The havoc and horrific harm being caused by federal Gestapo across Minnesota is mobilizing the state's institutional leaders as well as the traumatized citizens. The latest is a call by unions and others for what amounts to a general strike in the Twin Cities and throughout the state on Friday, January 23:
"Minnesota’s unions, progressive faith leaders and community activists are calling a general strike on Friday, encouraging Minnesotans to stay home from work, school and refrain from shopping — suspensions of normal orders of business to protest the presence of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.
Friday is “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom” — a statewide pause of daily activity to “stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota,” according to the website.
Demonstrators will march and rally in downtown Minneapolis Friday starting at 2 p.m."
So far over 100 businesses in the Twin Cities have announced they will close on Friday.
On Tuesday, the Minneapolis Chief of Police and other police officials held a press conference protesting ICE actions, which have included the harassment of off-duty local police officers, at gunpoint.
Chief Mark Bruley cited "endless complaints" to the police about forcible stops and other "civil rights violations in our streets." Several officers in his department and other nearby departments have been victims of aggressive and dangerous stops. "Every one of these individuals is a person of color," he said.
After describing the violent stop of one of his officers, Bruley added, "I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers," Bruley said. "This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty officers, but what it did do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted. And that's what they were."
Another press conference was held by representatives of major physician organizations in various specialties describing the lawless actions of ICE agents invading hospitals and clinics, and more generally citing the harm being caused both directly and indirectly (by causing such fear that people are afraid to seek needed medical care).
The doctor representing pediatricians called ICE interventions "atrocities." She spoke of children being traumatized by sudden invasion into their homes by heavily armed thugs, as well as children handcuffed face down in front of their school. "Horrific trauma," lifelong trauma, is one result.
One incident described was a mother with her child attacked in a clinic parking lot where she was going to fill a prescription for anti-seizure medicine. The attack caused the child to have a seizure on the spot, while the mother was carried off to be transported to a detention prison in Texas. ICE is "traumatizing an entire generation" of children.
They also said that half of their regular hospital staff is afraid to show up for work, because they are Latin and Somali. These are the people who braved the pandemic to save lives in these hospitals.
When asked if there are laws in the works to apply to these situations, one spokesperson said, "We can pass 110 laws but ICE is already acting outside the law." The doctors, almost all of them women, were from across Minnesota, and those who didn't speak stood with tears in their eyes.
They promised that they were organizing ways to bring medical care to people too fearful to leave their homes. "Minnesota doctors will stand in solidarity with our patients."
A Minneapolis resident provided her unofficial testimony on Facebook, which was then included in a daily meditation by Matthew Fox. The situation, she confirmed, "is FAR WORSE than anything the mainstream media is presenting." The number of videos, accounts of ICE raids, "beatings, abductions and other crimes" are too many to even count. "Everyone I know here is shaken to the core."
The raids are "nonstop, day or night." The sweeps in every public or semi-public place where people normally have the expectation of privacy, the violence to people driving in their cars, has been joined by door to door attacks--"kicking in the door armed to the teeth, entering illegally without a warrant and without batting an eye."
"These agents aren't out for any particular person. Don't believe the LIES about picking up criminals. They just grab whoever they deem non-white. Native Americans have been taken, and many are still missing. They are also abducting white legal observers, including those who offer no confrontation whatsoever."
"Yesterday, they violently abducted an autistic woman who was just trying to get to a doctor's appointment on a street they were occupying."
In her Wednesday letter, Heather Cox Richardson passes this on: "ICE agents are hanging around schools, threatening children. Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally."
The feds use of tear gas, mace and pepper balls against lawful protesters led to sanctions by a federal judge, though it was later countermanded at least temporarily by a Court of Appeals in a one sentence unexplained ruling.
The above witness echoes one of the doctors when she said, "I get so tired of hearing people lecture about what ICE can and cannot do legally. Yes, we all know. The problem is that ICE agents don't care and do what they want."
On Wednesday, AP revealed the existence of a memo within ICE asserting their thugs have a right to forcibly enter anyone's home without a judge's warrant, with only with their own administrative warrant, in direct violation of law interpreting the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Also Wednesday, results of a YouGuv/Economist poll showed that 71% of Americans surveyed agreed that the United States "is out of control."
