This is part of one A series of underground reports From Minneapolis.
As masked men dressed for war surrounded the car my friend Patty and I were in, there were moments I could think of because of the death of my neighbor Renee Goode. “I’m not mad at you,” she told her killer. These agents, who I assumed were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (they never identified themselves), were already knocking on our windows and recording us. They then pepper sprayed the car’s intake vent. They were certainly angry with us.
“You are under arrest!” the agents shouted. Frightened, I threw my hands in the air and waited for instructions. They didn’t give me anything – instead, they smashed our windows and kicked me out. I was almost handcuffed and pushed into the back of an unmarked Subaru.
I was a recent volunteer for a neighborhood group that organized to observe and report on ICE after the launch of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota the week before. Efforts only increased after Goode’s murder. In community chats, suspicious ICE sightings are reported, their license plates checked against a constantly updated public spreadsheet. If they are 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. The recording, a legally protected act, takes place on public roads.
Most of the time, commuting (as it’s known in activist circles) is boring. You usually drive in circles around familiar roads. Volunteer dispatchers will help coordinate where people should go, but often advise they stick around areas with lots of gray people: restaurants, community centers, places that make Minneapolis important. Commuting has become so popular of late that it’s common to hear dispatchers request, “Please drop the call if you’re not actively commuting.” Signal calls have limited space.
Sometimes, though, the journey is terrifying. “Haven’t you learned?” Two days after Goode was killed, an agent provocatively asks a legal supervisor in a video circulating among volunteers. His response, “What is our lesson here?” He gets angry, and tries to take her phone away. Agents are also known to follow travelers to their homes to threaten them, meaning “he’s following me to my home” is another common refrain in signal chat. Once, I 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 scared to hear it.
I ended up in ICE custody shortly after starting the trip on January 11th. Someone in our neighborhood chat reported ICE vehicles pepper spraying a bystander. Patty and I drove there, not far. I was well aware of Goode’s death when we arrived at the scene—it had only been four days and six minutes from where he was killed. This was the first time in my life I saw ICE agents (I wasn’t kidding when I said some commuter shifts are boring), and that’s when they pepper sprayed the inside of our car and kicked us out. The agents put me in that unmarked SUV, three minutes and 30 seconds had passed. We didn’t understand why we were let in: we weren’t blocking their cars or doing anything beyond a routine observation.
Patty, separated from me, was subjected to humiliation on her drive. They called her ugly, photographed her, and referred to Renee Good as “that gay bitch.” They took the two of us to the Whipple federal building, where, the day before, three local lawmakers had been denied access. They wanted to find out what was going on inside. As I was being processed, tied up, and taken to a cell, I wondered if I would be able to report to the outside world what it was like there.
In the empty yellow cell, I tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I could hear screaming and crying from deep within the facility. My requests to use the bathroom or get a drink of water were routinely ignored, met only after I knocked on the one-way glass of my cell and directly pleaded with the agents.
I only saw the other detainees when I was finally able to go to the bathroom – presumably, they were other people that ICE was here to hunt down. Their faces scared me. Through the observation glass, I saw more than a dozen people crammed into the cell, seemingly lacking power. They looked at the ground or the wall. They did not speak to each other. A man pushed his face against the one-way glass, either trying to see out or desperate for any kind of stimulation.
Elsewhere, I saw a woman, through the observation glass, using the bathroom. She wore clothes to protect her modesty, but that didn’t protect her from the three agents who stood watching her, making small talk and laughing. She cried in the toilet.
I was lucky – after the eight hours I spent in detention, I was released without charge. It helped that I contacted a lawyer, Emmanuel Williams, who helped my family try 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 me to speak. Legal counsel is always allowed in the building, even when it is closed. He told me things are changing at Whipple. “We’re starting to see the process of detaining American citizens, receiving indictments, and sending them to federal prisons more dangerous,” he said.
Often, whether or not a detainee sees their lawyer depends on who is working that day. “Some of the people at the door said it’s not possible to see anyone until someone stops us,” Williams said. “One time, I went to the guard post outside the Whipple building, and they told me it was closed. A postman — I think they were part of the police team — came up to my vehicle with pepper spray.”
Video of the arrest of my cellmate, a legal resident named Dennis, shows his body leaning forward in an unmarked van as two agents try to force him inside. Denise’s face is calm. A third agent, trying to be helpful, gropes for pepper spray in his tactical vest.
“Do you want me to spray you?” he demands, keeping an inch away from Denise’s eyes.
“Don’t spray him, don’t spray him,” the agent at the front of the car scolds his partner as he removes the pepper spray from Dennis’ face.
“I told him, ‘Go ahead,'” Dennis told me, laughing in our cell.
Patty and I weren’t the only ones arrested for trying to alert people to ICE’s presence and filming agents. We then met four other people who had similar experiences. I was not charged with any crime; Now I assume that my detention was to prevent ICE officials from recording.
Attempts to intimidate observers continue, but they have not been deterred. Minneapolis is so systematic in its surveillance responses that increasingly, the agency has spread its activities to surrounding areas, where there are not many residents mobilized, alerted to their presence, and filmed. ICE officers don’t want people to see what they’re doing, so it’s more important than ever to document it. My arresting agent stole my whistle. After I checked out, I bought 24 more packets.
