The Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board described the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities as “a military occupation”. Local leaders have used words like “siege” and “invasion”. After a week of reporting in Minneapolis and St Paul, I wouldn’t know how else to describe the scene.
I’ve been covering the administration’s immigration policies since Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January last year. I was in Chicago in January last year, when the administration assigned hundreds of federal agents to conduct “enhanced targeted operations” in the city. I was in Los Angeles last summer, when agents began seizing workers at car washes and garment warehouses, grabbing bicyclists and raiding churches.
Still, the operation in the Twin Cities felt like a marked escalation.
The Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities far surpasses previous mobilizations. The government has assigned some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what it is calling its largest enforcement operation to date. This show of force has an outsized impact in Minneapolis and St Paul, which have a population that is less than one-fifth that of Los Angeles.There are now so many federal immigration officers operating in the region that they outnumber the Minneapolis police force five to one.
The tactics of the federal force, too, have grown more aggressive and indiscriminate. Armed officers have appeared at schools, daycares, churches and mosques. Masked agents are stopping residents at traffic lights, or on their walk to the grocery store, demanding – at gunpoint – that they prove their citizenship.
The agents are targeting not only undocumented immigrants, but also those with legal immigration status and valid visas, US citizens and tribal citizens. On Tuesday, a group of local law enforcement officers said even their agents were being pulled over, reporting that off-duty police officers of color had been stopped and questioned at gunpoint by the administration’s immigration force.
Immigration agents have been emboldened by a supreme court ruling in September, which gave them legal cover to stop, question and detain people based on appearance, accent or vocation.
In recent weeks, they have broken into the homes of private residents without judicial warrants. Last week, agents used a battering ram to break down the door of Garrison Gibson, a 38-year-old Liberian man, and arrested him. Over the weekend, they forced their way into the home of 56-year-old US citizen ChongLy “Scott” Thao, and led him outside in his underwear in subfreezing conditions.
Minneapolis’s 911 dispatchers, meanwhile, have been overwhelmed by calls from residents who have encountered immigration enforcement. The city’s police chief, Brian O’Hara, said callers have often been hurt by the chemical irritants and crowd-control weapons that federal agents have been using against immigrant targets as well as advocates and bystanders.
“The administration has been emboldened,” said Julia Decker, a policy director at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. “The federal government feels it has the right to act beyond its authority.”
Decker said it’s unclear how many instances of warrantless entry have occurred and not been filmed or reported. Lately, in “know your rights” trainings for immigrants, attorneys have had to caveat lessons with an acknowledgement that federal agents won’t necessarily be deterred by constitutional and legal restrictions.
For many residents, this has meant that regular life has been suspended. Immigrants and people of color who fear being stopped by ICE are staying home – avoiding work, school and shopping. Approximately 80% of immigrant-run businesses were closed last week. Some restaurants that are still open have posted signs barring federal agents and locked their doors – urging patrons to knock or ring a bell for entry.
“Almost every single Latin business has their doors closed,” said Juan Leon, who owns Leo’s Tow in west St Paul. “They’re trying to strangulate our income.”
For the past several weeks, he’s been providing a free service towing the abandoned vehicles of those taken by ICE.
“It feels as though nowhere is safe,” one woman wrote to the Guardian; she’s a US citizen from Colombia who now carries around her passport with her wherever she goes. “I never felt the level of fear and constant concern that I feel now.” The Guardian is not identifying her because she fears being targeted by authorities.
She wondered if her ancestors lived through something similar during the years of civil war in Colombia in the 1940s and 50s.
It is difficult to drive around these cities without spotting an ICE vehicle. Evenings are soundtracked with the whistles and car horns of volunteer legal observers, posted at street corners and poised to alert residents that agents are in the area.
As was the case in LA, Chicago and so many other cities that have been swamped by federal immigration agents, locals have stepped up to organize mutual aid efforts and food-delivery services for immigrants too afraid to leave their homes. Minnesotans have booked out online legal-observer training sessions.
“What you have is moms, grandmas, teenagers out on the streets day in and day out doing everything that they can to protect their communities, so that we can go to bed with a clean conscience,” said Andrew Falstrom, a longtime community organiser. “But whatever we do, we won’t be able to match a federal force backed by billions of dollars.
“They have guns and teargas,” he said. “And we’ve got whistles and car horns.”
