Coalition of more than 20 mayors ask for legislative support for ICE surge recovery

[SOFT MUSIC] NINA MOINI: A group of mayors in Minnesota is asking the legislature for economic relief from the impacts of the surge of federal immigration agents to the state. The Cities for Safe and Stable Communities Coalition now includes more than 20 communities, mainly suburbs, in the Twin Cities metro area. Hopkins Mayor Patrick Hanlon said getting aid to city governments is the group's number one ask to state lawmakers.

PATRICK HANLON: As a vital part of Minnesota's economic engine, these 20 cities require immediate stabilization to protect the state's broader economy, not just for us, but all of the cities impacted. Because local operations have not yet concluded here, we don't know the final price tag on what that true cost is. We just know that it's immense. We won't be asking for handouts. We are asking for fairness, for justice, and resources to fix a crisis we didn't create in order for us to eventually thrive again.

NINA MOINI: That's Hopkins Mayor Patrick Hanlon. Another mayor joins us now. Brooklyn Center Mayor April Graves was part of the creation of this group of mayors and is here to talk more about some of these priorities and what that ask looks like. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon, Mayor Graves.

APRIL GRAVES: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on the show.

NINA MOINI: White House border czar Tom Homan, as we know, has said at least 1,000 agents have left the state of Minnesota. What is it looking like for you? What are you hearing and seeing in Brooklyn Center, which, for folks who are not from this particular area, borders Minneapolis? What are you seeing? Has there been a slowdown of ICE activity?

APRIL GRAVES: Well, I think that we haven't seen so many ICE activity on the streets in cars over the last week. But we have seen a change in some tactics. And I've also heard reports from community members where they've seen more drones in their communities rather than cars. I did get some confirmation from the police that they checked with the hotel that some agents had been staying at and were told that they had moved out. But that was just this morning that I got that information.

NINA MOINI: It's hard to know how fast it's happening or what is happening. But tracking hotel stays is one way of trying to figure that out on the ground. Some other mayors-- you spoke about the police department there. I want to about your communication with them and what they've experienced because other departments and cities have said they've had to take on really high overtime costs. It's just been really unsustainable for a lot of departments. What is your sense for how Brooklyn Center has been impacted? We know other food shelves, rental assistance programs have also been impacted.

APRIL GRAVES: Yeah, definitely have seen an impact on our businesses. I've heard from multiple different businesses who either had to close down, like one restaurant closed down for a month and just only recently reopened. Another had closed their doors for in-person dining. And it was only open to stay open via the drive-thru and then was asking for escorts at the end of the night because they were being harassed and waited for when they were getting off work and didn't feel safe to leave work, their employees.

So as far as the police department, I haven't really gotten a ton of information from my police department. A tangential, one-off conversations, some specific activities that happened that were brought to my attention and then I asked police about I was not always able to confirm. Mainly, it centered around the hotel and them wanting to make sure that the hotel was safe and that we were protecting the hotel as a business, but also trying to make sure that the communities didn't take that as our police being complicit in what the ICE activity was in our community-- so a difficult balance to strike.

In general, I don't necessarily think there was a ton of overtime in Brooklyn Center specifically, especially just based on the fact that when I asked about information about federal enforcement activity in our city, I wasn't able to get very much information from police. And they said that was because they didn't have that information to share with me.

NINA MOINI: When you think about the city, on the city's end, is it that the city is spending more, or is it that it's more concerned about constituents and residents and what they're facing and being able to assist them? Can you give me a sense-- or is it both?

APRIL GRAVES: I think it's really dependent on the city. I think that it's true that some cities have had a lot of overtime with their police. That might not be true for Brooklyn Center. But that doesn't mean it's not true for Brooklyn Park or Hopkins or a different city.

A lot of us came together in-- back in December. It was maybe about four or five of us that came back-- came together back in December, really, when Richfield was experiencing the bulk of the enforcement tactics. And we wanted to come together to support the mayor of Richfield because we recognized that we don't have the same level of resources that Minneapolis and St. Paul do.

And so we wanted to come together as mayors to support each other, and also recognizing that we knew that this larger surge was set to start in January. And so we wanted to learn, also, from Richfield and-- since they were having to face some of these obstacles and injustices earlier on than the rest of us were.

So that was really the time when we decided to come together because we knew that we would be stronger if we presented a united front. And we really wanted to do our best to work together to restore stability, and also to gain back the trust because I think a lot of community members feel let down by their local leadership and their state leadership and their federal leadership because they feel that their rights are being unjustly pushed to the side and that in the name of supposedly safer streets, people can't even go out and buy food or bring their kids to school or make money. And it's just really been disruptive for our communities as a whole. And I think it's important to talk about the financial costs. But I think the human costs are just as important, and even if they're not as easily quantifiable.

NINA MOINI: I think that one of the questions a lot of people wonder is, how does it work? What does it look like? What are cities asking for, because we know it can sometimes take a long time for any type of aid to reach people. Sometimes, it goes through the county and then to the city. So can you give us a sense for what your group of mayors are asking for? Is there a dollar amount? Is there a way in which you want to see that dispersed, or is that still being worked out?

APRIL GRAVES: That's all still in the works. A smaller city, too-- you might imagine that getting a specific number was difficult. I think for Minneapolis, that number is still shifting. And even as federal enforcement still-- starts to wind down, those costs aren't necessarily fully wrapped up yet. And in smaller cities, it's even more difficult, I think, to have the staff capacity and even some of the data collection systems to really get a number very easily.

But all of our cities are working together and in our respective cities to try to come up with that data so we can come up with a solid number. But in general, we know that there is an economic impact because we've been able to see that on the ground with our businesses closing and folks not being able to go out and purchase food or other retail services in our communities.

So in addition to what we're asking for as far as economic recovery and support and that fairness that Mayor Hanlon spoke to in the clip you played earlier, we're also talking about some commonsense policy protections that are really important, like reinstating the sensitive location status for places of worship, hospitals, and schools because people should be able to go to those spaces without fear of federal enforcement unjustly detaining them. We also are talking about prohibiting masked agents during these local operations because we deserve the transparency to know who's in our communities and who-- and what they're planning to do. That shouldn't be a guessing game. People shouldn't be wearing masks or disguising themselves and manipulating people into putting themselves in harm's way.

NINA MOINI: So there are monetary asks that you're asking for. There are also asks around different rights and policies that you want to put into place. If, at the state level, the state legislature doesn't pass some of these measures, would you pursue them at the local level, at the city level?

APRIL GRAVES: Well, I think that there's a lot more likelihood to do that if we're able to continue to grow our coalition. So like I mentioned before, we've had four or five cities at the very beginning. We're now up to 21. And we're still actively recruiting and in conversations with several other cities across the state.

We recognize that sometimes, a-- smaller suburban and rural communities-- we can be more easily targeted and hurt if we're not able to stand as a unified coalition. And so I think-- I'm hopeful that our state representatives will get some commonsense policy protections in place over this legislative cycle. But I also recognize that the stronger our coalition is, the more likely we can take local action that will have real, sustainable ability to actually protect those rights. It's more difficult when we can be singled out.

NINA MOINI: All right, Mayor Graves. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your perspective-- really appreciate it.

APRIL GRAVES: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on the show.

NINA MOINI: That's Mayer April Graves of Brooklyn Center.