By Lori Lee
NDG Contributing Writer
Recent raids and aggression targeting sanctuary cities and those with high immigrant populations have escalated tensions between the federal government and the U.S. public, a CBS poll showing 61% of Americans now perceive tactics used by ICE as too tough, up 5% since last month.
The sentiment is erupting as activist groups form across the country and as young people shout out alongside the elderly following the killing of Rene Good and Alex Pretti; this, as citizen videos directly contradict federal statements surrounding these deaths.
One can even start to hear Republican voices speaking out, in conservative media and in Congress, as Republican Senators call for transparent investigations into the killings.
The government’s mass deportation agenda, as much as this Administration had said it will only target criminals, is affecting everyone, non-citizens and citizens alike, said organizer, political strategist and immigration expert, Vanessa Cárdenas, speaking at an American Community Media (ACoM) briefing.
“Americans are seeing in real time what an enforcement-only agenda looks like, and they’re recoiling from it. They are rejecting it,” she said … They do not support the fact that ICE is going after long-established immigrants who are not committing crimes.”
Amidst the turmoil, we have seen a growing movement of citizen journalists recording government actions, defending their neighbors and training to defend democracy. Amanda Otero, parent and co-executive director of “Take Action Minnesota,” who also spoke at the ACoM briefing, has been working in her Minneapolis community to help students feel more comfortable going to school.
Using the Chicago experience as a model, the group created sanctuary school teams to help immigrant students and families afraid to leave their homes, helping them with rides and to get groceries, and raising funds to help them afford to stay home from work and be safe.
Surrounding the killing of Renee Goode, ICE was invading their neighborhoods and school yards with tear gas. The day before Renee Goode was shot, as she and other parents were gathering up the children, Otero witnessed federal agents tear gassing and arresting legal observers not a block away, said Otero, “and parents and teachers kind of made eye contact, and said, ‘okay, kids, let’s go,’ and you know, shoveled those kids in a little more quickly.”
Working on the front lines, legally defending these cities targeted by ICE is Sari Lee, Deputy Organizing Director for One Northside in Chicago, who also spoke at the ACoM briefing.
Working on Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, she said, “we organized block by block in our neighborhood, had a central hotline that everyone knew and had saved on their phones,” she said.
Her team taught Chicago residents to identify and document agents, including how to get in touch with needed help, she said.
In early November, they worked to train more than 500 people to resist, she explained, to participate in mass non-cooperation strategies and to impose economic and political costs on institutions.
Through that training, they were able to organize across the city and across the state, exposing AT&T in their contracts with ICE and DHS, while encouraging people to stand up and impose economic costs on the company.
Though a lot was learned from Chicago, through webinars and trainings, a lot of the strategies and infrastructure, Chicago took from California and D.C., added Lee. In fact, much of it came from the history of organizing back in the first Trump Administration, in Rogers Park and in Albany Park, doing cop watch on the north side of Chicago, Lee said.
Training to support networking in these hyperlocal groups, Otero added, they continuously guided and negotiated conversations surrounding different scenarios and the types of risks people would have to decide whether or not to take on, explained Otero.
From the community perspective, we are incredibly committed to peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and this is what keeps us safe, she emphasized.
Several lawsuits have emerged in the past few months to try to put the brakes on what Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is doing in Minnesota, noted Senior Staff Attorney with the National Immigration Project, Ann Garcia.
A class action lawsuit was brought in December by six Minnesotans who DHS had prohibited from exercising their First Amendment rights to observe, assemble, and protest, the lead plaintiff being Susan Tincher. The complaint references similar efforts to repress speech in fascist and totalitarian regimes, she explained.
A district court judge had issued a preliminary injunction in the case to prevent DHS from terrorizing and arresting people that were simply trying to engage in peaceful, unobstructive protests. Yet, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the measure, allowing DHS to continue the terror in Minnesota.
“This is largely the result of the makeup and the ideological leanings of appellate courts in this country at this point,” said Garcia. You’ll see the Supreme Court rolling back temporary pauses like this as well, she said.
The White House and DHS have been trying to create a false narrative about what’s happening in Minneapolis, painting community members as domestic terrorists as they exercise their legal, protected rights.
Federal guidance put in place just last Fall directs federal officers to treat political dissent as a form of domestic terror. Legal scholars and the ACLU have warned these actions are unconstitutional, overly broad and risk criminalizing lawful protests and dissent, the Washington Post reported.
“You can see how this really quickly can turn into state repression,” added Garcia.
The federal use of administrative warrants is also dangerous and unlawful, as the courts have made clear for decades that only judicially authorized warrants allow government to enter a home or other private space.
As the people fight these repressive tactics, current events resonate with the 1850s, when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act to assist owners to recapture escaped enslaved people during the Civil War, added Constitutional law expert, Mark Tushnet. Like in Minneapolis today, people then came out on the streets during resistance movements against slavery. Famously, a crowd stormed a Boston federal building, attempting to recapture Anthony Burns, who was being sent back to the South. They did not stop them, noted Tushnet, but they did galvanize public opinion in the north. The authorities’ behavior specifically provoked the resistance and the ultimate movement against slavery, he said.
Today, ICE actions are allowing resistance to build up in the streets. Yet, court victories, when measured, are quite low.
“You couldn’t count on them [the courts] then, and you probably can’t count on them now,” he said.
“As lawyers, we would use the language of unconstitutionality but really, that’s just a substitute for the moral evaluation of what’s happening,” said Tushnet.
When the law enables this to happen, but also fuels resistance, it is what the people of the country mobilize in favor of or against that matters, he said.
This is what makes the current situation encouraging, he suggested. The more outrageous the behavior of government, the more the popular opposition grows, thus strengthening the resistance.
“It’s not the law in the abstract that solves these problems. It’s people standing behind their particular vision of what the law should be,” he said.
With an administration that doesn’t care about the rule of law and a Republican Party that’s willing to just go along with the president, added Cardenas, democrats are pushing for reforms.
“We are hearing more voices, including some conservative voices … How do we harness this moment to push other voices that need to be speaking to influence Congress and other electeds to do more?” she asked.
“Part of the reason people are galvanized and going into the streets, is they realize their freedom may also be imminently threatened,” added Garcia.
“At this point, it’s not just the freedoms of immigrant neighbors. It’s your freedoms. It’s the freedom of everybody that is in this room right now,” she said.
You can use actions on the streets as a means of explaining to people that what’s going on is wrong, added Tushnet, but it’s also important to pressure Democratic and Republican members of Congress back toward more traditional Republican values, he urged.
The problems are urgent and you can’t rely on the court to intervene quickly.
“Don’t count on the courts, he said, but go to the streets and the courts will follow,” he said.
