Federal agents fired multiple rounds of tear gas, pepper balls, and flash bangs on January 14 in Minneapolis. Dave Decker/ZUMA
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As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to bring fear and upheaval to Minneapolis, more immigrants are sharing their stories of detainment and harsh treatment when being apprehended at their homes, while driving, and at work. Tensions continue to rise as federal immigration agents target people who they claim are in the country without legal status, as well as protestors filling the streets to demand accountability for Homeland Security’s often violent tactics, including ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renée Good in her car.
This week, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune, federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant hours after the agents themselves dined at the establishment. The agents reportedly followed the workers after the workers closed up for the night and took them into custody. That was not the first time ICE agents have gone to a local business as customers before arresting someone who works there.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” a man detained by ICE says.
During a Saturday press conference, a recently released man described a different form of callousness by ICE. Garrison Gibson, 38, said that agents showed up to his house multiple times, eventually smashing open the door with a battering ram. After armed agents took him from his home Gibson says, they reveled in his detainment.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding, “like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones.”
According to reporting from Minnesota Public Radio, the federal agents “did not let Gibson change into warm clothing or put on a coat before taking him out into the 16-degree winter air.” Gibson was sent to El Paso, Texas, before being returned to Minnesota, due to a federal judge’s intervention.
He made it back home just in time for his daughter’s birthday, but Gibson is still fighting the government’s efforts to deport him to Liberia, “a country he hasn’t visited since he fled a civil war there when he was 6 years old,” reported MPR.
Another troubling account comes from a husband and wife who were pulled over by federal agents while on the way to the hospital. According to reporting from Sahan Journal, Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez was experiencing back pain and was being driven to the emergency room by her husband, Liborio Parral Ortiz, when ICE agents stopped the car. The couple’s daughter, who says she was on the phone with Ortiz during the interaction, said that ICE “started opening their doors and pulling them. They were not asking them any questions, they just started grabbing them.”
Ortiz was taken into custody and quickly sent to El Paso, Texas, according to the family and ICE’s detainee locator system. According to the daughter, ICE agents and hospital staff have been restricting access to her mother at the hospital, even turning away the family’s pastor and lawyer.
“They were just racially profiled and picked up and kidnapped without a destination,” the daughter told Sahan Journal.
