In their latest update, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that over 400 people have been taken in ongoing kidnapping operations led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area.
As has been the case throughout the United States, federal immigration agents are not conducting targeted operations focused on alleged “criminals” but are instead going on fishing expeditions, targeting workers on the job in public settings.
In one of several flashpoints in the last week between ICE agents and local community members, this past Saturday, dozens of people responded to ICE agents attempting to kidnap construction workers building homes in Chanhassen, Minnesota, a city located about 15 miles southwest of Minneapolis. The two workers were trapped on the roof for hours leading one of them to be hospitalized.
In a video livestreamed on Facebook, dozens of workers and residents are seen confronting ICE agents who have surrounded a home currently under construction. Under sub-freezing temperatures and through bundled jackets, anti-ICE protesters cursed the agents and lent their support to two workers trapped on the roof. One man is heard in the video telling the Gestapo, “You are a fucking monster, you and all you people are fucking monsters. Putting people in concentration camps for being brown.”
One of the masked ICE agents replied to the man, “You don’t have to be like that,” which drew the quick retort, “No! You don’t have to be here!”
Another woman told agents the workers, “They are our community. They are a part of us.” She added, “Thank you for building our houses! Thank you!”
Another man questioned the agents, “What crime did they do? You guys can’t tell us. You are not going after the real criminals.”
Later on in the video a man arrives with hot coffee, “We got coffee, not for cops, but for people who know their rights.” Temperatures at the time were negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 Celsius).
One of the workers on the roof was brought down and taken into an ambulance along with an ICE agent. The second worker came down later and was apparently not detained by ICE.
Throughout the entire confrontation ICE agents rotated in and out of their warm vehicles while local police provided crowd control, protecting the ICE agents while at the same time preventing community members from providing aid to the trapped workers.
While the workers trapped by ICE on Saturday appeared to be Hispanic, the Trump administration has made clear that Somalis, regardless of immigration status, are being deliberately targeted by the government. For over two weeks, President Donald Trump and other top officials in his administration, have used racist and genocidal language to slander all people of Somali heritage, particularly those in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the largest concentration of Somali-Americans in the US.
Speaking from the White House on Friday, Trump said of Somalis, “they don’t have a country, all they do is kill each other.” Referring to Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a frequent target of Trump and the fascists due to her Somali heritage and Muslim faith, Trump said, “There is nothing worse than a person who comes in and does nothing but bitch. And comes from a place where she shouldn’t be telling us what to do.”
That same day, on one of his many Fox News appearances in the last week, fascist White House adviser Stephen Miller accused the entire “Somali community” of engaging in “massive, endemic, systemic fraud against American taxpayers for years.” Miller claimed that “90 percent” of Somali households with children “were on federal welfare, the real number is probably 100 percent.”
Encouraged by the fascists in the White House, immigration agents in Minnesota have been assaulting and kidnapping Somali Americans. On December 9, 20-year-old Somali-American citizen Mubashir was assaulted by ICE agents after he stepped outside during his lunch break while at work. In security footage, agents are seen grabbing and pulling on Mubashir for roughly a minute. Soon, members of the community come into frame and begin filming the ICE agents and blowing whistles.
The ICE thugs decide to drag Mubashir out into the street. Before shoving the handcuffed citizen into the back of their SUV with black tinted windows, one of the ICE thugs is seen putting Mubashir in a headlock and forcing him to the ground in the snow.
Speaking at press conference this past Wednesday, Mubashir said he told agents he was a US citizen and repeatedly asked what was going on. The agents, “didn’t seem to care.” Mubashir was not accused of any crime before ICE agents attacked him.
Mubashir said he did not flee from agents, and that at first he did not see them. “All I did was turn around. When I seen a black-topped car pull up, I just turned around to go back inside the office.
“I could see him behind me just running towards me. He pushed me inside the restaurant. I thought it was random person assaulting me or kidnapping me.
Mubashir explained that the ICE agent, “never identified himself, he didn’t say ‘ICE stop.’ I feel like I was getting assaulted, I was getting kidnapped, and that’s exactly what it was.”
After he was taken into ICE custody, agents demanded Mubashir allow them to photograph and scan his face, which he refused. Mubashir said he repeatedly offered the agents multiple ways to verify his citizenship, including providing his name, date of birth and a photo of his passport. The agents eventually accepted the fact he was a US citizen at which point Mubashir asked them, “‘Can you take me back to where you picked me up from?’ They said ‘No, you have to walk in the snow.’”
Mubashir is one of hundreds of US citizens that have been assaulted and kidnapped by ICE this year. The week before Mubashir was taken, Susan Tincher, a 55-year-old citizen, was seized and detained by ICE agents for over five hours for having the temerity to record ICE kidnapping operations.
In an interview that aired over the weekend, Rep. Omar revealed that her son, an American citizen was also recently targeted by ICE. This past Friday, Omar sent a letter to DHS accusing the agency of engaging in “blatant racial profiling” and an “egregious level of unnecessary force.”
In the interview, Omar detailed how her son has already had two separate interactions with ICE agents. The first occurred last week when agents menaced a restaurant her 20-year-old frequently eats at, along with other members of the community. Omar said the agents came into the restaurant and then left.
Omar then revealed that roughly a week later, on Saturday, December 13, her son was pulled over by ICE after stopping at Target. Omar said agents briefly held him, but that “once he was able to produce his passport ID they did let him go.”
In response to Trump’s attacks on her, her family and other Somalis, Omar said Trump was “creepy” and accused him of scapegoating the community to “deflect from the failures of his presidency.”
Omar said Trump, “doesn’t want to answer for the possible war crimes of shooting down those boats in the Caribbean. He does not want any conversations about releasing the Epstein files, he wants to continue to protect pedophiles.”
The Democratic congresswoman did not propose any concrete actions to oppose ICE operations or remove Trump from the White House. In an op-ed published Saturday by MS Now, Omar detailed some of the many crimes ICE agents have conducted but did not call for any criminal investigations, much less a mass political struggle to take down the Trump government.