ve heard and seen from Minneapolis disturbing. To me it all seems so unnecessary and sad. The loss of innocent life, the trauma that families and particularly children are experiencing. And the hurriedly hired and poorly trained ICE agents who have been caught up in this are not most to blame. It’s the folks in charge. The Trump administration has poured billions into this effort and is intent on deporting millions of folks. Stephen Miller, one of the President’s closest advisers, wants to rid the country of all immigrants, because “America is for Americans.” … We humans seem to need to have somebody to blame, somebody to victimize. Even so, and no matter our political affiliation, we know instinctively when something has gone too far, gotten off track.
In a beautiful way the people of Minneapolis have come together to peacefully resist, to support their neighbors, to stand up for their communities, and to call for something that is truer to the promise of America than what we’re seeing. And thankfully, last week, two days after Alex Pretti was killed, and just as a federal judge was weighing the legality of all this, President Trump called Governor Waltz. There is talk now of deescalation and cooperation. But why did it have to be so ugly to begin with? And take the sacrifice of the lives of two American citizens?
Steve Bullington Adrian, Georgia
