Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
ICE Operation Targets “Real People Living Real Lives”
So, what has ICE been up to since it began terrorizing our community last week with its stupid “Operation Metro Surge”? So glad you asked.
- In Burnsville, ICE agents detained four people from a home, leaving a 7-year-old child without his parents, according to KARE 11.
- Agents detained Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi, an addiction recovery leader described by friends as “a person that would give his shirt off of his back to anybody.” The agency claims Abdi is a gang leader.
- In Minneapolis, agents detained an Edina-born woman of Somali descent—a U.S. citizen—and mocked her for her hijab.
- On the Augsburg University campus, agents pointed guns at witnesses outside of a residence hall as they detained a student; they did not have a warrant. “These tactics, with the implicit threat of violence, are unacceptable, dangerous, and profoundly disturbing,” the university wrote in a statement.
According to local immigration leaders who spoke with Sahan Journal’s Katelyn Vue and Joey Peters last week, law-abiding clients who have been following immigration rules are being arrested, with some being detained during their required check-ins with ICE.
“These are real people living real lives,” Minneapolis-based attorney David Wilson tells Sahan Journal of the bulk of ICE detainees. “They’ve done nothing wrong but being from the wrong country at a time when the president gets mad.”
“I Will Blow My Whistle and I Will Scream”
That’s just one of many great quotes from ordinary people in Minneapolis that you’ll find in Jon Collins’s story about “ICE watchers” for MPR News. Among the folks Collins speaks to are Lucia Webb, who drove around in pursuit of frustrated feds. (The agent told her, “You can not do this.” Webb insisted, “Yes, I can. Yes, I can.”) There’s also a fellow named Dan who claims correctly that ICE is creating “the opposite of safety” in the city, and Jonathan, whose quote I’ll now provide in full: “If I find feds, I will honk at them, and I will blow my whistle, and I will scream.” Read the full story to learn more about how these people are working to protect their neighbors—and maybe get involved yourself.
Nobody Wants to Talk About Cyndy Martin
That’s the real takeaway from Michelle Griffith’s story in the Minnesota Reformer today about the northern Minnesota DFL party leader who’s been charged with criminal vehicular homicide.
On July 3, 2024, Cyndy Martin allegedly struck and killed 19-year-old Carter Haithcock on Highway 169 in Itasca County. She called 911 the following morning and said she believed she’d hit an animal. The prosecution’s charges rest on whether she had a duty to stop and investigate the collision. As the state puts it, “There is a stark difference between an adult male and an owl or a turkey.”…