Protesters sue ICE to cease ‘unconstitutional’ Minnesota actions after Renee Good’s killing | EUROtoday

Protesters suing to dam “unconstitutional” federal legislation enforcement actions in Minnesota have described officers firing pepper spray right into a transferring automotive and threatening to interrupt a automotive window on the identical day an agent fatally shot Renee Good.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in December on behalf of a gaggle of Minneapolis residents who alleged Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers adopted them residence, fired chemical spray and rubber bullets and threatened them with arrest as Donald Trump’s administration started surging federal legislation enforcement into the state.

But “extraordinary circumstances” — together with Good’s demise and aggressive confrontations with federal brokers within the wake of her killing — require a federal decide’s swift intervention to dam any additional threats, plaintiffs wrote Thursday.

In a sequence of sworn statements connected to a letter to the court docket, plaintiffs allege a federal officer threatened to interrupt a authorized observer’s automotive window whereas one other officer in a special a part of the town fired pepper spray into an observer’s transferring automotive, all on the identical morning Good was killed.

“These Minnesotans who are peacefully exercising their core constitutional rights to speak and gather continue to be met with unconstitutional and terrifying violence at the hands of federal agents on a daily basis, including unwarranted pepper spraying and unfounded arrests,” attorneys wrote.

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On Tuesday, an observer began honking her automotive at an ICE car that was driving “erratically,” based on a sworn assertion to the court docket. They blocked her automotive, and masked brokers in tactical vests — together with one carrying a neck gaiter with a “skull face and the American flag” — surrounded her automotive, she wrote.

When she didn’t roll down her window, an officer “got angry” and threatened to “break my car window and arrest me” if she continued to observe them, based on the assertion.

“I said, ‘Do you want to say that again for the camera?’ and held up my phone,” she wrote. “They both got back in their car and left.”

That identical morning, she stated she noticed one other ICE agent firing pepper spray into an observer’s automotive because it handed officers.

She additionally described officers arresting a person she believed to be of Somali descent and tackling him to the bottom with out checking his ID.

“I talked to him, and he told me that while he was in the car, the agents were joking about how he was lucky his girlfriend was recording,” she wrote. “This is why I watch ICE, so that we can document the way they’re treating people, so people who are being kidnapped off the streets don’t just disappear. He has a family. They wouldn’t know what happened to him if people weren’t documenting.”

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Hours after Good’s demise, ICE officers tackled a “young man” exterior a highschool and “menaced” a crowd of protesters who had been “yelling a lot and blowing whistles” and “calling agents murderers and telling them to leave,” based on one other plaintiff.

Agents then “body slammed” one other one that was working from the world, and “then an agent shot off some chemical irritant into the crowd” that “something like a paintball gun,” the plaintiff wrote. “I could taste the spray in the air,” based on the assertion.

“These agents seemed even more aggressive, more violent, more cavalier about things than the ones I’d seen before,” the plaintiff alleged. “They were decked out in more gear and had bigger weapons. One guy was wearing a huge cowboy hat with his fatigues. They all seemed comfortable just shoving people out of the way.”

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Good’s demise and the Trump administration’s allegations that she was a “violent rioter” who dedicated “terrorism” have sparked nationwide protests and outrage from elected officers throughout the nation, with witness statements and evaluation from video footage from a number of angles showing to contradict Homeland Security’s preliminary statements.

“Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take their word for it. Watch the video from every single angle,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey stated Friday as he defended his demand that ICE “get the f*** out” of the town.

The Twin Cities are residence to roughly 80,000 folks of Somali ancestry, the overwhelming majority of whom are authorized residents or American residents. But the president — seizing on a sequence of fraud circumstances involving authorities applications the place many of the defendants have roots in Somalia — is surging federal legislation enforcement and Department of Justice assets into the state as a part of a nationwide mass deportation marketing campaign.

Protesters in Chicago had equally sued the Trump administration to dam the usage of chemical weapons and different measures as Customs and Border Protection brokers took to the streets for citywide immigration enforcement operation.

A federal decide in that case banned authorities from firing tear gasoline and utilizing different riot weapons after video proof and courtroom testimony from protesters, reporters and religion leaders revealed habits that “shocks the conscience,” the decide stated.