Twin Cities community fights back against immigration raid
By Mira Altobell-Resendez and Montana Hirsch
St. Paul, MN – At around 8 a.m. on November 18 immigrant rights organizations received reports of federal immigration agents staging in a public park gearing up for what turned out to be a large raid at Bro-Tex INC., a paper distributor in Saint Paul.
Immediately after getting the report, members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), as well as others, arrived on the scene and followed the officers to the Bro-Tex building. After confirming Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and ICE presence, MIRAC put out an urgent call for observers to come to the scene. Within the hour, hundreds of community members showed up, chanted, and put their bodies on the line to show ICE that they are not welcome in Saint Paul.
What unfolded was what responders believe to be solely an immigration related raid. Protesters linked arms attempting to block ICE vehicles from leaving the scene with detained workers. ICE and federal law enforcement agencies used tear gas and pepper ball guns on the crowd, injuring multiple people. They ran into protesters with their cars, including one person who was using a cane. The officers grabbed people, then pushed and threw them onto the pavement in an attempt to break the human chain and drive away. Responders reported seeing officers from HSI, ICE, FBI and DEA.
“We saw clearly today how Trump is using every federal agency at his disposal to carry out his inhumane mass deportation campaign. The strong force of resistance that came out today proves that people will never buy into his anti-immigrant hate speech. More than not buy it, we won’t tolerate it. Families were destroyed today. We will do everything in our power to destroy their ability to carry out their work in the future,” says MIRAC member Esper Garcia.
The federal agents eventually broke through the crowd of responders, driving off with kidnapped workers, all of whom were undocumented. Some of their family members were on the scene, confirming what happened. The crowd dispersed and an all clear was publicized as activists began the process of tracking down those who were taken, later finding out that approximately 13 workers were taken into immigration custody at Saint Paul’s ICE headquarters and one protester was even arrested by a U.S. marshal and detained there for hours before being released with no charges.
When ICE enters our neighborhoods, the people are ready to stand up and fight back. The people of the Twin Cities showed that they were ready to kick ICE out of their cities, just like when ICE was present at another federal raid in Minneapolis on June 3. This time, federal agents pushed through the line of protesters by deploying tear gas, pepper balls, physical force and even hitting some protesters with their vehicles.
More and more people are getting trained on their rights and on how to respond to an immigration raid because they are ready to take to the streets and demand ICE out.
On November 19 protesters noted absence of the Saint Paul Police Department, which was very different from the federal raid that happened in Minneapolis in June, where Minneapolis police were on the scene taping off streets from the beginning and harassing community members throughout, claiming they were there for “crowd control”. MIRAC’s main campaign is currently to strengthen the separation ordinance in Minneapolis that says local law enforcement cannot assist ICE.