MN ICE Watch Jan. 19-22: Daily Updates on Trump’s Authoritarian Invasion

Having trouble keeping up with the fascist Trump administration's "largest ever" wave of immigration stormtroopers that continues to terrorize Minnesota? You're not alone. The rolling updates below will provide nugget-sized intel/links/embeds amid this dizzyingly depressing news cycle, hopefully making you feel a little better-informed and/or connected to your community. As always, feel free to contribute in the comments. Updates will stop Thursday because our shop is observing the Day of Truth and Freedom on Friday.

MONDAY 1.19

ICE illegally detained a St. Paul snowplow driver, according to Public Works Director Sean Kershaw. "This is a detention that never should have happened," Kershaw tells Fox 9. "He was detained by ICE purely based on his country of origin, he had every federal authorization to be here which is something we check at the city of St. Paul." You can support the worker via this GoFundMe that has already raised almost $20,000.

Jake Lang, a pardoned J6 rioter who now posts stupid far-right shit online, didn't enjoy his time in Minneapolis (see clip below). Ditto for Nick Sortor, a similar grifter/influencer.

Video: ICE drags elderly Hmong man out shirtless in the snow, then releases him.

“Well, we’re fucking close to civil war,” Minneapolis Park Board Commissioner Dan Engelhart tells New York Times Opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen. “This is tyranny,” adds Minnesota AG Keith Ellison. In her sprawling dispatch, Polgreen attempts to answer why President Trump is targeting Minneapolis, of all places. Part of her conclusion is inspiring: "The exceptionally broad solidarity I saw across the Twin Cities is emblematic of the qualities that have made Minnesota such an irritant to Trump."

American Indian Movement patrols are back in Minneapolis, ICT reports. Here's activist/historian Heather Bruegl:

One of the first acts that AIM did when they were forming was patrolling the streets and making sure that if their community members were stopped or pulled over by the police, that their rights were being followed, like, you know, "Hey, you have the right to this, you have the right to that." And we see that now happening again [because] people’s rights are being violated. We see Indigenous folks, tribal members being detained. It’s important that groups like AIM and other groups are coming out again, working in community and making sure that we’re protecting each other.

Jairo Pitalasig is working construction while he finishes his senior year at Minneapolis's North High School, a double-duty load he takes on to support his asylum-seeking family in Ecuador and cancer-stricken dad. Last week ICE abducted him at work, Azhae’la Hanson and Melody Hoffmann report for North News, and now he's awaiting deportation at a detainment camp in El Paso, Texas. “I am worried about him, and I don’t know what is happening,” his mom tells North News.

Add Allina Health to the list of institutions failing to meet the moment. Sahan Journal reports that Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez of Mounds View was suffering from back pain, so her husband, Liborio Parral Ortiz, drove her to the ER. But ICE stopped the couple, Parral Ortiz was shipped off to El Paso, Texas, and Sanchez Dominguez was trapped at Allina’s Mercy Hospital in Fridley, where ICE agents and hospital staff refused access to visitors, including her lawyer. “ICE wouldn’t even let us sit in the lobby,” says the couple’s daughter, Shelly Parral Ortiz.

Writing for the Minnesota Reformer, freelance reporter Atra Mohamed caught up with terrified Twin Cities immigrant communities. Minneapolis shop owner Sahra Sharif, a mother of 16, expresses profound regret at having voted for President Trump. “I feel as though the weapon I built is coming to kill me and my people,” she tells Mohamed.

You tax dollars at work:

Minnesota Public Radio reporters are absolutely crushing it this month. Here's further proof: Jon Collins has this report about ICE agents weaponizing fear as they rampage through Minnesota communities. “It’s corrosive. It’s confusing. It’s un-American and it's obviously dangerous,” lawyer Scott Shuchart tells MPR.

Out in Willmar, a 19-year-old high school student, Suban Noor, was released Friday by ICE after being nabbed by them Monday. Noor's family couldn't contact her all week, the Fargo Forum reports.

Hours after ABC News ran an interview with Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall, co-owner of St. Paul’s Mischief Toy Store, ICE agents swarmed the place, Ross Raihala reports for the Pioneer Press. “She delivered a very strident anti-ICE message, which we’re incredibly proud of,” her sweet dad, Dan Marshall, tells Raihala.

Speaking of ABC News: They're reporting that the Department of Homeland Security is denying some detainees at Minneapolis's Whipple Federal Building access to legal counsel. “ICE agents were physically restricting me from seeing them,” one immigration lawyer claims.

"Good’s death highlights a glaring lack of tactical skill," a retired St. Paul cop writes for MinnPost. He continues: "How much of this ICE behavior and tactics is incompetence and how much is a result of the impunity granted to the agency by the current administration? It is likely a mix."

Will 1,500 active-duty military troops from Alaska join the federal siege on Minnesota? The Army's 11th Airborne Division is on standby, NPR has learned.

Looking for an easy way to help your neighbors out? The People’s Laundry is a free, queer-run, mutual aid laundry service, which typically provides services to folks in encampments.

Popular pop-rockers Hippo Campus, Picked to Click champ Papa Mbye, and 26 BATS! are throwing an "I.C.E. OUT!" benefit concert on February 15 at First Avenue.

60 Minutes led its Sunday broadcast with a report from Minneapolis:

DOJ to investigate protest of ICE pastor’s St. Paul church. The agency has put ex-CNN newsman Don Lemon, of all people, "on notice" for covering the situation, which is never something you want to hear from the federal government about reporters doing their jobs.

North Minneapolis man Garrison Gibson, 38, told reporters Saturday that ICE agents "took trophy pictures with their personal phones" on January 11 after they broke down his door and arrested him in front of his daughter, per MPR News. The feds briefly detained him again last Friday following his initial release. Gibson has since lawyered up.

A man abducted by ICE this month in Minneapolis, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz, died Wednesday while being held inside a federal detainment camp outside of El Paso, Texas, according to ICE.

At least man in one St. Paul neighborhood is taking up arms against ICE, journalist Amanda Moore reports for FreedomNews.TV (see clips below). The screamingly hypocritical reactions from some right-wingers are... being noted.

On Friday evening the courts issued a preliminary injunction preventing ICE officers from retaliating against demonstrators. But as this video from Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne shows, ICE continues to wild out with the pepper spray. We’re not sure bodycams are gonna fix this problem, Angie.