'My US Citizenship Did Not Protect Me': Community Hearing Details ICE Horrors in Minneapolis
"Cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," said one witness.
Several Democratic lawmakers on Friday convened a hearing in Minnesota to hear testimony from local officials and residents about the impact that the surge of federal immigration agents in the state has had on their lives.
The hearing, which was organized by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), featured elected leaders such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as testimony from US citizens who had been taken into custody by federal agents.
Patty O'Keefe, a 36-year-old US citizen, told lawmakers that her encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began when she and a friend had received a report that legal observers in her neighborhood were being pepper sprayed.
She said they found the agents and began following them in their car while honking their horn and blowing whistles to alert others in the area to their presence.
The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car's windows and dragged out both O'Keefe and her friend.
O'Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, "You guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why this lesbian bitch is dead," an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.
O'Keefe said this comment left her feeling "rage and sadness," while also asking why anyone would say something like that about the victim of a horrific killing.
"Then I remembered that cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," she said.
O'Keefe was then taken to the BH Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul, where she was put into leg shackles and placed in a detention area that had been reserved for US citizens.
While in detention for eight hours at the building, she said she saw people being subjected to inhumane conditions.
"I saw holding cells with over a dozen people each, and a large holding cell of between 40 to 50 people," she said. "Most of the people there were Hispanic and East African, both women and men. Some cells had no room for people to sit or lay down. Most people I saw were staring straight ahead, not talking, despondent and grief stricken. I know I'll never forget their faces."
Mubashir, a 20-year-old US citizen of Somali descent, recounted his detention by federal immigration agents in December, when officers tackled him and took him into custody even though he offered to show them his identification proving his citizenship.
"I repeated, 'I'm a citizen, I have an ID,' the agent kept saying, 'That don't matter,'" Mubashir explained.
Like O'Keefe, Mubashir was taken to the St. Paul ICE detention facility, where he was shackled. Unlike O'Keefe, however, he was told that he was going to be deported despite having proof of his legal status.
Eventually, Mubashir was able to show a photo of his passport card to an official at the facility who instructed officers to release him from custody.
"It is difficult to believe this happened to me," he said. "I knew the president had made statements about Somali people and there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities... But I did not think this would happen to me or someone in my family. We are all United States citizens, so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE."
Mubashir also emphasized that "my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents."
