ICE Arrests Minneapolis Protesters After Residents Intervene on Pillsbury Avenue
Residents on Minneapolis’s South Side confronted ICE officers during an attempted arrest on Pillsbury Avenue, resulting in multiple injuries, chemical irritants being deployed, and at least four arrests. Witnesses and elected officials raised concerns about de-escalation, use of force, and the impact of community resistance on federal immigration enforcement.
On Monday afternoon December 15, ICE officers attempted to arrest two individuals on the 2800 block of Pillsbury Ave. in Minneapolis but were interrupted by residents who quickly showed up at the scene. Residents began filming, blowing whistles, and publicly shaming the officers.
The incident resulted in at least four people being arrested and multiple injuries, including a state representative, before the scene was cleared by local law enforcement, bringing to light both ICE’s seeming lack of de-escalation training and the effect protesters are having on agents.
“They were super nervous about what was going on.” said one observer who witnessed the initial stop. “They kept on calling in for reinforcements, but they weren’t showing up. They kept on being like, where the f*** are the backups?”
The initial observer said she pulled over after seeing two ICE vehicles had boxed in another car and were yelling at the two occupants. More witnesses quickly gathered at the scene, where at one point agents were seen throwing a woman, who was an observer, to the ground and tasering her.
“They tasered her as she was running away,” the initial observer said. “They ran after her, the two agents that I could see. One agent kneeled on top of her and cuffed one of her hands. People were saying that she was pregnant and to leave her alone.”
The scene quickly turned chaotic, as bystanders are seen on video surrounding agents. At one point she is seen being dragged on the ground as the officers try to hide from snowballs and water bottles being thrown at them. They let her get away.
The two people initially stopped were later detained, along with two U.S. citizens, for “assaulting federal officers,” according to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. More ICE officers responded and began to hit people with batons. Officers continued pepper spraying into the crowd, with one person being sprayed point-blank.
“They maced me right in my face. I couldn’t see anything for like 10 minutes,” witness Lauryn Spencer said. According to Spencer, she saw the growing scene while driving and stopped to record when she saw a woman being dragged through the street.
Spencer’s video shows one agent brandishing a weapon at the crowd, while the other sprays others close. “I think what ICE is doing is horrible, and the only way we are going to get them to stop is to document them and resist their fascism,” Spencer said.
State representative Aisha Gomez was also maced after she responded to the scene and tried recording. “You could tell they were not well-trained.
“I was just standing and observing, recording them with my phone, and I wasn’t issued any directions or any requests that I move back,” Representative Gomez said. “They just were deploying chemical irritants without issuing warnings to the crowd.”
Rep. Gomez, who has long critiqued MPD’s use of chemical deterrents for crowd control, says this is not new in Minneapolis’s Black-immigrant community.
“We went through this consent decree process because there was a pattern of discriminatory policing in Minneapolis. And one of the things that came out of that was the directive that chemical irritants are not to be used on crowds unless authorized by those higher up in MPD,” Gomez said.
“I’m very concerned because it reveals a lack of proper training when you have agents in that kind of situation, just indiscriminately using chemical irritants on crowds. Many of these larger demonstrations of force have been concentrated in Black immigrant communities.”
Despite the many people who were chemically attacked, residents stood their ground, refusing to let ICE officers leave, causing them to call for backup from MPD and Hennepin County’s Sheriff’s Office, who both responded to the scene despite a city ordinance that states MPD does not assist in immigration operations.
Regarding the police department’s response, MPD Sargent Garrett Parten said they responded to an “officer-needs-help” call and “immediately responded and confirmed there was no one being assaulted and no life-safety conditions that warranted further involvement.”
Sargent Parten said MPD cleared the scene in “less than 10 minutes,” and that their officers had not arrested anyone.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office took to Facebook in response to their involvement, releasing the audio of a caller from Homeland Security who stated “several times” that agents were surrounded and “being attacked” by “60-70 agitators,” but left soon after responding.
The community support has left ICE authorities rattled, with Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin posting “This dangerous riot is the direct result of sanctuary politicians and the media emboldening rioters to engage in violent and unlawful behavior, undermining the rule of law and putting officers and the public at risk.”
Izzy Canizares welcomes reader responses at icanizares@spokesman-recorder.com.