MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Demonstrators on both sides of the latest immigration crackdown by the Trump administration clashed in Minneapolis on Saturday, while the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops had been mobilized and were ready to assist state law enforcement, though they had not yet been deployed on the city’s streets.
There have been protests every day since the Department of Homeland Security intensified immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities by moving more than 2,000 federal agents.
A large group of protesters gathered downtown Minneapolis on Saturday and confronted a much smaller group demonstrating in support of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They chased the ICE supporters and forced at least one of them to remove a shirt they deemed objectionable. Jake Lang, who organized the rally in favor of the agency, appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scratches on his head.
Snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van arrived and the heavily equipped Minneapolis Police Department intervened.
“We are here to show the Nazis, ICE, DHS and MAGA, that they are not welcome in Minneapolis,” said local demonstrator Luke Rimington, referring to ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” “Keep out of our city, keep out of our state. Go home.”
The National Guard is “prepared and ready.”
Meanwhile, Minnesota’s National Guard said Saturday in a release that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Governor Tim Walz to assist the Minnesota State Patrol “to help provide traffic support and protect life, preserve property and support the right of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.” Lieutenant Colonel Andrea Tsuchiya, a Guard spokeswoman, said that while the agency is “prepared and ready,” it has not yet been deployed on the city’s streets.
The announcement comes more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the Guard to be ready to back up state law enforcement.
The crackdown in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has sparked daily protests, with demonstrators marching against masked immigration agents who drag people from their homes and cars and employ other aggressive tactics. As in some previous campaigns, the operation in the Twin Cities has claimed at least one life. Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a confrontation on January 7.
On Friday, a federal judge ruled that immigration agents cannot detain or fire tear gas at peaceful protesters who do not interfere with authorities, even while watching agents during the operation in Minnesota.
Living with Fear
On Saturday, at a news conference, a man who fled Liberia’s civil war as a boy said he has been afraid to leave his home in Minneapolis since he was released from an immigration detention center after being arrested last weekend.
Video of federal agents breaching the front door of Garrison Gibson’s home with a ram on January 11 became another rallying point for protesters who oppose the operation.
Gibson, 38, had received a deportation order, apparently due to a drug conviction in 2008 that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what is known as a supervision order. After being arrested on Sunday, a judge ruled that the agents had not given him sufficient notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
He was then held again for several hours on Friday during a routine check with ICE. Abena Abraham, Gibson’s cousin, said ICE told her on Friday that the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, ordered Gibson’s arrest again.
The White House denied the account of the new arrest and the notion that Miller had anything to do with it.
After his arrest, Gibson was moved to an immigration detention center in Texas, but was sent back home after the judge’s ruling. His family had to use a dumbbell to keep the front door shut in subzero temperatures before spending $700 to repair the damage.
“I don’t go out,” Gibson said at a press conference.
The DHS said that an “activist judge” was once again trying to stop the government from deporting “illegal foreigners.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention and removal of foreigners who do not have the right to be in this country,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for Public Affairs.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I were a violent person, I wouldn’t have been out these last 17 years, registering.”
