This is part of a series of field reports from Minneapolis.
As masked men in war gear surrounded the car my friend Patty and I were sitting in, all I could think about was the moments that led to the death of my neighbor Renee Good. “I’m not mad at you,” she had told her killer. These agents, who I had to assume were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (they never identified themselves), were already knocking on our windows and searching us. They then pepper sprayed the car’s intake. They were definitely mad at us.
“You’re under arrest!” the agents shouted. Terrified, I threw my hands in the air and waited for instructions. They didn’t give me anything, instead they broke our windows and kicked me out. I was handcuffed and pushed into the back of an unmarked Subaru.
I recently volunteered with the neighborhood group that had organized to observe and report ICE after Operation Metro Surge began here in Minnesota weeks ago. Efforts have increased since Good’s killing. In community chats, suspicious ICE sightings are reported, their license plates checked against a constantly updated public spreadsheet. If confirmed, people in cars drive to the scene to record what the agents are doing and warn people that ICE is in the area with car horns and whistles. Recording, a legally protected action, takes place on public streets.
Most of the time, the commute (as it’s known in activist circles) is boring. You usually drive in circles on familiar streets. Volunteer dispatchers will help coordinate where people should go, but they usually just recommend staying in areas with lots of brown people: restaurants, community centers, the kinds of places that make Minneapolis vital. Commuting has become so popular lately that it is common to hear a dispatcher ask listeners to “please leave the call if you are not actively commuting.” Signal calls have limited space.
Occasionally, however, the commute is terrifying. “Haven’t you all learned?” an agent provocatively asks a legal observer in a video circulating among volunteers two days after Good was killed. Her response, “What’s our lesson here?”, infuriates him and he tries to snatch the phone from her. Agents have also been known to follow commuters to their homes to intimidate them, meaning “Following me to my house” has become another common refrain on Signal chat. I once suggested to a woman on a call that she go to a nearby gas station to meet me because an ICE vehicle was idling outside her house and she was audibly terrified.
I ended up in ICE custody shortly after starting a commute on January 11th. Someone in our neighborhood chat reported ICE vehicles pepper spraying a bystander. Patty and I, not far, drove there. I was acutely aware of Good’s death when I arrived on the scene – it had only been four days and she was a six-minute drive from where she was killed. It was the first time I’d ever seen ICE agents in my life (I wasn’t kidding when I said some commutes are boring), and that’s when they pepper-sprayed the inside of our car and pulled us out of it. By the time the agents pushed me into that unmarked SUV, three minutes and 30 seconds had passed. We didn’t understand why we were being received: we hadn’t blocked their cars or done anything other than routine observation.
Patty, separated from me, was subjected to humiliation on her way. They called her ugly, took pictures of her, and referred to Renee Good as “that lesbian bitch.” They took us both to the Whipple Federal Building, a place where, the day before, three local lawmakers were off limits. They tried to determine the conditions inside. As I was being processed, handcuffed and led into a cell, I wondered if I would be able to report to the outside world what it was like there.
In an empty yellow cell, I tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I could hear screams and crying from deep inside the unit. My requests to use the bathroom or drink water were routinely ignored, granted only after I knocked on the one-way cup in my cell and directly begged the agents.
I only saw other detainees when I was finally able to go to the bathroom – they were probably the other people ICE was here to hunt. The looks on their faces terrified me. Through the observation glass, I saw more than a dozen people crammed into a cell, seemingly out of energy. They were looking at the ground or the wall. They didn’t talk to each other. A man pushed his face up against the one-way window, either trying to see out or simply desperate for any kind of stimulation.
Elsewhere, I saw a woman, through an observation window, using the bathroom. She was wearing a coat to preserve her modesty, but that couldn’t protect her from three lowly agents who were watching her, talking and laughing. He cried on the toilet.
I was lucky – after eight hours in custody, I was released without charge. It helped that I had a lawyer, Emanual Williams, that my family contacted as they tried to piece together what had happened to me.
After I got out, I called Williams to thank him. I asked him if it was difficult for him to come and talk to me. Legal counsel should always be allowed in the building, even when it is locked. He told me things are changing at Whipple. “We’ve started to see a process that is more dangerous for American citizens who are apprehended, charged and transported to federal prisons,” he said.
Often, whether someone in custody sees their lawyer simply depends on who is working that day. “Some of the people at the door said there was no way we could see anyone unless someone detained us,” Williams said. “One time, I went to the security post outside the Whipple building and they told me it was closed. One of the postmen – I think they were part of the police team – pepper-sprayed my vehicle.”
A video of the arrest of my cellmate, a legal resident named Dennis, shows his body slumped forward in an unmarked van as two agents try to force him inside. Dennis’s face is calm. A third agent, trying to be helpful, reaches for pepper spray on his tactical vest.
“Do you want me to spray you?” he demanded, moving it an inch away from Dennis’s eye.
“Don’t spray him, don’t spray him,” the officer in front of the car scolds his partner, brushing the pepper spray away from Dennis’ face.
“I said, ‘Come on,'” Dennis had told me in our cell, laughing.
Patty and I weren’t the only ones detained for trying to alert people to the presence of ICE and the cameras. I have since met four others who have had similar experiences. I have never been charged with a crime; I now assume that my detention was intended to prevent me from registering with ICE officers.
The effort to intimidate observers continues, but they have not been deterred. Minneapolis is so organized in its responses to the watchers that the agency has expanded its activities to the surrounding area, where there are not so many mobilized residents, alerted to their presence and filming them. ICE officers don’t want people to see what they’re doing, which is why it’s more important than ever to document it. My arresting agent stole my whistle. After I checked out I bought another 24 pack.