ICE

NBC News - A federal judge on Friday ordered federal law enforcement participating in the Minnesota immigration crackdown to stop pepper spraying, detaining and pulling over peaceful protesters.

The preliminary injunction by Judge Katherine Menendez of the U.S. district court in Minnesota applies to federal agents and officers participating in Operation Metro Surge, the controversial immigration crackdown launched by the Trump administration as part of its broader deportation plan.

Jamelle Bouie, NY Times - Not since the British occupation of Boston on the eve of the Revolutionary War has an American city experienced anything like the blockade of Minneapolis and its surrounding areas by the federal government.

Acting under the pretext of immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has sent both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to terrorize the people of Minneapolis. Masked paramilitaries stalk streets, schools, businesses and other places of public accommodation in search of anyone deemed “illegal,” regardless of whether they’re citizens or legal residents. Using race as part of their criteria — a now-legal tactic, thanks to a recent opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh — armed officers go door to door through neighborhoods searching for Latino, Asian and African people to detain.

And then there is the violence. On Jan. 7, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good while she was in her vehicle. A video analysis by The New York Times of the footage from that day “shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over,” and “establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place,” eventually shooting into Good’s S.U.V. three times. Since then, we’ve seen multiple attacks on protesters and citizen observers, with ICE officers using flash grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to harass and disperse demonstrators. We’ve seen evidence of vicious brutality against detainees; on Jan. 8, two U.S. citizens working at a suburban Target were arrested, with one of them seen bleeding and injured.


All occupations resemble one another in some way, and it is striking to read descriptions and accounts of the occupation of Boston in light of events in Minnesota. “Having to stomach a standing army in their midst, observe the redcoats daily, pass by troops stationed on Boston Neck who occupied a guardhouse on land illegally taken it was said from the town, and having to receive challenges by sentries on the streets, their own streets, affronted a people accustomed to personal liberty, fired their tempers, and gnawed away at their honor,” writes the historian Robert Middlekauff in “The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 to 1789.”