Minneapolis City Council members call for eviction moratorium amid ICE presence

NINA MOINI: With federal agents in the streets, some Minneapolis council members say residents are reporting they can't safely go to work and pay rent. With increased federal law enforcement presence in the Twin Cities since December 1, the city leaders say the bills are piling up for people.

Here to discuss this and other ripple effects of the immigration operation is Minneapolis City Council Member, Robin Wonsley, who represents the eastern part of the city. Thanks for your time this afternoon, Council Member Wonsley.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Yes, thank you so much for having me on.

NINA MOINI: Basically, you and some of your colleagues are saying it's time for Governor Tim Walz to call an eviction moratorium. And for people who don't remember, we saw that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when people could not work. Tell us about it, how it works, and why now is the time for this.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Yeah. So over the course of the six weeks that we've experienced this occupation by federal ICE agents and now other federal law enforcement officers coming in and terrorizing our communities and continuing with this campaign of separating families as well, one of the impacts of that is people are not able to go to work.

As we've heard, people aren't able to safely go to their places of worship or even go take their children to school or even take public transit without risk getting abducted or assaulted and harassed by a federal law enforcement agent. In response to that, residents have had to just stay home. And they have not been able to make it to work.

And thus, when you can't go to work, you can't earn money, which you need to cover basic necessities, like rent. So we're seeing that play out. And we're seeing neighbors, day after day, doing everything that they can to raise thousands of dollars to cover their neighbors' rent that's going to be due on February 1, but that only goes so far.

And this is the moment where we need elected officials to step up and match the energies of our residents who are caring for one another right now in the streets all across Minneapolis and all across Minnesota. And one way we can do that right now is having Governor Walz, as he did in 2020, when we were faced with another statewide crisis and national crisis, which was the COVID pandemic-- we can have some harm mitigation done right now if he was to enact an eviction moratorium and make it so that residents don't have to choose between going to work and risk getting abducted or detained or terrorized or shot or killed and between having to pay their rent.

So that is something that we're calling on Governor Walz to do immediately and asking our local leaders to also support those efforts in addition to getting rental assistance support so people can also have what they need to pay for rent on February 1.

NINA MOINI: So tomorrow, which is January 15, the council is going to consider a resolution urging Governor Walz to pass an eviction moratorium. We have not yet heard from him if that's something that he's open to or planning to do. We're hearing he might have a media availability later this afternoon. So we'll try to get that question to him. What do you say, Council Member, to people who say that it's not the responsibility of others to assist when somebody who is breaking the law or here without legal documentation is facing this issue? Because some people say that.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Well, what is actually important here is since ICE has been here, we're not just seeing undocumented residents be targeted. We saw Renee Good, a US citizen, 37-year-old mother-- she was shot and killed by federal ICE agents. We've seen students in MPS families be harassed and assaulted by federal ICE agents.

So we've seen indiscriminate attacks on our residents regardless of your citizenship, ethnic background, whatever the case may be. So this protection isn't just for one particular vulnerable community. It's for all of our residents who are at risk and have been at risk of being harmed by federal ICE agents and are thus struggling to make it to work because they're having to shelter in place in order to stay safe.

So this is about keeping all of our residents across Minnesota-- because this is a Minnesota crisis, not just a Minneapolis crisis of occupation by federal ICE agents. It's about keeping those residents safe. And our governor represents all residents across the state.

And this is an effort. As he recognized back in 2020, it's something that the government can do. It's not others. It's the government that has the responsibility to step up and care for our residents and our constituents. And this is one bare minimum way in which we can do that right now.

NINA MOINI: After the last eviction moratorium-- I think it lasted around a year. It was phased out. I wonder how long you believe that this should last because after, as you know, when it was phased out, all of those bills pile up for people. They're not excused or forgiven. So a situation occurred when a lot of people were evicted after that moratorium lapsed or phased out. How long do you think that this should continue, given that we don't know how long this immigration operation is going to continue?

ROBIN WONSLEY: Yeah. And this is why our demand for an eviction moratorium to be declared by Governor Walz is also being paired with the request and demand for rental assistance because that is what happened in 2020. We needed the state to allocate resources to make sure people had have the ability to pay back rent or rent retroactively-- to pair that with the eviction moratorium so that housing providers will also be compensated as opposed to taking the path of evicting residents.

So again, we saw best practices from 2020 that can be implemented right now through the declaration of eviction moratorium and pairing that with rental assistance support for residents all across the state. Now, in terms of timeline, that is something-- an additional piece of legislation that my office is bringing forward that is calling on the state legislature to give cities like Minneapolis the flexibility, and to use our local authority, to determine if we can pass our own eviction moratoriums or other housing protections or any type of other protective measures for residents in a state of emergency so we're not constantly waiting on the governor to either demonstrate some courage with passing actions like eviction moratorium or not.

So that is something that we're bringing forward because we don't how long this is going to last. We should not anticipate that this will be the last attack from the Trump administration on Minneapolis. We should anticipate that they will come back, that they're going to be here for the foreseeable future in cities like Minneapolis that are being amongst the hardest-hit in the state.

We need to be able to respond readily and proactively to keep our residents safe. So we are asking for other measures from the state legislature to give us authority to do that. And the eviction moratorium-- I think that that is at the discretion of the governor. And I think it should be cognizant of-- this is going to be a crisis that we're going to deal with for quite some time. And it should be reflective of that.

NINA MOINI: Council Member Wonsley, thank you for checking in with us. And we hope you'll join us again sometime soon.

ROBIN WONSLEY: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: That was Minneapolis Council Member, Robin Wonsley.