A Minneapolis Mom on the ICE Violence She’s Witnessed
Tackling teachers and spraying chemical agents on school property, ICE’s rampage through Minnesota is only getting more violent. Jacobin spoke with a Minneapolis parent-organizer about what she’s seen so far.
Renee Good’s murder was not the first incident in which ICE and other deportation agents have aimed firearms at or threatened lethal force against US citizens and other unarmed people. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Trey Cook
Federal immigration enforcement activity has intensified in Minneapolis in recent weeks, with large numbers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operating across the city. The escalation has drawn protests, school walkouts, and sharp concern from parents, educators, and local officials, particularly after enforcement actions occurred near schools and residential areas.
Jacobin’s Trey Cook spoke to Minneapolis parent Christin Crabtree about how the increased ICE presence is affecting public schools, family life, and community safety — and how students and neighbors are responding.
How long have you lived in Minneapolis?
Most of my life. My mom grew up here, so my family is all here. I actually grew up in South Dakota until I was fourteen and then moved here. I’m forty-five, so a long time. And I have two kids. One is a Minneapolis Public School graduate, and my other child is in high school right now.
Has there been a change in people’s relationship with ICE around town?
In Minnesota, especially in Minneapolis, we have a really strong connection to one another. We are a community that’s been through, especially in recent years, so many different things. We’re a very socially conscious community and more than anything, one that cares about its neighbors and cares about each other.
In the 1990s, when the Somali community came here, they were escaping horrific war conditions, civil war conditions, and Minnesota was a place that people came to because we have such a strong sense of community here. We’re the type of state that cares about its neighbors and has strong social programs.
We have a lot of different immigrant communities that have chosen the Twin Cities in particular. So lots of different backgrounds — Ecuadorians, people from Afghanistan, lots of Somalis. You will see in the summertime at things like the May Day parade, you’ll see the Aztec dancers, and you’ll see that celebration and connection among people. We also have in Minneapolis, the largest urban indigenous population in the country. Some people are Anishinaabe, Dakota, who are indigenous to these lands. They’re very much a part of our community.
But there are conditions nationally that have absolutely made things more difficult for all of us. So these attacks on our immigrant community are an attack on all of us. And we see that reverberating through our community. For example, I was just talking with a family I know the other night, their daughter is on the autism spectrum and is nonverbal. And this is a native family. They have a person who drives this child to their program every day for education. And the person who drives them happens to be Somali. The mother was afraid for her daughter to go to the program, because what if the driver gets pulled over and gets abducted by ICE, and then you’ve got a nonverbal child with no one there to protect them? We have seen that happen, where ICE agents have grabbed a caregiver out of a car and just left the kids there. It’s bananas.
So this is really impacting everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are documented or not. They’re targeting people, particularly anybody who isn’t white or isn’t white presenting. And it’s just been wild.
How has that changed the conditions in school?
It’s been really tense. It’s traumatic for our kids. It’s absolutely horrific, the things that they’re experiencing every day. We’ve got kids coming home from school and talking about it. It used to be that you would do a drill for a tornado or a fire. And now kids are doing drills on how to stay safe if ICE comes to their school.
The federal government is attacking our places of education and our schools. Public school is where we build up our next generations, and school ought to be a safe place. It ought to be an affirming place. It ought to be a place where our children are able to be themselves and be able to learn and grow. And now school is a scary place.
We’ve seen ICE agents near schools and even on school property in ways that are just terrifying for our kids. And they have demonstrated zero situational awareness. What one might hope one would see from a public safety or law enforcement approach would be one that recognizes where you are and how to move appropriately. And that is not happening.
There are lots of families where caregivers are afraid to drive their kids to school, for their kids to take the bus, or to walk their child to the bus stop. So our community has worked really hard. Neighbors have been giving each other rides to school and rides back home again and delivering groceries to families, those kinds of things. And so we’ve got kids experiencing just a complete disruption of their day-to-day life. And, as a caregiver, one thing I know is that kids need structure and stability. And they have been robbed of that. For some kids, being at school is the only place they’re able to play outside because it’s not safe for them to play outside at home.
With all of the activity and things going on, we’ve had to cancel recess at a lot of schools because there are too many chemical agents, sprayed by ICE, in the air for it to be safe for the kids to play outside. They’re using pepper balls and tear gas and things of that nature. And, I was present at a high school here in Minneapolis when ICE came — they came just racing around a corner and pulled up in front of the school during dismissal. So as kids are still walking out the door, the ICE agents are chasing them.
It was a driver who had nothing to do with our school but that just happened to be where they stopped. It was multiple vehicles, big SUVs, and they came jumping out of their cars. I came running toward the scene as I’m seeing all these vehicles and whistles being blown and community [members] coming out and surrounding [the scene] because our kids are right there! So we’re trying to get our kids to safety. And as that’s happening, and they’re working to apprehend the person they’re trying to apprehend, they’re also being incredibly scary toward our kids.
