Activism, Uncensored: Minneapolis in Crisis, Part 2

The escalating protests and interactions between federal agents and protesters. Plus, a conversation with Ford Fischer of News2Share.

Our partner from News2Share, Ford Fischer, has spent nine days in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good. We had him on last week’s America This Week livestream reporting while in a vehicle following federal agents and anti-ICE activists.

You can watch a compilation of his work from January 12 to January 17 in the video above. We also thought it would be good to hear more from Ford. The following Q&A includes links to additional video, and has been edited for brevity and clarity:

Racket: You’ve been there nine days. What has your schedule been like?

Ford Fischer: These have been long, pretty challenging days, but the community of fellow journalists consisting of freelancers and other independents has made it possible. Generally, it’s looked like rolling out fairly early in the morning, and chasing reports about ICE and CBP activities throughout the day in vehicles. As watchers, protesters, and journalists come across immigration enforcement activity, they follow closely behind and jump out of the vehicles to record when the agents get out to do what they’re doing. Most days have been like that all day, possibly followed by protests in the evening, such as the demonstrations outside the hotels housing ICE, and those outside the Whipple Federal Building, which are non-stop.

On Wednesday night (January 14), I was with six journalists at a restaurant. I was two mozzarella sticks in and awaiting a patty melt on rye when we had to abandon our food because ICE shot someone about two miles away. The resulting unrest lasted for hours.

Q: Things were already heated when you arrived, but has there been a change in how ICE agents have reacted to protests and the people they’re arresting as part of the operation?

FF: My impression from my friends filming and photographing out here before my arrival is that the shooting of Renee Good had the dual effect of driving further involvement among the anti-ICE watchers, and more forceful tactics on the part of ICE. Entire crowds have formed around the agents amidst raids, and they’ve reacted with copious amounts of crowd control munitions.

However, since the Wednesday night shooting, as of today (Saturday), ICE appears to have been a bit more restrained, staying in their vehicles, and generally have had a more trollish attitude.

Q: How dangerous has the environment been for agents, protesters, and the public?

FF: Because of the activists’ tactic of being in contact online in real time, protesters tend to converge in greater force around scenes with longer durations. This has led to correspondingly aggressive tactics by ICE to push them back using riot control munitions. For protesters and agents, this is a chaotic environment, but one they’ve elected to end up in.

I think the effect on the public cannot be overstated. Tear gas canisters have ended up on lawns and under cars. In one scene, I filmed ICE agents rush away and leave behind an unspent flash grenade on the ground, which could severely injure someone if it were unpinned and detonated while holding it. At the shooting scene, I filmed a handful of 9mm unspent rounds on the ground, while a friend of mine filmed activists picking up a fully loaded AR-15 style magazine.

Q: Has the number of people attempting to block federal agents with vehicles grown?

FF: I’ve seen hundreds of activists follow agents in vehicles, and not once have I seen them attempt to use their cars to block agents’ movement. However, as people rush to converge on a scene — squads of agents, the watchers and journalists — additional vehicles also arrive. I have absolutely seen vehicles left on the street in a way that inadvertently has this effect [of blocking agents], causing the agents to stay in the area longer as they instruct people to move the cars. I’ve always seen this complied with, but additional violence has occurred when agents are stuck confronting crowds.

GC: From videos, we get the sense that all of the Twin Cities have erupted. Is it business as usual in parts of the city? Are we getting a distorted view of life there?

FF: I’ve had dinner at a handful of restaurants since arriving, and the management and servers have always said the same thing to me, which is that businesses are dead right now. Many people are afraid to go outside, fearing interaction with ICE regardless of immigration status or any kind of related conflict.

The two exceptions, so far, have been hotel restaurants and a business I won’t name here positioned close to the Whipple Building. Specifically, because these businesses are accommodating federal agents in their downtime as well as press, it would be fair to say they’ve benefited, while the economy more broadly seems to be suffering.

Q: From what you’ve seen, are ICE and Border Patrol agents stopping people who are targeted, or has it been more random? In other words, have you seen ICE or Border Patrol agents appear to stop people only because of how they look or sound?

FF: The Department of Homeland Security denies using race as a metric for establishing suspicion to begin an interaction, but the consensus among people here is that people of color are inherently at risk regardless of status. While filming BORTAC [Border Patrol Tactical] units on the 12th, I witnessed agents get out of a vehicle because a kid was on what appeared to be his driveway. They spoke to him briefly in Spanish, and the conversation that has been translated for me was roughly the following: The agents asked the kid for his ID, and the kid responded that it was inside the house. Agents said that he couldn’t be allowed in the house because he might not come out, so they forced him into a van.

I have no way to confirm his status at this point, nor whether he was released. But it would be nonsensical to expect a child to carry ID on his own driveway and treat his failure to immediately present one as evidence of lack of legal status.

Likewise, I filmed a man’s car window being smashed at a gas station and him being dragged out of his vehicle and taken away. A later DHS report said that he was indeed in the country illegally, but my understanding of the moments before my video started was that he was simply approached at the gas station and questioned, and this occurred because he refused to roll down his window. What made them begin suspecting him in the first place? Their statement doesn’t say.

Q: You spoke before about local police often being hands-off. Do you have a sense that people can do whatever they want around local police?

FF: There are a few different nexuses here. Local and state police are not supposed to participate in assisting immigration enforcement. It has been my experience that the police are not getting between the watchers and ICE. The only city I’ve seen police assist in that manner so far is New Orleans. However, the Minneapolis Police Department was out in force at the Wednesday night shooting scene, even firing riot munitions alongside the federal agents. So, in short, it seems like it takes a lot for them to get involved.

Likewise, the police did show up at the hotel protests, but it took a long time for them to do so. Protesters attempting to break into a hotel on my very first night scattered when state police showed up, but that didn’t happen for hours.

Q: You’re used to hearing allegations of paid protesters. What have you learned about these demonstrators? Do you see evidence of a well-funded, organized resistance?

FF: From my perspective, this week has further entrenched my view that “paid protesters” is, for the most part, an absurd fantasy. Having watched the Signal chats used to track the activities of ICE, these are formed by people joining and volunteering as they can, most of whom don’t even appear to know each other, and the work is done out of sheer commitment.

I will caveat this by saying that of course, some demonstrations are led by coalitions that have non-profits attached to them, and so donations are clearly used for things like signage. However, their calls to demonstrate attract the public with absolutely zero, zilch, nada evidence that the participants are somehow financially incentivized to participate.

In 10 years of documenting activism, I’ve very rarely run into even a crumb of evidence of “paid protesters,” but I’ve heard the accusation thrown around constantly without evidence to discredit them.