A growing number of Americans who are witnessing the lethal brutality of Donald Trump’s ICE secret police force across the country, believe that the people of Minnesota are a critical line of defense against an authoritarian federal government determined to destroy the rule of law and democracy. After ICE agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a third shootin, dozens of incidents where citizens and non-citizens were violently attacked without provocation, the arrest of peaceful ICE observers and the abduction of a 5-year-old boy, tens of thousands of people in Minnesota have demonstrated extraordinary courage and resilience by putting their freedom and very lives on the line by resisting tyranny in the streets of their own neighborhoods.
On two consecutive Fridays, Jan. 23 and 30, large numbers of Minnesotans from all walks of life participated in a general strike and work stoppage under the banner of “ICE Out of Minnesota.” At the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, local police arrested about 100 faith leaders on Jan. 23 demonstrating against ICE violence, while dozens of cities across the U.S. have organized Minnesota solidarity protests in recent weeks.
While the harsh rhetoric from the Trump White House may have changed slightly, the reality of repression on the ground in Minnesota hasn’t. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Minneapolis-based organization Vote Common Good. Here he talks about the brave determination of people in his state standing up to Trump regime violence and his advice to people across the country on how best to prepare for similar assaults on their communities.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: This Trump administration has no plans to stop only in this city. They want to punish political enemies all over the country by sending what seems to function as something akin to Donald Trump’s personal military force through ICE into American cities to destabilize and to terrorize and to make it impossible for people to pursue life, liberty and happiness. And it’s the most un-American presidency we could have ever imagined. It’s rogue and it’s dangerous. And Minneapolis and the larger Twin Cities area and including, and then also outstate Minnesota, has really suffered greatly because when you put our immigrant populations into a point of fear that damages our society, people from all over the world make Minneapolis, make Minnesota a thriving, beautiful place to live. And our freedoms are connected to those people. And when they can’t leave their houses, when they are terrorized by the presence of ICE, it makes it harder on all of us.
And if you think that the Trump administration is going after only people who should not be in the country or the worst of the worst or all the other propaganda nonsense that this administration continues to say, and so many people continue to parrot, then you might think, well, maybe it’s reasonable. That’s the extreme measures need to be taken. But the thing we know to be true is they are not going after the worst of the worst. They’re not only detaining and arresting people who are in this country without legal authorization and certification in the country, but the great majority of people they’ve taken into custody are either citizens or people born in the state of Minnesota. My own son, who’s adopted into our family with two adopted children is of Mexican heritage, but was born here in Minnesota in Minneapolis, and he drives for Amazon.
And his dispatcher said to a whole number of the people that were there, any of you that look like you all, look, we advise that you carry your birth certificate and your passport. So my adult son had to come to our house to pick up his birth certificate and passport that he keeps here at our house so that he could go to work in the city of Minneapolis. The idea that Minneapolis-born American citizens have to carry papers to answer to a bunch of masked, unqualified, money-seeking government troops is absolutely unthinkable. And yet that’s what we’re experiencing in this city.
SCOTT HARRIS: And Pastor Pagitt, I wanted to ask you this, after the death of Renee Goode on Jan. 7th and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24th, what’s the mood of the people you talk to about their anger, their fear, frustration and worry about the state of the city? State of the state? As well as the state of the entire country here, that they’re really on the front lines of?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: None of us are concerned about going to protests because those are big and they’re organized and they’re peaceful. It’s walking down the regular street in Minneapolis and thinking, I could be in a confrontation with a federal agent at any moment. That is what makes people scared and that is what makes people angry, and that is what makes the people of this city resilient so that people are out there whenever we can be just driving around, walking around, looking around, trying to make sure we can make the city safe for those in this community that could be gathered up. Like poor little Liam, that poor little 6-year-old boy swept up and sent off to Texas. These people are so senseless. They took a child and his father and shipped him to a detention center in Texas. So that’s who we’re trying to protect. People who have every right to be here, people who live in our communities and make it up, and we have to keep them from being accosted and abducted by the federal government.
SCOTT HARRIS: If you were to pick any lesson out that people in Minnesota and Minneapolis have learned over last couple of months of this ICE surge of agents and the brutality and the killing that’s gone on for the rest of the nation, what’s the lesson you would impart?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: I would strongly encourage people wherever you are, anything you can do to build connection, neighborhood connection, community connection, connections with law enforcement, which for a lot of us has been a really hard thing because our law enforcement in Minneapolis has been on the wrong side of goodness for far too long, but still building that because right now the police in the city of Minneapolis and the state troopers and the National Guard are helping to protect American citizens from the federal government. So from local neighborhoods, faith communities, whatever you can do to build social cohesion, it’s going to pay off in the end. So any way you can connect with your citizens and not feel at odds with them, find a way to do it. Because when the Trumpy people come knocking at our doors, they are going to have no care or concern for anything else that we hold to other than our ability to hold one another’s hands.
For more information, visit Vote Common Good at votecommongood.com.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Doug Pagitt (27:03) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. See more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.
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