MINNEAPOLIS — Even with a below-freezing forecast through the end of the week, several residents and business owners said they are planning to turn out Friday for an “ICE Out” day of protest in the city.
Organizers are calling for no work, no school and no shopping, and some businesses said they would close their doors as part of the civil action.
“This is a bigger thing than the weather,” said Larry Weiss, a retired resident who patrols on his block alongside his wife and noted it was supposed to be about “eight below” in the city on Friday. “They are trying to break us and we are not going to be broken,” he said.
Posters calling for statewide action and promoting the protest march and rally are pasted in the windows of businesses near the University of Minnesota. In the LynLake area, a few businesses had posted signs warning that neither Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs nor Border Patrol were welcome inside their stores without a valid judicial warrant.
“Everyone is welcome here, except I.C.E.,” reads a sign on the door to Wrecktangle Pizza.
Three weeks since 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer, the defiance of the city’s residents remains on full display.
Jeff Rogers, one of the Wrecktangle owners, said the pizza restaurant would be closed Friday and he’d attend the protest. The restaurant industry in the city is being suffocated by ICE’s presence, he said.
“It’s tearing our restaurant community apart … everyone’s seen all the evidence of all this bulls—. It’s horrific and not something we condone,” he said.
Beckett’s, a nearby sports bar, also planned to close, said Frank, one of the managers who declined to give his last name as he expressed concern over his co-workers.
“We have one of our head cooks who hasn’t come in for a month now because he’s afraid. We’re all just supporting him. We also have other cooks that also are worried about it, but they need to pay their bills,” he said of his immigrant co-workers.
Craig, a local businessman who did not want his last name used and did not want his business identified over fears of backlash, said he has canceled all his Friday appointments to support the protest. He said most of his clients were supportive.
One of his co-workers is of Hmong descent, Craig said, and has had a lot of ICE activity in his neighborhood.
“I don’t know how fearful he is, but I am fearful for him,” said Craig, who added he’s been locking his business’ door to offer a safe place for University of Minnesota international students.
“They’ve maybe felt all week unsafe and they can come in here and maybe feel safe that maybe I’m a trusted person,” he said.
On Tuesday, Greg Bovino, Border Patrol’s commander-at-large, and Marcos Charles, ICE’s executive director of enforcement and removal operations, touted the arrests of more than 3,000 people in the Minneapolis region since last month, including “some of the most dangerous offenders,” they said at a news conference. Bovino said the actions he’s witnessed from immigration enforcement agents have been “professional” and “lawful,” after he was asked about concerns from local law enforcement that people were being racially profiled.
In the neighborhood where Good was shot, the streets were covered by snow on Wednesday. At mid-morning, a burst of whistles and car horns broke the icy quiet as drivers and pedestrians blowing whistles started following a group of vehicles they identified as belonging to federal agents. After a few blocks, the cacophony subsided.
Despite days of bone-chilling winter weather, residents could be seen throughout the week on street corners and navigating the snow piles on sidewalks as they monitored any actions by ICE or Border Patrol agents.
Networks of volunteers have grown by the thousands, according to a person who acts as a “dispatcher” to groups, including those who respond quickly to arrest sites in order to document immigration enforcement activity. Volunteer medics and chaplains also roam neighborhoods where ICE operations play out, ready to tend to anyone impacted by tear gas or pepper spray.
“None of us want to be doing this. I don’t, but we simply cannot stand by as other Minnesotans are being hurt,” said Ben Damberg, who helps thousands of people communicate on Signal channels, coordinating responses to ICE operations around the city. “We will march, we will protest, and we will do it all peacefully above all else.”
A massive mobilization network
While some residents have been acting as rapid responders, others have been mobilizing and doing the kind of work seen in natural disasters such as floods or fires.
Earlier this month, Rogers’ business began providing free frozen pizzas to immigrant families for every pizza bought. The donation drive began in early January after a confrontation with federal agents who were refused entry to the restaurant.
The restaurant shortened its hours to have more hands to prepare the pizzas and meal kits for families and handle donations.
On Wednesday, Rogers said in a social media post that the restaurant had raised $200,000 and would put that money in a fund to support other nonprofits as it continues to give frozen pizzas and meal kits to families.
At Dios Habla Hoy church, in south Minneapolis, volunteers were stacking dozens of small bags of flour and other staples that were coming into the church. It’s the sort of relief-operation work volunteers might do after a major disaster.
Sergio Amezcua, the church’s pastor, said he has a network of 4,000 volunteers. They help him distribute food to families in need, many of them immigrants who won’t leave home for fear of being arrested by federal officers.
On Wednesday, Amezcua said the church delivered boxes to 1,500 families in about six hours. About 300 volunteers served as drivers and helped Amezcua deliver the boxes. The church is distributing about 100 tons of food weekly, the pastor said.
Last Friday, the church had run out of food and Amezcua sent a message to volunteers asking if they could do some shopping. In three hours, the church was filled with food.
“This is a humanitarian crisis in Minnesota,” he said. He said the disaster-like response honors Renee Good.
“Her life shouldn’t be forgotten. She is going to be a hero for our community,” he said.
Aside from donation mobilizations, other residents are expressing support to the city’s immigrant community in other ways. A community singing group has been performing at the site where Good was fatally shot.
“It’s such a sacred and difficult place,” said Timothy Frantzich, of the Perfection-Free Community Singing Circle, who spoke to NBC News last week. “But I think if we can bring something beautiful, then maybe we can bring something beautiful to a difficult place.”
One of the singers, who asked to be identified as Z. Brown out of fear due to the ongoing tensions in the city, described a feeling of “helplessness, and wanting to do something” after Good’s death and recent enforcement actions impacting her immigrant neighbors.
Brown said there was an uncomfortable truth about it all, which was that those who didn’t look like her, a white woman, couldn’t come out and support the community for fear of being aggressively targeted by ICE.
“It’s important as white people, we can be out here right now and we can be in this space,” she said. “It’s just, we feel like we have to do that, because there are so many people right now who are literally hiding.”
