This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the Pentagon has placed 1,500 soldiers from the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska to be on standby to possibly be deployed to Minnesota, just days after President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continue over ICE’s immigration crackdown.
The Trump administration says it’s opened criminal investigations into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who have sharply criticized ICE’s tactics. In a statement, Walz said, quote, “Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous authoritarian tactic,” unquote.
This comes after the FBI reportedly opened a civil rights probe into the ICE agent who killed Renee Good, but then pivoted to focus instead on whether Good and her widow assaulted the agent.
Meanwhile, on Friday, a federal judge ordered ICE agents to stop arresting or pepper-spraying peaceful demonstrators in Minneapolis.
On Sunday, demonstrators disrupted Sunday services at a church in St. Paul to protest one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, who they say is a top ICE official in the Twin Cities.
JONATHAN PARNELL: Shame on you! Shame on you!
NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG: David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul. So, someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents.
AMY GOODMAN: The Department of Justice says it’s opened an investigation to the protesters.
In another development, the Trump administration is being accused of denying legal counsel to many arrested during the immigration sweeps. Multiple attorneys say they’ve been blocked from seeing clients held at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.
Meanwhile, ICE agents continue to carry out raids. In St. Paul, armed, masked agents battered down the door of a home and — without a warrant — arrested a man led out of home in his underwear in subfreezing weather. It turned out the man was a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Laos.
For more, we go to Minneapolis for a report from Democracy Now!’s John Hamilton on the ground there this weekend, speaking with people about how communities are organizing against the ICE raids.
JOHN HAMILTON: James Schwesnedl is a volunteer with a community rapid response group on the lookout for federal agents in his Minneapolis neighborhood.
JAMES SCHWESNEDL: Just driving around my neighborhood, kind of picking an area to just keep an eye on, looking out for any ICE or Customs and Border Patrol.
JOHN HAMILTON: Hundreds of legal observers like James now patrol the streets of the Twin Cities each day on the lookout for masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles.
JAMES SCHWESNEDL: And then I’m on a Signal chat with people in my neighborhood here. And then there’s people all over the neighborhood who are following that Signal chat. And if they see a message that ICE is, you know, passing through their block or getting out of their cars on their block or the next block over, they’re ready to run out and, you know, videotape, do constitutional observing, blow whistles, let neighbors know that ICE is on the block and it’s not safe to come outside.
JOHN HAMILTON: Activities like these are protected by the First Amendment, but that hasn’t stopped federal agents from deploying violence against people who track their movements.
ICE AGENT 1: Get out! Get out of the way! Move your car now! You’re obstructing! Get out of the way!
ICE AGENT 2: Get out of the way!
JOHN HAMILTON: Patty O’Keefe is a 36-year-old South Minneapolis resident who learned that lesson firsthand.
PATTY O’KEEFE: I live about eight blocks away from where Renee Good was murdered. And last Sunday, January 11th, I was out patrolling and observing ICE with my friend Brandon, when we were violently arrested and detained.
When we got on the scene, the ICE agents were getting back into their two vehicles. There were a number of people who had shown up by that point, and so they decided to leave the area. So they turned down a side street, and we proceeded to follow them on that side street and continue blowing our whistles and honking our horns. Thirty, forty seconds, like, into doing that, they stopped their car, got out of the car, surrounded my vehicle, you know, screamed at us to stop following them, told us we were obstructing them, even though there was no one in front of their cars. We weren’t at an active ICE raid even. You know, they could have just kept going forward. And yeah, then one of the agents proceeded to spray pepper spray into the front windshield vent of my vehicle, so we got pepper spray in the car, which was — you know, hurt our eyes and our mouths and our throats. And they got back in the vehicles, kept driving. And when we didn’t turn around, they stopped the car again, got out.
You can go forward! We are not obstructing! We are not obstructing! You can go forward!
ICE AGENT 3: [bleep] off!
PATTY O’KEEFE: You can go forward! We’re not obstructing! We are not obstructing! We know our rights!
They broke our two front windows and dragged us out, arrested us and brought us to detention.
ICE AGENT 4: Get out of the car!
BRANDON: Yes, sir.
ICE AGENT 4: Get the [bleep] out of the car!
BRANDON: Yes, sir. I’m coming out.
ICE AGENT 4: Get out of the car! Get him! Grab his arm! Get your hands behind your back!
BRANDON: Sir, I have a passport in my pocket.
ICE AGENT 4: Shut up! Shut the [bleep] up! Sir, you are under arrest for impeding operations!
PATTY O’KEEFE: I was in the vehicle with three ICE agents. And as soon as they all got into the vehicle and shut the doors, they just immediately started taunting me, making fun of me. One of them took a photo of me and showed it to the other agents, and, you know, they were just laughing, you know, insinuated that I was ugly. And then one of the agents, the one who had sprayed the pepper spray into my car, proceeded to say, “You guys got to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead,” referring to Renee Good.
