New Orleans It took me several passes at the current New Yorker before I was able to bring myself to sit still and calmly read the long article on the siege of Minneapolis last winter by Trump’s ICE shock troops. One of the pull quotes in the piece noted that for ICE this wasn’t Minneapolis, but Falluja, which gives you a sense that something horrific is coming.
And, it was. A citizen monitor was driving and stumbled onto blocked streets, witnessing the Rebecca Good’s body still on the ground with police and others milling around the crime scene and her car and theirs still in the middle of the street. Blood was everywhere. As all of us remember, she was also a monitor and was trying to exit the scene on orders from the ICE agent, when he shot her through the front window several times, killing her. Her partner was filming the entire incident as it unfolded. Good was a mother of three. She and her partner and moved to Minneapolis precisely because of its reputation as a quiet, friendly and tolerant city.
No wonder that civil rights groups and the City of Denver have sued the administration asking that armed agents not be allowed to operate near voting areas. Their claim is that it would intimidate potential voters. Given what happened repeatedly in Minnesota where civilians were killed, it seems impossible not to agree that there are risks for everyone, whether voters, immigrant or not.
The Minnesota story is also one with a silver lining. The community has a history of coming together and did so amazingly to resist the invasion of 2000 ICE agents, many hastily recruited and marginally trained. Later another thousand joined their ranks as it swelled with repurposed Border Control agents and more. Minneapolis is not a big immigrant catchment area. Given Trump’s personal antipathy to Somalians, there’s a theory that he may have targeted the city for that reason, but most Somalians are in fact citizens. Following the presidential election, which included the governor on the ticket and found him losing Minnesota for the third time, it may just have stuck in his craw as a chance to get some revenge. This was another war that he didn’t win. There’s no doubt that the state and city became a shining light for constructive resistance and its ability to unify to face the storm.
I often use the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial as my benchmark for extremist positions, but you can also measure how badly Trump, Miller, Vance, and the ICE team lost in Minneapolis by their lead editorial. They joined all America in disbelief and condemnation over the outrage of an ICE agent lying about the incident where he shot someone in Minnesota through a closed door and only by luck and fate avoided hitting the victim’s partner and several one-year-old babies in the apartment. He had claimed he was being beaten with a broom and a shovel. The Justice Department eagerly bought the fable, convinced the grand jury, and then had to retract once a real investigation revealed the truth.
The deaths of the two observers who were killed in ICE operations still hasn’t found justice. No single shooter has been identified. Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to prevent investigation, though Minneapolis police are continuing in spite of all of this coverup. The surge and siege stopped, but nothing will be finished until real justice comes to the family, the community, the city, and state.