In Minnesota, Everywhere Is a Front Line
What a federal invasion looks like from the inside.
On January 7, 37-year old mother Renée Nicole Good was shot three times in the face by an armed ICE officer — later identified as Homeland Security agent Jonathan Ross —as she attempted to pull her car away from an active immigration raid she’d been monitoring in South Minneapolis. Although federal deportation troops had already been operating in and around the Twin Cities, where I live, for some time, Good’s death, and the incandescent city-wide rage that followed, have inspired the Trump regime to double down on its reflexive need to terrorize and subjugate its enemies. As things currently stand, there are currently more than twice as many ICE agents roaming Minneapolis and St. Paul as there are local police.
Practically speaking, this means that the place I call home is living under an occupying army—one that has demonstrated not only a willingness for violence, but a compulsive hunger for the most ostentatious displays of force it thinks it can get away with. ICE and CBP officers are grabbing people from their cars at gas stations and busy intersections, leaving glass and blood on the concrete as their fleets of tinted SUVs speed from the inevitable cacophony of whistle blasts that follow them across the metro. Phalanxes of armed goons have splintered front doors while families huddle terrified in the back of their homes. Streets everywhere are deserted. Restaurants are closed. Everyone is terrified. Everyone is furious. Nobody knows what comes next.
I’ve struggled for the past week with how to best convey the truly astronomical levels of fucked-up-ness in the air here. I imagine it must be like the days after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or the early weeks of COVID in Manhattan. That’s how it feels—like a natural disaster. Except, nothing about what’s being inflicted upon the Twin Cities is natural. It’s not natural for the January snow outside local public schools to be dyed orange with bear spray. It’s not natural for masked men in body armor to guard an entire Target restroom, just so a fragile fascist can tinkle.
So how do you describe a hurricane while you’re stuck in its eye? How do you describe getting kicked in the teeth while you can still taste leather? You can’t, of course—not completely. But I’ll try anyway.
