‘I was flooded with fear’: Minnesotans describe their encounters with ICE, being detained

On Dec. 1, operation “metro surge” started in the Twin Cities and in the weeks since, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says they have detained 2,000 people. Minnesota Now spoke with people who have encountered ICE agents or been detained about what they experienced.

Two Minneapolis observers detained for eight hours

On Sunday, Patty O’Keefe and Brandon Sigüenza were alerted to an ICE sighting in their neighborhood. Allegedly, agents were pepper spraying observers. O’Keefe and Sigüenza headed over to help. In their observer training, they have been told that ICE is less likely to use force if more people are there.

They said they were following an ICE vehicle, when agents stopped and surrounded O’Keefe’s car, spraying chemical irritants into the vents of the car. They smashed the windows, and then arrested them.

“The first thing I told the agent is that I had my passport in my coat pocket as he was handcuffing me. He brought me into an unmarked SUV and sat me down without buckling and ripped the whistle off my neck and said ‘I’m gonna be needing this later,’” Sigüenza said.

O’Keefe was put into another vehicle with three agents. She says they started taunting and mocking her, and called her ugly.

“The ICE agent who had pepper sprayed into the vents of my car said ‘you guys gotta stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian b—— is dead,’ verbatim, speaking of Renee Good. Which filled me with absolute rage and shock that you could say that to one of her neighbors,” she said.

They were brought to the Whipple Building and released after eight hours. They weren’t charged for a crime. Sigüenza said he was brought to a room with agents from the Department of Homeland Security and asked to provide the names of people he knows that are undocumented or the names of protest organizers in exchange for money or legal protection.

“I was shocked when I heard this, I didn’t know this was something they were doing,” he said. “On the way to the room I saw many people, mostly Hispanic people, in cells crying. We heard people yelling, ‘let me out,’ we heard screaming, we just heard wailing, desperate wailing.”

O’Keefe described holding cells with 40-50 people in them and smaller cells with dozens of people. She says the most disturbing part of her experience was the juxtaposition of people crying and ICE agents laughing.

“Just the level of disconnection that you have to be able to have to have those light hearted conversations on the backdrop of desperate crying from people who have been torn away from their lives and their families is pretty disturbing to me,” she said.

O’Keefe has lived in Minneapolis for 14 years and says she has never felt less safe in the city as she does now with the increase of federal agents.

An Uber driver questioned at the airport

Ahmed Bin Hassan, an Uber driver, was parked at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport glued to his phone after the killing of Good. Then, Border Patrol agents came up to his car.

“This is not the border, go to the Canada border or the Mexico border. I’m working dude,” Hassan told the agents.

The agent then questioned if he was from the United States. “I can hear that you don’t have the same accent as me, that’s why I’m asking,” the agent said.

Hassan recorded the interaction on his phone. More than half a million people have viewed the video and other videos that were recorded of the interaction. Eventually the agents left, but Hassan says he knows he isn’t the last one that will have a run in with agents — and wants others to know they can defend themselves too.

“I was defending my human rights because I was working and trying to earn an honest living and men in uniforms came up and they tried to terrorize me. So I was like, ‘Hey I’m not gonna let you get away with this,’” he said.

Hassan has had an outpouring of messages sharing support and praise of how he handled the interaction. He says he didn’t know he was capable of inspiring this much hope. For those who have interactions with ICE in the future, Hassan says he would tell people to not be intimidated.

“Do not be accomplices to your own oppression. Do not allow anybody in uniform or because of the power that they hold or the office they work from, do not allow them to intimidate you if you are oppressed,” he said. “It’s not a crime to not speak English.”

A parent stopped while doing school drop off

On Jan. 6, Alexis Greeves was driving herself, her kid and a neighbor’s kid to school when she was pulled over on Lake Street by ICE agents. She saw three cars behind her with flashing lights. Pedestrians began to stop and pulled out their phones to record.

Greeves wasn’t sure what was happening, she asked a woman on the street if the officers were ICE and she said yes, and told Greeves she would stay with her and monitor the situation.

“She stayed at a distance which was smart, but she just took two steps closer, made eye contact with me and just spoke in a way that reassured me and let me know I wasn’t alone and my job was to protect the children in the car,” Greeves said.

An agent went to her passenger side back seat where her neighbor’s kid was sitting — a tenth grader who is African American. According to Greeves, the agent peered in the window at the teenager. Greeves asked if there was a problem, but the agent stayed silent. Then, they left.

“I was terrified. I remember my voice was breaking as I was talking to this woman on the street and myself and the neighbor child in the backseat he and I just kind of burst into tears and I was just flooded. I was flooded with fear,” she said.

Afterwards, Greeves debriefed with the teen who says he thinks the agent saw a person of color and assumed he was Somali, and pulled Greeves over to check. Once the teen got to school that day he went to the guidance counselor and took a mental health day.

Greeves said the choice of the agent not to speak was “very frightening” but she locked eye contact with the woman on the street to find security.

“Just being able to see this woman making eye contact with me, she spoke to me in a way that communicated she wasn’t scared, that she could kind of be a container for my fear,” Greeves said.

MPR News reached out to ICE for comment on these claims, but hasn’t heard back.