Protesters suing to block “unconstitutional” federal law enforcement actions in Minnesota have described officers firing pepper spray into a moving car and threatening to break a car window on the same day an agent fatally shot Renee Good.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in December on behalf of a group of Minneapolis residents who alleged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents followed them home, fired chemical spray and rubber bullets and threatened them with arrest as Donald Trump’s administration began surging federal law enforcement into the state.
But “extraordinary circumstances” — including Good’s death and aggressive confrontations with federal agents in the wake of her killing — require a federal judge’s swift intervention to block any further threats, plaintiffs wrote Thursday.
In a series of sworn statements attached to a letter to the court, plaintiffs allege a federal officer threatened to break a legal observer’s car window while another officer in a different part of the city fired pepper spray into an observer’s moving car, all on the same morning Good was killed.
“These Minnesotans who are peacefully exercising their core constitutional rights to speak and gather continue to be met with unconstitutional and terrifying violence at the hands of federal agents on a daily basis, including unwarranted pepper spraying and unfounded arrests,” attorneys wrote.
On Tuesday, an observer started honking her car at an ICE vehicle that was driving “erratically,” according to a sworn statement to the court. They blocked her car, and masked agents in tactical vests — including one wearing a neck gaiter with a “skull face and the American flag” — surrounded her car, she wrote.
When she didn’t roll down her window, an officer “got angry” and threatened to “break my car window and arrest me” if she continued to follow them, according to the statement.
“I said, ‘Do you want to say that again for the camera?’ and held up my phone,” she wrote. “They both got back in their car and left.”
That same morning, she said she saw another ICE agent firing pepper spray into an observer’s car as it passed officers.
She also described officers arresting a man she believed to be of Somali descent and tackling him to the ground without checking his ID.
“I talked to him, and he told me that while he was in the car, the agents were joking about how he was lucky his girlfriend was recording,” she wrote. “This is why I watch ICE, so that we can document the way they’re treating people, so people who are being kidnapped off the streets don’t just disappear. He has a family. They wouldn’t know what happened to him if people weren’t documenting.”
Hours after Good’s death, ICE officers tackled a “young man” outside a high school and “menaced” a crowd of protesters who were “yelling a lot and blowing whistles” and “calling agents murderers and telling them to leave,” according to another plaintiff.
Agents then “body slammed” another person who was running from the area, and “then an agent shot off some chemical irritant into the crowd” that “something like a paintball gun,” the plaintiff wrote. “I could taste the spray in the air,” according to the statement.
“These agents seemed even more aggressive, more violent, more cavalier about things than the ones I’d seen before,” the plaintiff alleged. “They were decked out in more gear and had bigger weapons. One guy was wearing a huge cowboy hat with his fatigues. They all seemed comfortable just shoving people out of the way.”
Good’s death and the Trump administration’s allegations that she was a “violent rioter” who committed “terrorism” have sparked nationwide protests and outrage from elected officials across the country, with witness statements and analysis from video footage from multiple angles appearing to contradict Homeland Security’s initial statements.
“Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take their word for it. Watch the video from every single angle,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Friday as he defended his demand that ICE “get the f*** out” of the city.
The Twin Cities are home to roughly 80,000 people of Somali ancestry, the vast majority of whom are legal residents or American citizens. But the president — seizing on a series of fraud cases involving government programs where most of the defendants have roots in Somalia — is surging federal law enforcement and Department of Justice resources into the state as part of a nationwide mass deportation campaign.
Protesters in Chicago had similarly sued the Trump administration to block the use of chemical weapons and other measures as Customs and Border Protection agents took to the streets for citywide immigration enforcement operation.
A federal judge in that case banned authorities from firing tear gas and using other riot weapons after video evidence and courtroom testimony from protesters, reporters and faith leaders revealed behavior that “shocks the conscience,” the judge said.
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