Law enforcement leaders in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region said off-duty officers are among those who have been targeted by federal agents as they expressed wider concerns about “civil rights violations” in the area.
Three police officials from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area hosted a Tuesday press conference to sound the alarm on concerns about “discrimination,” “profiling” and “civil rights violations” as federal immigration officials operate in the region.
The Department of Homeland Security launched “Operation Metro Surge” in the region last month, and agents have made 10,000 arrests since, the agency said Monday. The operation has sparked protests and backlash from local officials, which further intensified after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, on January 7 in Minneapolis.
Local officials are “receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens,” according to Mark Bruley, the police chief of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. Off-duty police officers have also been targeted, he said.
“We started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them,” Bruley told reporters.
Bruley said one off-duty officer was recently stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who “demanded her paperwork,” despite her being a U.S. citizen who “clearly would not have any paperwork.” The agents also had their guns drawn during the incident, he said.
“When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone. In an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands, preventing her from recording it,” Bruley said.
The agents “immediately left” without making any further comments after she identified herself as a Brooklyn Park police officer, Bruley said.
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said people in the area are being “stopped, questioned and harassed solely because of the color of their skin.”
“This is not OK now, and it has never been OK, and now that same discrimination is also spilling into the law enforcement community,” Witt said.
Bruley noted these concerns are “not widespread,” and said it’s a “small group of agents within the surge in the metro area that are performing or acting this way.”
“What you won't hear from any of us today is rhetoric of ‘abolish ICE’ or that there shouldn't be immigration enforcement. The truth is, immigration enforcement is necessary for our national security and for local security, but how it's done is extremely important,” he said.
A DHS spokesperson told The Independent “allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”
“This type of garbage is contributing to our officers facing a more than 1300% increase in assaults against them. A person’s immigration status makes them a target for enforcement, not their skin color, race or ethnicity. We are targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens—including many that were released from Minnesota jails into American communities,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that there is “no record of ICE or Border Patrol stopping and questioning a police officer” and that “without a name, we cannot verify any of these claims.”
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said at a separate press conference held Tuesday that his agency’s operations are “lawful” and “focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community.”
When asked about the recent remarks by police officials who criticized ICE agents, Bovino said the agency’s tactics “are borne of necessity.”
“What we do is legal, ethical and moral. Everything we do everyday is legal, ethical, moral, well-grounded in law,” he said.
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