ICE Ramps Up Deportation Efforts In Minneapolis After Trump Claims Somalians Are ‘Garbage’

from the hate-feeding-on-hate dept

Trump was always going to target Minnesota and, specifically, the home of its most liberal residents, Minneapolis. Trump hates the state’s governor, Tim Walz. He also hates one of the state’s congressional reps, Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia.

This is only part of Trump’s recent hateful statements targeting Somalians, Tim Walz, and Rep. Ilhan Omar:

As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc…

That was delivered via Trump’s favorite outlet for his unhinged rants, Truth Social. He followed that up by making these statements where anyone could hear them during a press briefing:

“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump told reporters near the end of a lengthy Cabinet meeting. He added: “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”

[…]

“We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way, if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

That put another target on Minnesota’s back. The state is home to nearly a third of the nation’s 260,000 Somalians. It’s not as though they’re here illegally, though.

Almost 58 percent were born in the U.S., and 87 percent of those born elsewhere are naturalized citizens.

Not that any of that matters to Donald Trump or ICE’s collective of masked thugs. So, these are the sort of things that are happening now in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as Trump’s hatred becomes personified.

Federal agents used chemical irritants to push through an angry crowd that blocked their vehicles as they checked identifications in a heavily Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis on Tuesday, amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown targeting the community.

City Council member Jamal Osman, a Somali American who represents the neighborhood, witnessed the confrontation, as did an Associated Press videographer.

[…]

He also said he spoke with one young Somali American who was dragged to a vehicle, detained and taken to an ICE detention center. There, officials finally looked at his U.S. passport, fingerprinted him, and released him but told him to find his own way home, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away in snowy weather.

The DHS also made some noise about an arrest that supposedly justified the violent actions taken by ICE officers (who not only deployed chemicals but also arrested two people who were simply recording ICE officers and/or asserting their Fourth Amendment rights). But the statement seems extremely light on facts, as is often the case when DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin decides to open her mouth:

The Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested Jesus Saucedo-Portillo, whom she described as an unauthorized immigrant, on Dec. 6 while he was getting into his vehicle in a campus parking lot.

In a divergence from what school officials have said about the incident, McLaughlin said officers had a warrant and were obstructed by a university administrator and campus security during the encounter.

McLaughlin said Saucedo-Portillo “is a registered sex offender and has a previous arrest for driving while intoxicated.” A search of Minnesota court records by the Minnesota Star Tribune found no record of a DWI case under that name, and Saucedo-Portillo does not appear in the national sex-offender registry.

Some journalists who got an inside look at this operation could have tried to undercut McLaughlin’s narrative about targeted arrests and “worst of the worst.” Instead, NBC News embedded with ICE for a day and ended up generating an article headlined “ICE operation shows the difficulty of immigration arrests amid pushback in frigid Minnesota.”

The article isn’t nearly as bad as the headline, but it allows ICE and their spokespeople to flat out lie about what’s been happening all over this nation, but has most recently focused almost exclusively on cities or states run by members of the Democratic Party.

“It is not an operation targeting the Somali community,” [ICE Acting Executive Director Marcos] Charles said. “We’re looking for people that are here illegally.”

Right. And that’s why the raid that made all the headlines (and generated a handful of bullshit arrests) just happened to have occurred in a neighborhood that is primarily populated by Somalis.

Then there’s this, which is directly contradicted by NBC’s reporting, even if NBC tries to present its observations as supporting Marcos Charles’s assertion:

“The biggest misconception is that we’re out there just randomly arresting people, which we’re not,” Charles said.

[…]

During NBC News’ roughly eight hours with ICE, fewer than a dozen people were arrested despite not being the initial targets of the operation. They just happened to be at the scene when agents showed up.

Given the wording, I would assume eleven people who weren’t ICE targets were arrested. If it were less than that, I assume NBC would have used wording like “ten people” or “less than ten people.” Either way, it’s like more than one “collateral” arrest per hour, which is crazy considering this is an article involving officers griping about the cold keeping people indoors, being prevented from entering homes by property owners multiple times due to the ICE’s lack of actual judicial warrants, and double-tap home search that revealed the targeted person had already fled. The officers decided to arrest the other person there just because.

Minneapolis is pushing back, which is exactly the way it should be. Here’s an incredible recording of anti-ICE protesters shielding a Minneapolis store from being entered by ICE officers, who collectively can’t even explain why they need to enter the building. The officers are eventually shamed into leaving, and showered with nothing but expressions of love, sympathy, and offers of prayer:

Resistance works. ICE officers work best when there’s no friction. When confronted or slowed, they’re far more apt to give up and leave than continue their likely illegal actions. In some cases, being confronted results in unprovoked acts of violence by federal officers. Fortunately, nothing like that happened here.

And just because we’re talking about Minneapolis, “Minnesota Nice,” and ICE activity largely fueled by xenophobic hate, here’s a palate cleanser. I don’t agree with my dad on nearly anything political, but he’s one of the most helpful people you will ever meet. He recently made the news in Minneapolis for doing what he’s always done: pitching in wherever needed.

Filed Under: bigotry, dhs, ice, mass deportation, minneapolis, racism, somalia, tricia mclaughlin, trump administration