These agents jumped out of their vehicles with these huge guns and started yelling at everybody. And our educators and school staff are saying, “You need to get off school property.” Then multiple agents tackled one of our teachers. Another educator was detained by them. And our kids are watching this. These are the people who take care of our kids, educate our kids, and keep them safe every day. For a child to see that? It is absolutely unacceptable. And these educators weren’t doing anything wrong. They were there to keep the kids safe.
The agents then deployed chemical agents on the school property with kids standing there. They had zero regard for who was present in the space at the time. And the head of their group was there. [US Border Patrol agent] Greg Bovino was there on site within feet of me. And I remember him taking a canister off his vest and holding it out like he was going to let more chemical agents out. They also sprayed somebody in the face with what I assume was pepper spray, like very close, point-blank; it was unnecessary. They already had this person apprehended, and they still sprayed them.
They were attacking someone else who just happened to be driving by the school?
Yep.
So what you’re describing is how they treated the people trying to de-escalate the situation in front of the school after ICE agents already apprehended the first guy?
Not just de-escalators like everybody else. There were neighbors; there were parents, and caregivers; there were educators and there were kids, because it was during dismissal.
From your perspective, is ICE acting as law enforcement meant to protect the community, or as an occupying force separate from it?
It certainly feels like an occupying force. And that seems to be the way that they’re operating. They’re not working in coalition with other jurisdictions. They’re not working with our state government or our city government by any means. We have a sanctuary policy here in the city of Minneapolis. If our governor called up the National Guard, these different agencies would be working together. And that is not what seems to be taking place here. It feels like an occupying force. It feels like a rogue gang of armed militia.
That’s what it seems like. Most of the agents are masked, and you can only really see their eyes. So it’s hard to know their age or anything like that. But I said before the murder of the observer last week, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed. It’s only a matter of time. What’s happening is constant escalation rather than de-escalation. While I, of course, wish it hadn’t happened, I am not at all surprised that somebody was killed.
The thing about Minneapolis is we know who keeps us safe, and it’s each other. And so that’s what we’re going to keep doing. But it’s very tense.
Are there any expansions of protections, any policy implementations that people are organizing for, or is it strictly bottom-up direct action?
Our city council just very recently strengthened our separation ordinance after there was an incident on June 3 here in my neighborhood, where multiple different federal law enforcement agencies descended on our community. And our local law enforcement, both our county and city law enforcement, showed up saying that they were there to keep the space safe.
But what they were actually doing was making it possible for the federal agents to continue their work. And there were even incidents caught on tape of some of the local law enforcement being kind of rough with our community members. So following that incident, which was terrifying in and of itself, there was a big push to strengthen our separation ordinance. And that just recently happened.
What is a separation ordinance?
So essentially it’s saying that our city will not work with federal immigration enforcement, that there’s a hard line between what Minneapolis police are supposed to be doing versus ICE agents. For example, if I were an undocumented person and I were to call 911, they are not to disclose anything about my immigration status — and it isn’t really their business what my immigration status is anyway. So it’s supposed to be a protection for our community and a separation between local government and federal law enforcement.
I know that we’ve had one for quite some time but that it had not been reviewed for many years. And we knew that it needed to be stronger than it was because of what happened on June 3. There was an audit by our city government of what transpired, and it was looking at the way that the Minneapolis Police Department showed up to that situation and what we need to do differently and better. The result of that audit was the clear need to strengthen that ordinance — for the separation to provide clear direction to our local officials and law enforcement about what they can and cannot do.
There’s also work being done regarding rent. Many of our neighbors are unable to go to work because it’s not safe for them to do so. And so there is organizing being done right now to potentially do an eviction moratorium for some amount of time. We certainly don’t need more unhoused neighbors than we already have, right? There’s no reason anybody should be unhoused in this community, but we certainly don’t want to add to that. “We are a state that believes that when we all do better, we all do better.” That’s what our former senator, Paul Wellstone, said. That quote is often reflected on in different spaces in our community, and we need to live that value.
Our kids are finding ways to — sorry, it makes me emotional — they’re working hard to keep each other safe, and they have organized walkouts. Our students did a walkout at one of our local high schools just this week. It was so powerful to see them singing together. They had a band, and they took the streets. It was phenomenal. And I could not be prouder of our young people.
We need ICE out of our community. We need them out of our schools. We need them out of our city, and we need them out of our state. They have no business being here. They are directly contributing to increased violence and harm at a time when what they are doing is not attacking or arresting criminals. They are attacking our community with indiscriminate violence, and that’s unacceptable.