The Department of Homeland Security claims its ICE operation in the Twin Cities is winding down. But hundreds of ICE agents have continued patrolling communities, armed with guns and chemical weapons that they’ve used on protesters and bystanders alike.
The people of the Twin Cities have continued to resist, with whistles, protests and informal neighborhood networks. These groups have organized to aid their most vulnerable neighbors who fear persecution by federal agents.
“[ICE presence in Minneapolis] produced this collective outrage that got a lot of people who wouldn’t ordinarily consider themselves protestors or activists off the sidelines and into the streets,” says journalist Dan Simmons, who wrote about the immigration crackdown in a recent piece for The New Republic.
For Simmons, the scenes in the Twin Cities have hit home — literally. Simmons grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he returned to his hometown to report on what’s been happening there.
“The term that you think of is ‘warzone.’ That’s overstating it, but it’s probably as close to that as I’ve ever experienced in the U.S," he says. "And here we are in this otherwise placid, picturesque, super quiet town where I spent my youth.”
Simmons joined Lake Effect’s Joy Powers to share what he saw in the Twin Cities and what Milwaukeeans can learn from local responses to the operation.
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