Minnesota Olympic Curler Risks Trump’s Wrath With Damning Take On ICE | EUROtoday

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Curler Rich Ruohonen grew to become the most recent U.S. athlete to weigh into home politics on Tuesday, condemning immigration sweeps in his residence state of Minnesota that could be a hotbed for the game.

Various American athletes on the Winter Games have spoken out over occasions again residence, with skier Hunter Hess labelled a “real loser” by an irritated U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I’d like to say I’m proud to be here to represent Team USA, and to represent our country. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention what’s going on in Minnesota,” stated Ruohonen, a 54-year-old private damage lawyer who works in Minnesota.

“What a tough time it’s been for everybody. This stuff is happening right around where we live,” he added in a press release on the finish of a press convention.

Protests have been going down round Minnesota after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers killed two U.S. residents as a part of Trump’s push towards unlawful immigration.

“I am a lawyer, as you know. We have a constitution, and it allows us freedom of speech,” Ruohonen went on. “It protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures. And makes it that we have to have probable cause to be pulled over. What’s happening in Minnesota is wrong. There’s no shades of grey. It’s clear.”

Minnesota is a curling stronghold within the U.S. and has produced various Olympic rivals together with John Shuster, who skipped the boys’s crew to gold on the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

Ruohonen, an alternate for the boys’s crew, stated he was pleased with the general public expressions in his residence.

“I really love what’s been happening there now. With people coming out, showing the love, the compassion, the integrity and respect for others that they don’t know, and helping them out,” he stated.

“We love Minnesota for that … We love our country. We’re playing for the U.S. We’re playing for each other, we’re playing for our family and our friends that sacrificed so much to get here today.”

The Olympics, he stated, embody the identical values as these proven by compatriots in Minnesota. “What the Olympics means is excellence, respect, friendship. We all, I think, exemplify that. We are playing for the people of Minnesota and the people around the country who share those same values, that compassion, that love, and that respect.”