SKY: Do not break my [bleep] window.
JOHN HAMILTON: Other legal observers have experienced physical abuse. A disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran named Sky suffered bruised arms, hands and legs after being violently pulled from the driver’s seat by federal agents.
ICE AGENT 5: Get out of the [bleep] car!
ICE AGENT 6: Get out of the car! Put the car in park! Get out of the car! Put the car in park! Get out of the car!
ICE AGENT 5: Get out of the car.
SKY: You know I’m a Marine Corps veteran.
ICE AGENT 5: I don’t care what you are.
ICE AGENT 6: You [bleep] move, I’ll [bleep] tase you! You [bleep] move, I’ll [bleep] tase you! Get the [bleep] out of the car right now!
JOHN HAMILTON: Others have had their license plates and faces scanned by ICE, with agents even following them to their homes.
NOAH LEVY: ICE is at my house.
VOICE ON PHONE: Keep your doors locked. This is an intimidation tactic.
JUDY LEVY: Yeah.
JOHN HAMILTON: Judy and Noah Levy were at their home in St. Paul on January 6th when they got an alert.
JUDY LEVY: Someone from my book club sent a message on the group chat that, “Hey, I think ICE is staging in the parking lot of a grocery store,” that closed down, several blocks away. So we drove over, and there were about eight SUVs lined up, kind of tail to tail. Some had plates; some didn’t.
NOAH LEVY: They stopped us.
JUDY LEVY: Yeah.
NOAH LEVY: Almost right away.
JUDY LEVY: They stopped. They stopped traffic. The first car that was behind them was about to take a right-hand turn. They surrounded him. There were like five agents that we could see from, you know, several car lengths back, where we were. We could hear that they were giving him a really hard time.
No, he’s alone.
And then, the agents that weren’t occupied, the employees that weren’t occupied with him, started coming back, and, car by car, they took photographs through the windshield.
NOAH LEVY: They’re saying, “Get out of the car,” you know, “Roll down your window.”
JUDY LEVY: And we didn’t do either thing.
NOAH LEVY: Yeah, we didn’t budge.
JUDY LEVY: We just said, “Hey, we don’t want to talk to you.”
I do not want to talk to you. You’re in our neighborhood.
NOAH LEVY: You’re in our neighborhood.
JUDY LEVY: You’re in our neighborhood. I have every right to be here.
NOAH LEVY: You’re in our neighborhood. I’m driving.
JUDY LEVY: You are in our neighborhood.
NOAH LEVY: I’m driving.
JUDY LEVY: You are in our neighborhood.
After the dude took our photographs through the windshield and checked the plate, he came to my passenger side window, just kind of knocked on it, and said, “Hello. Hello, Judith. How are you today? What can I do for you, Judith?”
Do not threaten me.
ICE AGENT 7: Hello, Judith. How can I help you?
JUDY LEVY: Do not threaten me.
ICE AGENT 7: How can I help you?
JUDY LEVY: As I told you, I go by Judy. Nobody calls me Judith, unless they’ve just run my plates. Of course, the next day, they killed someone who was doing just what we were doing. You know, they killed Renee Good. And they’ve escalated. You know, the violence has escalated, the harassment, the abuse, the beatings, you know, the kidnappings, that every day they’re wreaking havoc. They’re speeding through the neighborhood. They’re causing accidents. They’re disappearing people before the police can even get there.
NOAH LEVY: And what we did was legal.
JUDY LEVY: Yeah, what we did was legal.
NOAH LEVY: It was legal to follow them. It’s legal to film them. And they were trying to chill that. And I will have to say, that was incredibly intimidating.
JOHN HAMILTON: That intimidation is felt most in Minneapolis’s diverse neighborhoods, like the Lake Street corridor, where ICE’s crackdown has led many immigrant-run businesses to shut their doors.
MIGUEL HERNANDEZ: My name is Miguel Hernandez, and I’m the owner of Lito’s Burritos here on Lake and Bryant in Minneapolis, which is a Mexican American Chicano restaurant. If there’s not a significant change in what’s happening here in Minneapolis, like, right now, we will lose a massive amount of the community restaurants. People aren’t going to work. You can’t keep open hours. You can’t pay bills if you’re not open. But you’re risking the safety of staff, you’re risking the safety of your family, if you continue to work. And those conditions can be stressful. It’s really tough to be making tacos and burritos and wondering if someone’s going to barge in and just start asking for people’s, you know, statuses. It’s not a sane way to live.
And over and over, I’m really proud of the community for standing up and fighting back any way they can. And all they’re looking for, when I say fight back, is accountability, accountability, due process and respect of human rights.
