In Minneapolis, Trump picked the wrong target

The city is not going riot and it's not going to back down, either.

The stretch of Nicollet Avenue where Alex Pretti was killed is called Eat Street. He died just a few doors down from Lu’s Sandwiches, where I learned what a Banh Mi is really all about. Some of the best Thai food in America comes from unassuming storefronts along that corridor. There’s also German food, Middle Eastern fare, Mexican, and Americana. One summer, I spent most mornings writing these blogs in a breakfast joint called the Bad Waitress, just a few hundred feet from where the shooting occurred.

Eat Street defines part of what makes Minneapolis such a great American city. It’s unpretentious, maybe even a bit gritty, yet producing high-quality food, often at reasonable prices. Sidewalks are filled with every nationality, religion, and ethnicity you can imagine—Whites, Blacks, Native Americans, Hmong, Somalis, Hispanics, Ethiopians, Arabs, Jews, northern Europeans, even Wisconsinites. Nobody bats an eye. They’re all there to eat, shop, and work.

It’s also what attracts immigration enforcement—restaurants full of immigrant workers and customers. ICE and CBP agents are looking to snatch people from their jobs or off the street, knowing they have impunity. Despite what the administration claims, ICE and CBP don’t seem to care whether their targets are violent criminals or not. They’re just trying to reach quotas, and Eat Street provides them a good hunting ground.

But the Trump administration didn’t target Minneapolis because of the large number of illegal immigrants. A lot of states have far more. They wanted a reaction.

The state had just gotten a lot of bad publicity because of massive welfare fraud perpetrated by Somali immigrants. The wounds from the George Floyd riots are still healing and the emotions still raw. Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller targeted the city because they believed an assault was politically palatable and confrontations with liberal activists would help their cause.

They sent more than 3,000 federal agents into the state. The city of Minneapolis only has 600 police officers. There’s a reason political leaders like Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey refer to the deployment as an occupation.

The federal agents arrived looking like troops sent to a war zone, wearing camo, vests, and helmets and openly brandishing assault weapons. They wanted to intimidate the residents as much as the immigrants. And they behaved as if they had impunity, busting out car windows, demanding to see brown people’s proof of citizenship, disappearing Native American citizens into the system, and breaking down doors without warrants.

Minneapolis has had three killings this year and two of them were by federal agents. Renee Good died when an agent fired into her driver-side window, shooting her in the head. The administration quickly claimed her killing was justified and refused to investigate, but that’s not what most people saw.

Instead of taking a measured approach or acknowledging the horror of Good’s killing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled her a “domestic terrorist” without citing any evidence. She followed the same pattern after the death of Alex Pretti. While her statements show an incredible lack of empathy, they expose a government that believes it’s at war with its own citizens.

Noem and DHS immediately lied about what happened to Pretti, claiming he approached officers with a gun drawn. Video clearly shows something different and Pretti never pulled a gun. Instead, he was trying to help a woman being pushed to the ground. The administration has lost any credibility that it might have had.

While conservatives and Republicans blame protesters and local political leaders for the deaths, Minnesotans have been remarkably restrained. Their response has been mostly peaceful. They’ve been shown that DHS does not operate in good faith and that the administration won’t hold abusive or rogue officers accountable.

As writer Robert A. George said on Twitter, “[T]he administration’s decision to not even consider a transparent investigation of the Good shooting did two things: 1) told ICE agents that there were no consequences for any poor judgment that may have contributed to Good’s death; 2) told Minneapolis residents that they had to step up their own vigilance and surveillance of ICE actions just for their own protection and ability to hold the feds accountable—as today’s tragedy demonstrated.”

The administration thought that they would show their strength and build support for their heavy-handed immigration enforcement. Instead, they found a city both disciplined and uncowed. Residents are providing the oversight that neither Congress nor the administration will provide. Each injustice strengthens Minnesotans’ resolve and weakens the administration’s support.

The residents aren’t interested in spiraling into the riots and destruction that marred the George Floyd protests, but they aren’t going to back down from bullies, either. Instead of dividing the city, ICE and CBP have united it. The residents see immigrants as part of the community and have been welcoming different cultures for generations.

They aren’t going to surrender Eat Street or their culture to thugs in cosplay uniforms or bullies in the federal government. Alex Pretti’s killing justifies everything they are doing while exposing the abuse of the Trump administration beyond the borders of Minnesota. In the eyes of America, the people of Minneapolis will look far better than the federal agents killing citizens exercising their rights.