Minnesota Is Not Afraid

 Sujata Massey

I’m writing to you from St. Paul, Minnesota, where many roads are ice rinks and frozen snowbanks are as hard as stone. I came for a few days to visit my parents and sisters.January always means bringing warm boots, a down coat, and a thick wool hat and gloves. And now: my US passport. 

The reason I’m carrying my document everywhere isn’t because I’m paranoid.  It’s because the Supreme Court gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authority to racial profile: that is, to stop and detain people based on their skin color. For a brown person like me, it's not a joke. If I'm on a street by myself and the wrong car comes up, just telling them I'm a US citizen isn't enough. So many citizens have had lengthy detainments; and others have never come back home. 

In the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, a massive deportation effort named “Operation Metro Stop” is underway. More than 2000 ICE and Border Patrol agents are driving through business and residential neighborhoods, lingering to look at people both on foot and inside cars. Beating up and pepper spraying victims is common: not only for people they hope to throw into the van, but the neighbors and bystanders who step in to observe whether they have warrants and can legally take people. They are using license plate information to get the names and addresses of people participating in protests, and then following these people and speaking to them by name to intimidate them. This is the terrible new change that's happened in the last few weeks: ICE is violently and psychologically retaliating against peaceful protestors.The Trump government’s goal is to punish Minnesota, and use the wide publicity of the harm they’re doing to frighten sympathizers around the country and suppress political resistance.

Most people have already heard about the shooting death of American citizen and mother Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan 7. Good had only come to a scene where ICE cars were because she’d heard that ICE was hassling people and observers were needed. Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security, described the officer as being subject to ‘domestic terrorism’ and falsely stated that Good was an aggressor. But she never got out of the car. The truth was that her last words alive, recorded on Ross’s cellphone, were: “Dude, I’m not mad at you.” And his words, after shooting her three times in the face, were “Fucking bitch.” 

As I’ve said, the Good shooting, just like many other actions against the community observers, are meant as a warning to people not to interfere with ICE abductions. The agents are clearly distressed by the many times they’re missing making arrests because of the tremendous support Minnesotans are showing for each other. 

"We are Not Afraid!" is the defiant cry people chant at the men and women with guns in their hands and bandannas masking their faces. I am honking my heart out as I drive past each group. “Thank you!” I occasionally yell from my window, and the call comes back: “You’re welcome!”

More urgently, Twin Cities residents are making whistles with 3-D printers and distributing them widely to the population. They blow their whistles to signal that ICE is in the area, leading the vulnerable to take cover and the observers to get boots on the ground. And while ICE is going door-to-door asking people to report to them which houses have immigrants living in them, other neighbors are giving their phone numbers to such families for help in crisis. There is no rioting; there is no violent interference with ICE. It’s peaceful support, absolutely covered by existing law. Yet many protestors are being held in ICE jails for a day, during which time they are subject to extreme interrogations and offers of money in exchange for names of other protestors. What does this remind you of?

The valiant resistance is appearing from all sides. Minneapolis’s Native American community is sending its trained volunteer network to patrol streets and assist in protection. They’ve also have turned a community/arts center into 24-hour safe haven for observers and community members needing a place to sleep and eat. 

It may seem surprising that this particular state in the upper Midwest has turned out to be a place where people care so deeply about neighbors who are relative newcomers.

I think the answer is tied into to the history and nature of Minnesota. Ever since Native Americans were forced out of the area in the 19^th century, Minnesota became a place for transplants—and this history goes back only a few generations. Some people rode in covered wagons from other states, and foreign immigrants sailed directly from Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia. African Americans have been here since the pioneer era and the Civil War. The Twin Cities were further integrated in the 20^th century, during the Great Migration from Southern states. I recall that back in the 80s, it was common to see mixed race couples going out together in Minneapolis—something that could be dicey in many other parts of the country.  During this same decade, the state gained Hmong, Somali, South Asian and Latino immigrants. Minnesota had plenty of job possibilities, and local government leaders were willing to set up bilingual schools and daycare options. The philosophy was that giving people a chance to get an education and job would lead to economic success for everyone. 

Another unusual regional feature that influences Minnesotans is a strong sense of obligation to help people caught out in the elements who seem to be in trouble. Minnesota has the coldest winters in the continental US. This fact, over the generations, has shaped an awareness of the potentially fatal risks people face out on the street in the snow. To this day, you are cozy at home, but you can see a car stuck in the street in front of your house, you are expected to zip up your parka put and get out to help them. This was explained to me during my first winter as an adult homeowner in Minneapolis—even though it was already the age of cellphones and emergency car services. If it's your street--you keep the people on it safe.. 

Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for Operation Metro Stop, just as several other states have done. Regardless of this, ICE will certainly keep on assaulting Minnesotans. It must be hard for them to understand that the more tyrranical they are, they will only inspire larger numbers to step in to fill the shoes of those they've taken away.