Minneapolis council member condemns multi-agency police search on Lake Street

When federal agents wearing tactical gear and driving armored vehicles arrived at a Mexican restaurant at Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue in Minneapolis on Tuesday, a crowd gathered, fueled by social media messages, worried they were witnessing an immigration raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Multiple agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, insist they were carrying out a search warrant in a narcotics and money laundering investigation. Multiple current and former public officials have expressed concern about how the operation was carried out.

Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez was at the scene. He spoke with MPR News host Cathy Wurzer about it.

You had the Federal Bureau of Investigation there, the Drug Enforcement Administration, ICE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Minneapolis Police Department, Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputies, a whole lot of agencies and a lot of confusion. What was going on?

And a lot of questions. I think the fact of the matter is, that we have armored vehicles, people with guns. We had law enforcement from Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department to MPD helping with traffic control and you had ICE agents or people with ICE badges. And that is something that is very concerning to many residents on the Lake Street corridor, home to a large immigrant community.

When we tell them that our police department is not going to be working hand by hand with ICE agents when it comes to federal immigration law, and then you see our own police department being hand in hand with these same agents, it raises alarms.

That is something that we will have to work really hard now as a city of Minneapolis to rebuild trust with our residents.

Why did you go to the scene right away?

I represent Ward 9, one of the most racially diverse areas in the entire state of Minnesota, home to some of the largest immigrant communities in the state. When ICE, or there is reports of ICE on site, you’re going to see me there, because this is my community.

Chief O'Hara blamed what he called ‘irresponsible misinformation shared on social media by some officials’ as not helping the situation, and that’s a shot at you. You tweeted that it was an ICE raid. Where did you get your information?

When did I tweet that it was an ICE raid? I said that ICE was on site, which is facts.

Did you did you know that to be true? In terms of that it was an ICE raid?

I said that ICE was on site, which was factually correct.

But in hindsight, might you have added to the chaos?

I did not add to the chaos. When ICE is on Lake Street, when ICE is in our community, our community deserves to know that they are on site, because ICE is an agency that has separated our families, that has caused chaos, that has broken families and torn them apart.

And residents should know when ICE is on the ground, because ICE is a family separator, and nobody wants to see them here in our community, because it is a very scary situation. So when they are on site, people need to know. What I did was report the facts.

There were folks being pepper sprayed. They were being pushed around. Some protesters were throwing things at officers. The sheriff said it’s not okay for folks to obstruct law enforcement when they’re trying to obtain evidence. And I’m wondering how, where does this end? How does this change?

It would start with us getting all the answers that we need to know. What was the investigation for? Getting more facts about the case, and why were we seeing local law enforcement next to ICE officials? I think that was the meat of it. We saw the tensions get higher when the Minneapolis Police Department arrived to close off the perimeter next to these federal agents.

There could have been a way to de-escalate the situation a lot more. There could have been a way to communicate with the community about what was happening in there. But when you have a federal law enforcement agency coming in with tanks, coming in with ties, literal ties that you can tie people’s hands, into our community like on Lake Street, I don’t think that sends the same message.

When you have a different enforcement action in Bloomington compared to the heart of the immigrant community, it felt like a very tactical decision to escalate, cause pain and trauma, to the people that live here in the heart of south Minneapolis, and it felt like an intentional decision to unfortunately scare the people that live here.

Do you want an after-action review of what happened?

Yep, so we’re bringing that on to council today, and we’re bringing that to a vote, because I think it’s important that we get all the answers that we need to know of what happened here, the breakdown in communication, the ways that the city was involved, because it feels like the stories are changing from hour to hour.

What about the neighborhood now? There is, as you say, a lot of trauma, and there are a lot of businesses in that area. And I’m wondering, are people afraid to maybe go into those businesses now? And what do you want people to know?

Yeah, I think it’s important that we show support to the businesses near Lake and Bloomington on the East Lake Street corridor, making sure that people buy food, groceries, flowers, clothing, you name it, because a lot of them are struggling. And they were struggling before this federal action on June 3, but now they’re only struggling more.

And it is something that we need to make sure that the community knows that we support them and figure out like how to show support during these very difficult times. But we know that this action is having an effect across our city and probably even our state, because it is not something that we welcome in Minneapolis.

Hennepin County Sheriff Witt said she has concerns with what happened, that it was not OK to bring in armored vehicles. Do you plan to talk to Chief O’Hara about the role of the MPD?

I emailed the chief last night, asking him questions of who he’s talking about with his statements, because I think he needs to go public and name the specific officials that he’s saying without naming. In that email, I also talked about us making sure that we connect so we can have a further conversation.

• Morning Announcements for July 3
• Art Hounds: Healing medicine, abstract art and ‘Endometriosis: The Musical’
• Minnesota on track for above average tornado season
• Minnesota Republican responds to uptick in extreme political views, violence following lawmaker shootings