DIEU DO: My name is Dieu Do. I use she/her pronouns. I’m a community organizer and immigrant rights activist with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee. Folks at all hours of the day, no matter who you are, just being on the lookout in the community. We see, you know, especially in streets that are cultural corridors that have a lot of immigrant-owned businesses, but just people of color who own their businesses, we see people standing on street corners looking after each other; if there’s any suspicious activity or vehicles, reporting it to each other and seeing if there’s any license plates that we can bring back that we know are confirmed ICE vehicles; and, you know, if there are ICE agents who show up, to immediately alert other rapid response networks, to blow their whistles, to alert the community that ICE is in the area, and, ultimately, just chase them out and make it known to the community that ICE is here, not only to protect the community, but also to let ICE know they’re not welcome here.
JOHN HAMILTON: As ICE agents openly use racial profiling to determine who they stop, some of Minnesota’s Indigenous citizens have been detained, sometimes violently. Chase Iron Eyes is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, an attorney and executive director of the Sacred Defense Fund.
CHASE IRON EYES: I’ve said nobody is more American than the American Indian. Yet here, here, ICE is executing immigration enforcement violence against the original Americans, the true Americans. And when they’re capturing us and violating our rights and illegally profiling us, where are they going to deport us? Where could they possibly deport us? So, it is a legal impossibility for ICE to be doing what they’re doing to Native American people right now.
NATIVE WOMAN: Get out! Just get out! Just get out, Beto! Just get out, Beto! Please! Please! They’re mean.
CHASE IRON EYES: There’s a Native woman with her nephew, another Native American, driving in Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and they’re pulled over and profiled, and probably because they look like us, we look like them. The people that ICE is trying to target, one demographic, are those people who are Indigenous to the entire Western Hemisphere.
NATIVE WOMAN: We’re citizens!
ICE AGENT 8: OK. Then, show your ID.
NATIVE WOMAN: Get your ID! We’re Native! What are you doing?
CHASE IRON EYES: They pull this family over. And the auntie, the aunt, is doing her best to maintain decorum under those extremely stressful circumstances.
NATIVE WOMAN: Just get the ID. Get the ID.
CHASE IRON EYES: She’s complying with everything that the ICE officers are stating, and they’re asking for her nephew’s driver’s license. He’s driving. He’s 20 years old. I have a son about the same age. He never takes his driver’s license or his wallet anywhere. So, he’s having a hard time finding his license. At the same time, ICE is using a facial recognition technology, and they’re scanning his face. And they begin to beat him, physically attack him and assault him. And this woman, I don’t remember her name, but she starts — she’s looking into the camera, and she is calling out for help.
NATIVE WOMAN: Let him scan your face. Why’d you hit him? No! No! Stop! What are you doing? No! Why are you hitting my nephew? OK, OK. Stop! Ow!
ICE AGENT 9: Get the [bleep] out of the car!
NATIVE WOMAN: OK! Back out!
ICE AGENT 9: Get on the [bleep] ground!
NATIVE WOMAN: Back out! No!
ICE AGENT 10: Do not move. Do not move. Do not move, OK?
CHASE IRON EYES: The violent arm of the state, which is ICE at this time, is staring her down. And they begin to beat her nephew, and she begins to cry. And by the end of it, they scanned his face and found out that he is a United States citizen.
I got a call from a councilman from the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and he says, “Brother, we’re in town. Can we meet?” So I go to meet with this certain councilman, and he’s not alone. He has four other councilmembers that are with him. And they want their tribal members back. They want their tribal members returned. They want the body released. You know, that’s habeas corpus. They want these tribal members, who are also American citizens, to be released. And we proceeded to the detention center, because they wanted to gain access to it. And ICE wasn’t really — they knew nothing of these men. But we have eyewitnesses that can attest to the fact that they were apprehended by some uniformed personnel. Now, it is absolutely possible that ICE did not apprehend them, but somebody did. So, we’re continuing to search, and we’re making progress. What I can tell you right now is that ICE couldn’t identify them. I shouldn’t say they don’t have them, because we don’t know their names.
JOHN HAMILTON: On Saturday, a steady stream of mourners visited the intersection of Portland Avenue and East 34th Street, where Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot three times by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. They came with flowers and signs of protest.
L.K.: My name is L.K. I’m a teacher from the Twin Cities. Last time I was here was last Wednesday night, the day that Renee Nicole Good was murdered. This is unprecedented. I mean, I have kids emailing me about what’s going on and the presence in their neighborhoods and at their front doors. And the very things that keep community going are trying to be torn down, like schools, you know, because kids aren’t able to go. They can’t go, and they can’t learn, and they can’t create. And everybody is in jeopardy. It’s not, you know, one type of person. It’s literally everybody.
JOHN HAMILTON: For Democracy Now!, I’m John Hamilton, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to John Hamilton. Next up, President Trump has put 1,500 military troops on standby to deploy to Minneapolis, to add to thousands of ICE agents already there, dwarfing the local police department. On Friday, a federal judge ruled peaceful protesters and those who film ICE cannot be arrested. We’ll speak with constitutional scholar and professor Michele Goodwin. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: A rendition of “Cryin’ in the Streets” by Zeshan B in our Democracy Now! studio.
