Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
ICE Struggles to Clown
In Monday's Flyover, we noted that Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick referred to ICE as “fucking clowns.” He’s right, and apparently it’s easy to join the circus. Take this account of applying for an ICE gig from Army vet/journalist Laura Jedeed in Slate. Jedeed's resume includes a slew of anti-ICE articles, she took legal THC six days before her drug screening, and she signed none of the paperwork required for her background check. But when she logged into the job portal she was surprised that she had not only passed screening, but had already “accepted” a position as a deportation officer. She writes...
If they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didn’t fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people’s homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status? How many rapists and pedophiles are working in ICE detention centers with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICE’s allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they can’t even keep their HR paperwork straight?
It's no wonder they were quick to accept her application. While Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announces almost daily that more troops are coming to our state, leaked documents shared with independent journalist Ken Klippenstein suggest that the organization is actually struggling to find volunteers willing to deploy to Minneapolis. And the folks signing up are not the best and brightest.
“The claim is that recruiting is up, but there is also dread that the gung-ho types that ICE and the Border Patrol are bringing in have a propensity towards confrontation and even violence,” one source notes. Leaked emails sent out to agents have also included “legal refreshers” on use of force and examples of First Amendment protections.
Someone should also send a memo out on chokeholds. Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk found 40 cases of agents using these and other potentially deadly tactics that restrict or block breathing. Foy and Funk detail these cases and examine the DHS’s lack of accountability in this article for Propublica.
Meanwhile, the Resistance Is Prepared
For examples of how rapid responders are organizing and fighting the good fight, look no further than this Minnesota Reformer piece from Madison McVan, who met with organizers and took a ride along with two friends dedicated to patrolling their neighborhood.
The duo sets out to "distract [ICE], to occupy their time,” says copilot Patty O’Keefe. “The more time they’re trying to get away from us, the less time they’re spending searching for people to abduct.”
A few days later an agent would smash O’Keefe’s window and detain her; she was held at the Whipple Federal Building for eight hours. Elle Neubauer, her friend and fellow patroller, would later be stopped by ICE. They greeted her by her wife’s name and led her to her house when she decided to keep following their vehicle.
Using private data to spook activists is an increasingly common tactic, as detailed in this story from MPR's Jon Collins. It’s also illegal; license plate readers and car registration databases are only supposed to be used in active criminal investigation cases.
“It's another example of the lawlessness that ICE has been operating with in our state,” ACLU MN’s John Boehler notes.
Meanwhile, The Daily Beast is reporting that personal data on 4,500 Border Patrol and ICE Agents has been leaked via a DHS whistleblower. Referred to as "The ICE List," it’s believed to be one of the biggest data breaches in U.S. history.
A Brief History the Silver Shirts in Minnesota
Minnesota may be known for its progressivism, but white supremacy is just as much a through line in our state’s history. (Minnesota is located in America, after all.) For more context, check out this Liberal Currents story on the Nazi-adoring Silver Shirts (aka the Silver Legion of America) from Samuel Freedman, the author of Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of racism and antisemitism in Minneapolis before World War II.
“As a nationwide movement, the Silver Shirts never mustered more than about 15,000 members, far from the several million [founder William] Pelley claimed,” he writes. “Yet in Minneapolis, a city with sizable reservoirs of racism and antisemitism, the group found an enthusiastic following, and not just among a destabilized and desperate white working class.”
Though the group’s lifespan was relatively brief, from 1933 to 1941, and Pelley and his followers are now long dead, Freedman can’t help but wonder if he’d appreciate the current state of Minnesota.
“ICE bears less resemblance to the federal agency formed under the George W. Bush administration than to exactly what Pelley yearned to produce: a paramilitary unit accountable only to a dictator,” he writes.
ICE Killer Lied to Neighbors About Shitty Job
In an EXCLUSIVE report from People magazine, we learn that Renee Good's killer, ICE agent Jonathan Ross, reportedly lied to his Chaska neighbors about what he does for a living. "[Ross] said he worked with plants, as a botanist," one neighbor tells People. "[He said he] enjoyed border control... but loved plants... It really creeps me out that those are my neighbors—that that’s the kind of people I live next to.”
Ah yes... enjoying border control? Right up there with "watching movies" and "playing sports" on the Family Feud tally of Things Normal People Enjoy.
