ICE Now Demanding Papers From Off-Duty Cops Caught Driving While Brown
Well of course that's happening.
Donald Trump’s federal occupation of Minnesota’s Twin Cities has poured something like 3,000 deportation officers into the area, and on Tuesday a trio of local police leaders held a press conference at the state Capitol to warn that the DHS goons’ out of control actions are undermining the public’s trust in law enforcement. All three of the top local cops said they were getting “endless complaints from US citizens” about harassment by ICE, and that DHS hasn’t done dick to communicate with local law enforcement. Further, all three said their own off-duty officers of color — all US citizens — had reported being pulled over by ICE thugs who wanted to see their “immigration” papers, noting that if it can happen to cops in their private vehicles, it can happen to anyone.
Brooklyn Park PD Chief Mark Bruley said that DHS’s “civil rights violations have to stop.” He was joined at the presser by St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry and Hennepin County Sheriff DaWanna Witt.
We’ve cued up this video of the press conference to the start of Bruley’s remarks, in which he recounts how one of his officers was racially profiled by ICE agents who held guns on her and only left when she identified herself as a cop.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara didn’t take part in Tuesday’s presser, possibly because he had already voiced similar complaints about the DHS occupation in a 60 Minutes segment that aired Sunday. In that interview, O’Hara said his department has been flooded with 911 calls from people harassed by ICE or attacked with tear gas and pepper spray, and warned that the ICE invasion could unravel his department’s efforts to rebuild trust with residents following the murder of George Floyd by (now former) MPD cop Derek Chauvin. O’Hara told 60 Minutes reporter Cecelia Vega, “We're in this 2020 moment where all these tensions have been building, and I'm afraid we're gonna have another moment where it all explodes.”
Bruley said that an off-duty officer in his department was recently “boxed in” by ICE vehicles after the crime of driving past them while nonwhite. The goons demanded she show her immigration paperwork, which Bruley pointed out US citizens are not required to carry.
Growing concerned about “the rhetoric and the way she was being treated,” the off-duty cop got out her phone to record, but the goons knocked it out of her hand. (Recording ICE is legal as long as you aren’t getting right up in their masked faces preventing them from doing “law enforcement” shit.)
Bruley continued, “The officers had their guns drawn during the situation. After the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident down.” At that point, the goons departed, without so much as an apology.
He added that this was anything but an isolated incident, noting that other officers in his and other area law enforcement agencies had experienced similar profiling, and that all of them were people of color.
“If it’s happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day,” Bruley said. “It has to stop.”
Chief Henry and Sheriff Witt said their off-duty officers, and other city employees, had also been harassed by ICE, although they didn’t go into the level of detail Bruley did.
In addition, the top cops said trying to get further information on such incidents from DHS was next to impossible, because the agency just directs them to an online complaint form that’s impossible to file thanks to common ICE practices. The form “requires identifying the federal agent in question, and agents in Minnesota wear masks and don’t wear any public identifying information.” That’s some catch, that Catch-2026. Real cops in Minnesota have their names prominently stitched on their uniforms, and their badge numbers must be visible, by law.
Bruley, Henry, and Witt all emphasized that this isn’t just something that they’re calling attention to because their own officers are being harassed; rather, they said its a sign of how indifferent ICE is to the public’s civil rights. That lack of respect for basic rights, they said, is only going to destroy public trust in law enforcement at all levels.
Well of course it will. That’ll just prove that Trump needs to invoke the Insurrection Act, to send in the military to bust some heads and shoot some troublemakers and restore order after his DHS goons threw the city into chaos.
[Sahan Journal / CBS 60 Minutes transcript / Wapo (gift link)]
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Police Chief Mark Bruley
And now immigration has its sights on him.
ICE creams Bruley.
The regime has built an army too dumb to be trusted with firearms, which is secondary to the problem of being too stupid to discern between legal and illegal orders...