Yves here. While most of us were busy watching events like the Iran war, the AI bubble, private debt wobbles, and the climate crisis, ICE abuses continue, as we showed in our post on the lack of required health care for detainees in the New York City area. This post focuses on the severity of misconduct in the Minneapolis raid last year.
By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
Human Rights Watch on Thursday published a scathing report detailing how President Donald Trump“caused a human rights crisis” in Minnesota by ordering the deadly federal invasion of the Twin Cities in service of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
HRW called Operation Metro Surge, launched by Trump last December, “an unprecedented deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents and officers to the state of Minnesota,” including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The Trump administration claimed that Operation Metro Surge was designed to keep Americans safe and often stated that it was targeting noncitizens with violent criminal histories,” the report states. “But the operation itself caused significant harm, and nearly two out of three immigrants arrested by ICE during Operation Metro Surge had no prior US criminal history whatsoever.”
At least three people have been killed in connection with the operation. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7. A week later, 36-year-old Nicaraguan detainee Victor Manuel Díaz, who was arrested during the operation, became the third person to die at the notorious East Montana concentration camp in Texas. On January 24, CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, also in Minneapolis.
“Federal agents shot a third Minneapolis resident and pulled guns on dozens more,” the report continues. “Agents also violently smashed car windows without justification, physically threw people to the ground who were not resisting arrest, and deployed chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades on dozens of occasions, sometimes at close range and without warning, resulting in injuries, including to journalists.”
Furthermore, federal agents “unlawfully arrested and detained hundreds; engaged in racial profiling, harassment, and surveillance; and terrorized Minnesotans, chilling their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and impacting their rights to education and health, among others,” HRW said, adding that “residents faced further abuses when they collectively acted to protest, prevent, and stop these violations of their rights.”
The HRW report calls for an immediate end to abusive federal enforcement operations in Minnesota; independent investigations into alleged unlawful killings, racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, excessive force, and other rights violations; and full accountability for officials responsible.
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Reagan Williams, HRW’s crisis and conflict researcher, said in a statement. “Minnesotans mobilized to protest, to document abuse, and to provide critical aid to one another. National-level action is needed to ensure accountability, end ongoing abuses, remedy the harm, and prevent another crisis of this scale.”
“Operation Metro Surge put the violent and abusive practices of these agencies on full display,” Williams added. “We have clear proof of how they operate when impunity prevails, and we need to urgently chart a new way forward through accountability and structural reforms that put an end to these abuses.”
Imperial foreign policy comes home to abuse the citizenry.
US citizens: “What is the risk to people living in the US of the militarism America pursues abroad?”
US government: “Hold my beer.”
We’re all Palestinians now.
I understand the sentiment, but I don’t find the comparison helpful, it is hyperbolic. The Israelis (with funding, weapons and political support from the US and vassals) are committing genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine, the US already did that to the American Indian original people. American Indians are the most akin to the Palestinian indigenous people, not Euro-Americans.
The majority of the US public will experience lower quality of life, authoritarian tyranny, shorter average life expectancy, increased levels of violence, but the US gov is not bombing hospitals, ambulances, journalists etc. The US govt. is not bombing and mass slaughtering 100s of thousands of US citizens,
The comparison detracts from the horrific and historical atrocities being committed.
“Operation Metro Surge” was a direct attack on Due Process and the Rule of Law and it achieved some notable successes.
The pushback is happening, which will lead to a direct confrontation which SCOTUS will have to adjudicate.
Given the rank corruption and the intellectual mediocrity of today’s Court I think there’s a better than even chance that they will piss away what remains of their credibility and what remains of the Republic.
The Stupidity is epic, the Constitution and the Bill of rights were put in place to protect the Property and the interests of America’s Wealthy.
When it is gone, the Life, Liberty and Property of the Oligarchs can be taken away at the whim of the King and they will have no recourse.
It grates horribly, but in order for the people that matter to have any rights, so must the Plebes.
Life isn’t fair, ask DJT if you don’t believe me.
I’m grateful to the NC commenter who recommended Douglas Valentine’s CIA as Organized Crime. It outlines how the Phoenix Program in Vietnam sought to destabilize local resistance to belligerents (i.e. US). It has proven to be a template that guides US foreign and domestic policies ever since. This GRW report confirms that the program’s essence (terrorizing the locals) remains active today in the USA. Once Trump retreats from Iran, after kicking Cuba his minions will bring the war home. Gonna be a long, hot summer.
I had referenced that book some weeks ago in a reply to Nat Wilson Turner’s comment about the CIA involvement with the drugs cartels.
Thanks for mentioning it in this context, The Phoenix Program is often overlooked, but it sure fits here as a template as well.