This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
President Trump has put U.S. military troops on standby for possible deployment to Minnesota amidst ongoing peaceful demonstrations against ICE raids and arrests. Thousands of ICE agents already on the ground now dwarf the local police department and have been accused of a brutal occupation.
In one case, armed ICE agents, with guns drawn, broke down the door of an older Minneapolis man, handcuffed him, dragged him into the snow while he was wearing only his underwear. It turned out the man was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Laos.
At least four protesters arrested by ICE agents and detained at the Whipple Federal Building during the so-called Operation Metro Surge said they were denied their right to see an attorney.
A federal judge ruled Friday, ICE agents must stop arresting or pepper-spraying protesters. On Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared on Face the Nation to defend ICE actions in Minneapolis and respond to the judge’s ruling.
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KRISTI NOEM: We only use those chemical agents when there’s violence happening and perpetuating and you need to be able to establish law and order to keep people safe. That’s the only situation. So that judge’s order didn’t change anything for how we’re operating on the ground, because it’s basically telling us to do what we’ve already been doing.
AMY GOODMAN: Some legal experts compare the conduct by immigration agents to attacks by police officers on protesters during the civil rights era.
We’re joined now in Washington, D.C., by Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University.
Professor Goodwin, welcome back to Democracy Now! There is so much to talk about here, and we just played this incredible report from the streets of Minneapolis. And the latest information that the FBI actually opened a probe, an investigation into the ICE agent who killed Renee Good, but then shifted gears and decided to investigate instead the victim herself, Renee Good, and her wife, and then the news of the six attorneys in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis quitting over the direction of the investigation, and a judge ruling that peaceful protesters should not be pepper-sprayed and arrested — your comments overall?
MICHELE GOODWIN: Overall, this is extraordinary. In fact, the judge’s order emphasizes how extraordinary it is to impose this kind of order — that is to say, that the conduct that’s taken place in this particular surge by ICE is not something that is usual. It’s not something that has been lawful. It’s not something that has been constitutional. It is not to say that ICE can’t be present, but ICE certainly cannot do what it has been doing in Minnesota, much of which you’ve covered, which is horrific and does actually have flashpoints of the American civil rights movement. The only difference then is that it was the federal government looking to uphold the Constitution, looking to uphold Supreme Court decisions and to protect citizens against unlawfulness by the state, but here you have an inverse, a reverse of that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michele Goodwin, the threats of President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, I’m wondering your thoughts about that. I’m thinking especially, for instance, back in 1962 at the University of Mississippi, there was mass rioting by white segregationists attacking federal marshals because they were trying to escort James Meredith in to integrate the University of Mississippi. There were 160 marshals injured, including 28 shot. And at that point, President Kennedy did invoke the Insurrection Act and ordered federal troops into Oxford, Mississippi. That’s a very different situation from what we’re seeing here in Minnesota or what we’ve seen in some of these other cities where Trump has also threatened with the Insurrection Act. I’m wondering your thoughts.
MICHELE GOODWIN: It’s a very different situation. Notice the year that you mentioned. We’re talking about the early 1960s. It’s 1954, years before that, that the Supreme Court strikes down these “separate but equal” segregationist laws. It’s a time in which the Supreme Court did that through a unanimous decision recognizing the harms that had been inflicted throughout the American South through that decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, and so the federal government coming in in order to support this Supreme Court decision, the constitutionality of equality under law, which is, by the way, something that extends back to our Reconstruction Amendments back in the 1800s, the 1860s, the United States Constitution being revised to recognize equality among citizens, birthright citizenship, which is also something that’s come up in this past year, and the federal government coming in in order to uphold constitutional law.
What we see now, and what we recognize from this order from the judge over the last few days, is the fact that what — the lawlessness that has taken place has actually been conducted by the federal government. And the federal government is not above the law. The rule of law is to be imposed on any branch of government, any branch of law enforcement. That’s whether it’s state law enforcement or federal law enforcement. Simply being part of the federal government does not allow the federal government to breach the rule of law, the Constitution or legal norms and values.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you about your sense of the state of the U.S. Justice Department one year now since President Trump has been in office. There was — Justice Connection, an alumni group of Justice Department prosecutors, has tallied over 6,400 departures and over 230 firings in the past year of prosecutors and agents. We’ve seen the resignations of prosecutors in Minneapolis, refusing to change the investigation from the killing of Renee Good to — from the agent, investigating the agent, to investigating the protesters. Wondering your sense of what the state of the Justice Department is right now.
MICHELE GOODWIN: Sadly, it’s in a disarray. And one of the troubling features of this is that important thought leadership, thought leadership that spans across Republican administrations, Democratic administrations, has been lost. One of the stabilities with the United States federal government has been, regardless of party affiliation, being Republican, Democrat or independent, that there have been individuals who have been part of the brain trust of our federal government, throughout the federal government, throughout departments, and including in the Justice Department. These are individuals who are experts on any number of things, and they’re gone. These include experts on Russia, experts on China, experts on North Korea, experts on terrorism, so much more, gone from the federal government, and that’s regardless of political affiliation.
And that’s quite dangerous, right? There shouldn’t be a sense that around one political leader — at least it’s been inconsistent in the United States, that around one political leader there coheres a sense of a kind of loyalty that ignores principal rules of law, principal constitutional values. And so, you’ve seen people leave, and leave in protest. And you’ve just mentioned those in Minnesota who have left because they refuse to investigate Renee Nicole Good or Renee Nicole Good’s widow. That is inconsistent with what we would perceive as the rule of law.
AMY GOODMAN: And overall, I mean, the federal government, Trump, the Justice Department, threatening to criminally prosecute the governor, Walz, the mayor, Frey, of Minneapolis, and then a report of a military recruiter in Minnesota pointing to fears of the ongoing ICE operations in Minneapolis, trying to get high school students to sign up for the National Guard, saying there’s a program that can offer the immediate family of service members some protection against deportation? You’ve got thousands of ICE agents dwarfing the local police department. What about pitting one arm of government and law enforcement against another right now, and how the police in Minneapolis actually enforce the law?
MICHELE GOODWIN: Well, this is why many are reflecting on — and I’ve been, too, for some time now — about this kind of reversal, if you will, from what we saw during the United States civil rights movement, where it was so crucial that there would be some protection of vulnerable people, vulnerable African Americans, who were seeking to exercise their constitutional rights, their civil liberties and civil rights, and urging the federal government to get involved against the Bull Connors, the Governor Faubuses and whatnot, those who were committed to segregationist ideas that reach back to American slavery. And what you have here is a real contestation. This is why the judge’s order was so important and a very clear delineation.
And if I could, I want to just make a note of what we get from that judge’s order, because it helps to put so much of this in context. This is a district court judge. And what the district court does is they review facts, facts on the ground, tell us what happened, show us videos. We want to have as much witness testimony as possible. And what you see from this 83-page order is just the cruelty, the unlawfulness that has been unleashed on people in Minneapolis and in St. Paul. It’s really quite horrific.
If you think about just this one aspect of it, people having their faces put in snow for a half an hour — now, in order for snow to stay on the ground, it has to be freezing cold outside. And if someone has pressure on their back, their neck, their head to keep them in snow, that can lead to hypothermia. It can lead to even death. So, much of what we’ve not necessarily been hearing about, while we’ve heard about Renee — Renee’s horrific death, but what we haven’t heard as much about are some of these instances that have been portrayed, that have been carried out in the Twin Cities, that are really quite dangerous and really words are hard to describe, except those that cause us deep pain, such as terrorism inflicted upon American citizens in that state.
