Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
ICE Stands for I Can't Eat :(
The Minnesota Reformer’s Madison McVan gives us this ruthless recap of Thursday morning’s press conference with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, who took charge of Operation Metro Surge after Gregory Bovino's departure earlier this week. From McVan:
Over the past month, immigration agents have shot three people, killing two; racially profiled people, asking them to produce proof of legal residency; detained legal immigrants and shipped them across state lines, including young children; caused numerous car crashes; deployed chemical irritants on public school property; smashed the car windows of observers and arrested them before releasing them without charges; and threatened journalists who were filming them from a distance in a public space, among other high-profile incidents.
Homan tacitly acknowledged the chaos, saying, “I’m not here because the federal government has carried out its mission perfectly.”
Understatement of the century, that.
Homan also spent a fair chunk of time complaining that Minnesotans aren’t treating his gangs of masked thugs with the proper respect. "Day after day, they can't eat in restaurants. Day after day, having people spit at you and blow whistles at you. Day after day, having all these threats at you... they're human," he whined. Boo—and I cannot emphasize this enough—fuckin' hoo.
MN Man Impersonates FBI Agent, Tries to Bust Luigi Outta Jail
Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them wear FBI outfits purchased from Spirit Halloween.
According to ABC News, a Minnesota man allegedly tried to break alleged CEO killer/unlikely cult hero Luigi Mangione out of jail in New York. "Mark Anderson, 36, was charged Thursday with impersonating a federal agent after authorities said he showed up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn claiming to be an FBI agent with a court order to release Mangione," writes Aaron Katersky.
To be clear, we're not sure if Anderson was actually dressed like an FBI agent. Here's what we do know, via ABC:
Anderson allegedly approached the intake area inside the MDC and claimed he had paperwork "signed by a judge" authorizing the release of a specific inmate, according to the criminal complaint. The complaint does not name Mangione, but law enforcement sources told ABC News that is who Anderson was seeking.
When Bureau of Prisons personnel asked to see Anderson's credentials, federal prosecutors said he showed them a Minnesota driver's license and "threw at the BOP officers numerous documents."
Anderson also told prison personnel that he had weapons in his bag; according to the criminal complaint, they found a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter—mamma mia!
The Rent Is Almost Due
February 1 is fast approaching, and thousands of immigrants in Minnesota have been out of work for weeks or months due to the ongoing federal occupation. But despite pleas from the City Councils of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Gov. Tim Walz's administration seems unlikely to move forward with any sort of eviction moratorium. As Ashley Fairbanks, creator of the mutual aid aggregating website Stand With Minnesota, told Racket in today's feature, "I just think this week is going to be one of the hardest, because we don’t have easy answers for people."
What can you do? Well, the Immigration Rapid Response Network is trying to raise $10 million to address urgent basic needs including rental assistance, and there are dozens of other rental relief funds on the Stand With MN site. Centro De Trabajadores Unidos En La Lucha (CTUL) is collecting donations via an Emergency Rent Fund. In her Instagram stories, local food writer Kirstie Kimball is highlighting stalled-out rental assistance GoFundMe campaigns that could use your support.
And on Friday at 1 p.m., renter advocacy group Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia is hosting a rally at the Minnesota Public Housing Authority HQ (1001 N. Washington Ave., Minneapolis) to demand that Walz declare an immediate eviction moratorium.
Hey, We Know Them!
Earlier this week, our pals at Coyote Media, the Bay Area's premier online alt-weekly-style publication, reached out to see if Racket's four staffers would be interested in chatting about running a worker-owned news outlet during a fascist takeover. Would we ever!
It was a treat to sit down with Rahawa Haile and Nuala Bishari and riff on all kinds of stuff that's important to both of our newsrooms: the role of hyperlocal media in times of crisis, running an arts-driven alt-weekly while covering the ICE invasion, and that elusive ol' concept of work-life balance. They ran it as a Q+A, and yet we managed to sound somewhat intelligent. The importance of a good editor, y'all.
Elsewhere at Coyote, you might enjoy Soleil Ho's piece from earlier this week, "What We Owe Minnesota," as well as this Vincent D comic about hosting a backyard mutual aid swap. They're doing great work over there.
