On the day Alex Pretti was murdered, I was attending a women’s retreat along with fellow members of our church. The subject of Mary Magdalene was intriguing and held our interest, but many also kept their ears open and their eyes on their phones, as news was pouring in constantly about what was happening all around us. We heard of the invasion of 3,000 federal masked troops—unidentified and untethered to the Constitution and the law—violently rounding up anyone who appeared to be an immigrant, and on that day, murdering another witness. Our pastor left the retreat to be on the scene with her fellow clergy. We prayed for them, for the crowd that gathered at the site, and for our city.
In less than three weeks, and a mere ten blocks from the killing of Renee Good, our dictator’s masked, lawless thugs executed another innocent witness on Saturday, January 24. Alex was a nurse who cared for our veterans at the VA Hospital. He was shot in the back while being attacked and wrestled to the ground for helping a woman pushed into the snow by those same thugs. While he was lying on the street, several more bullets were pumped into his body.
The “troops” invading us were nothing more than cowards, carrying weapons and dressed in war gear like they were ready to storm Fallujah; but really, they are too chicken to fight enemy soldiers, so they signed up to do violence to helpless immigrants. A talking head on cable news pointed out that when Trump was threatening to invoke martial law and send in the military, he didn’t do it because the military is disciplined and follows the rules. He has now created his own private, lawless, violent, military-style force to be sent in wherever he wants to rain terror on the people of this nation.
After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the administration doubled down on who was at fault, and it seemed as though ICE was all over the ’hood like flies on rice. Two times during those weeks, I was notified of ICE in the area while on my bus walk. Taking advantage of my white privilege, I told parents to go home and I would stand with their children. And they did. The population of kids waiting on the corners where I stand went down by about a third, as many had gone to distance learning. Some kids began walking alone to their bus stop. I made sure to be there early enough to watch them walk from their houses to their corners.
After the senseless homicide of Renee Good, I resolved to do more than my bus walks, even though they became ways to protect the parents who waited with their kids. From the leader of a prayer group that gathers at our home once a month to pray for the neighborhood, I learned about a project out of a church in the community that has been holding a food giveaway for years. Since ICE came to town, volunteers started delivering at least half of those groceries to the immigrant families who used to come and pick them up themselves. My neighbor and I went there once a week and picked up groceries for eight families we know, most of whom live on our block. Churches, community organizations, schools, law firms, and even our city and state government funded and organized volunteer efforts to help our neighbors stay in the safety of their homes and obtain legal counsel if needed. The news reported that 34,000 Minnesotans trained for the invasion. A Minnesota State Senator was asked in an interview if the people of Minnesota were getting burned out, and she said that if people on the ground need to take a break, there are many more waiting in the wings to replace them.
I was one of those waiting in the wings, wanting to be a part of the operation that tracks and follows ICE vehicles, but I got in on the very last week of the occupation. I only did it one time. I used my car. My partner was a little nervous about using his because he too picked up and delivered groceries and was worried about ICE following him to his deliveries. I never noticed any vehicles following me, probably because I didn’t go all over, just to my block. As we drove around, he was connected to Signal, which he plugged into Bluetooth so we both could hear a dispatcher who was connected to us and other drivers in the area to let us know of suspicious vehicles. My partner would report the license plate numbers of suspicious cars to the dispatcher, who checked them out. He told me that ICE also runs our license plate numbers and puts them in a database when they suspect we are helping our neighbors. It all felt a little like the Spy vs. Spy comic strip I used to read in MAD magazine.
The cable news often spoke about how incredibly organized the people of Minnesota were. As only a foot soldier, I too was in awe of all those volunteers with the organizing and technical skills to launch such a tight, well-run, and non-violent resistance.
In Minnesota in the month of February, when it’s 18 degrees, we call it a warm-up. When the temps reach 40 degrees or higher, we call it the “February fake out,” because we are like Lucy with the football when the cold weather returns. Even though it will probably not get below zero again, it won’t stay at 40 degrees either, and we are always due for at least one more blustery snowstorm before winter’s end. On February 12, the first day of a six-day-long February fake out, Border Czar Tom Homan announced the end of “Operation Metro Surge.” He was pulling out the troops over the next few days. “Too bad those boys are leaving. They will only experience our nice winter weather for a few days,” I thought. As it was, before our fake out, we had the coldest winter in seven years, for weeks at a time, with wind chills often registering from 20 to 40 below. Reporters from all over the world descended upon Minneapolis during this time to report not only our persistence, organization, and courage, but how amazed they were that people participated by the tens of thousands in anti-ICE marches in the most extreme weather. No matter how cold it got, there was always a crowd out, taking videos and blowing whistles wherever ICE was operating.
ICE bragged about arresting 4,000 people during their occupation, but that included everyone they were forced to release, like the Hmong elder who was shown marched out of his house in his underwear and slippers with nothing but a blanket his grandson threw over his shoulders. They spoke of their “targeted” arrests, but like the elderly Hmong man, he was the wrong person they were targeting. He was a U.S. citizen, and he was mistakenly one of two immigrants targeted for child abuse. One of the two was in prison. In fact, during one of Trump’s incoherent, rambling press conferences, he was showing pictures of criminals “captured” by ICE in Minnesota, all of whom were turned over to them after serving their time. What a bunch of lunkheads. Luckily for us, they did more harm to their cause than good. It was the picture of little Liam Ramos in his bunny cap being put in the ICE vehicle that I believe turned the national sentiment against them. He too, along with his father, was released from Dilley some weeks later. But now we have to work on getting all our children and families back, so many of whom were targeted because they were doing the right thing, like checking in with the local immigration offices. Those were the ones rounded up because ICE knew where they lived, not the “worst of the worst” they claimed to be going after. We are left with death and destruction, ruined businesses, and separated families.
