Reports of ICE ruses add to fears in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — For days, Luis Ramirez was disturbed by men dressed as utility workers he saw outside his family’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Minneapolis.
He noticed that they were wearing high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, even when parked in their vehicles. A search for the Wisconsin-based electrician advertised on the car doors yielded no results.
Ramirez, 31, said Tuesday when their Nissan pulled into the parking lot in front of his restaurant. He filmed his confrontation He is accompanied by two men who hide their faces as they approach and appear to be wearing heavy tactical gear under their yellow vests.
“This is what our taxpayer money is going to: renting these vehicles with fake tags to come here and monitor my business,” Ramirez shouts in the video.
A spokeswoman for Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about whether the men were federal immigration officers. But encounters like Ramirez’s are becoming more common.
Aspect Comprehensive crackdown on immigrants As the events in Minnesota continue, legal observers and officials say they are receiving increasing reports of federal agents posing as construction workers, delivery drivers and, in some cases, anti-ICE activists.
Not all of these incidents have been confirmed, but they have raised fears in one state. already at the limitThis raises legal groups’ concerns about the Trump administration dramatic reshaping of immigration enforcement tactics nationwide.
“If you have people fearing that the electrical worker outside their home might be ICE, you’re inviting public distrust and confusion to a much more dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, director of immigration advocacy for the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s what you do if you’re trying to control a population, rather than routine, professional law enforcement.”
A ‘more extreme’ scam
In the past, immigration officials have sometimes resorted to disguises and other deceptions. tricks, Entering homes without permission.
Those tactics became more common during President Donald Trump’s first term, lawyers said, leading to an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration officials of violating the U.S. Constitution by pretending to be local law enforcement during home raids. recently residential Restricted the practice in Los Angeles. But ICE scams remain legal elsewhere in the country.
Still, Shah said the undercover operations reported in Minnesota will appear “more extreme than we’ve seen in the past,” in part because they’re so openly visible.
Where past subterfuges were intended to mislead immigration targets, current tactics may also be a response to immigration. Minnesota’s expanding citizen watchdog networks They tried to draw attention to federal agents before making arrests.
Activists told The Associated Press that at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, the center of the city’s ICE activities, they saw agents leaving in vehicles with stuffed animals on their dashboards or Mexican flag stickers on their bumpers. Pickup trucks with lumber or tools in their beds were also frequently seen.
Federal agents have repeatedly arrived at construction sites posing as workers in recent weeks, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer with the local immigrant rights group Unidos MN.
“We have seen an increase in cowboy tactics,” he said, but noted that the raids did not result in arrests. “Construction workers are good at identifying who is a real construction worker and who dresses like one.”
Using vintage plates
Since the start of the operation in Minnesota, local officials, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, have said ICE agents have been seen switching license plates or using fake plates. violation of state law.
Candice Metraler, an antique dealer in South Minneapolis, believes she has witnessed such an attempt firsthand.
On Jan. 13, he received a call from a man who identified himself as a collector, asking if his shop sold license plates. He said it was. A few minutes later, two men wearing street clothes entered the shop and began looking through her collection of vintage plates.
“One of them said, ‘Hey, do you have a new one?'” Metraler said. “he says,” he recalled. “An alarm bell suddenly went off in my head.”
The Metros walked out as the men continued to browse. A few doors down from the store, he saw a Ford Explorer idling with its windows blacked out. He memorized the vehicle’s license plate and then quickly connected it to a crowdsourced database that local activists use to track vehicles linked to immigration enforcement.
The database shows an identical Ford with the same license plate was photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and was reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks ago.
When one of the men approached the register with a white Minnesota license plate in hand, Metrailer said he told him the store had a new policy against selling the items.
Metraler said he reported the incident to the Minnesota attorney general. A DHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A response to blocking
Supporters of the crackdown on immigrants say the volunteer army of ICE surveillance activists in Minneapolis is forcing federal agents to adopt new methods to avoid detection.
“Of course agents are adapting their tactics to stay one step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, former deputy director of ICE enforcement and operations in New York City. “We have never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”
Mechkowski said in nearly three decades of immigration enforcement, he has never seen ICE agents pose as uniformed workers during an arrest.
Earlier this summer, a spokesperson for DHS approved A man wearing a high-visibility construction vest was an ICE agent conducting surveillance. A natural gas company in Oregon published guidance Last month, there was a conversation about how customers could identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.
Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he has been on high alert for undercover agents in the days since his encounter. He recently stopped a locksmith he feared might be a federal agent and quickly realized it was a local resident.
“Everybody’s nervous about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “It feels like they’re everywhere.”
