MN Police Chief Intervenes To Free A US Citizen Arrested By Federal Officers
from the good-guy-with-a-gun dept
No doubt this will be spun as some form of Minnesota-specific obstruction, but until that happens, let’s just appreciate the fact that not all cops are willing to be appendages of the Trump administration’s bigoted migrant purge. Here are the details, courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio:
MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention, although the city of St. Peter denied the intervention in a statement Saturday.
It’s believed to be the first time a local police department in Minnesota intervened in a federal law enforcement action since the surge in immigration enforcement began two months ago.
It won’t be the last. But it’s sure to anger the administration, which has already made it clear it thinks local officials are to blame for the two people federal officers have murdered in Minneapolis over the past three weeks.
The person federal officers ran off the road, threatened at gun point, dragged out of the car, and arrested was someone who was merely observing what they were doing. It was one woman in one car and yet federal officers felt compelled to box her in and approach her with weapons drawn. They treated this like a felony stop, as though they were in the process of apprehending a known violent criminal, rather than one person armed with a dash cam and a cellphone.
She wasn’t doing anything illegal. She was doing what anyone could have done: recorded law enforcement officers performing their public duties. Just because ICE et al would prefer to go about their business unobserved (hence the rented cars, dummy license plates, and face masks) doesn’t make being seen by others an illegal act.
Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to tell others to call 911 on her behalf. Federal officers arrested her and drove her towards the Whipple Federal Building, presumably in hopes of getting her on the next plane to wherever the fuck before she had a chance to contact anyone.
But her 911 call derailed this:
“I couldn’t hear what was being said, but within 30 seconds after they hung up, they exited on, an exit that goes into Le Sueur… and then turned around, didn’t say anything to me, and started heading back towards St. Peter.”
The husband told MPR News that after his wife was taken into custody, he called his attorney, and soon after, he got a call from St. Peter Chief of Police Matt Grochow, whom he said he has known for years.
Shortly after that, Chief Grochow drove her home from the St. Peter police station, where the federal officers had left her.
This is frightening stuff. If her husband hadn’t managed to talk to an attorney and if that attorney hadn’t reached out to the police chief, this US citizen might still be sitting in an ICE detention center.
And if that’s not frightening enough, there’s this coda, which makes it clear this administration is willing to punish anyone who won’t immediately try to lick the boots pressed to their necks:
MPR News reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the incident. A spokesperson responded by asking for the woman’s name, date of birth and “A-number,” or alien number, which DHS uses to track non-citizens who are living in the United States. The woman is a U.S. citizen. To protect the woman from retaliation, MPR News did not provide that information to them.
What the fuck. This isn’t normal. This is a rogue administration that answers to no one and has made it clear to the federal officers who serve it (rather than the public they’re supposed to be serving) that they’ll never be punished for behaving like violent, lawless thugs. Many more people are going to be brutalized, if not actually killed, by this government simply because they refuse to ignore what ICE, etc. are doing.
Filed Under: cbp, dhs, ice, mass deportation, matt grochow, st peter, trump administration
Comments on “MN Police Chief Intervenes To Free A US Citizen Arrested By Federal Officers”
I do hope the military stops taking orders from the orange Adolf. It’s about time they put their actions where their words are: to protect the constitution.
You don’t know any black people, huh?
I have seen it said that she was supposedly driving, erratically, at excessive speeds, and running red lights and stop signs before they pulled her over. I haven’t seen any proof of this, but that is the story that is being spread.
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And is there a reason you’re helping to spread it without evidence?
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So, DHS is Department of Highway Safety now?
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And, even if true, that would have put her under ICE jurisdiction how?
Re: A story from ..
A bunch of liars said this. They have zero credibility and anything they say should be immediately discarded without reliable corroboration.
So it didn’t happen. The video doesn’t show that.
According to her. She absolutely could have been obstructing them, which IS illegal, and yes, they can arrest you for that. Whether that’s worth doing can vary with the facts on the ground.
You’re using “detention” to make it seem analogous to detaining an illegal alien for deportation, and it absolutely is not that. It’s an arrest, for a crime.
It absolutely is, actually.
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That’s because they are.
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Is it a dopamine rush? You don’t trust the administration’s propaganda mouthpieces to spread the message wide enough? You’re cursed by a witch to be an oppositionally defiant asshole?
What grand motivation drives you to just blanket defend every action the feds take as if you’ll die if you let an article pass unopposed, regardless of how little knowledge or substance you have on the matter?
Just statistically not every single action any administration takes is going to be legal.
I tell you what, just tell us what you think the administration has gotten wrong and besides that, we’ll just assume you think everything else from the torment nexus to the orphan crushing machine is perfectly legal and normal, and then you won’t even have to bother returning.
Hell, we can script a chatbot that can reasonably predict your bullshit.
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ICE aren’t cops and they have zero jurisdiction over citizens. Put it back in your pants, fascist.
Gunpoint Abduction Victim Rescued
Perpetrators remain at large, armed and dangerous.
"Federal officers arrested her"
You are willing to admit this?
I dont think we have seen the opath they take yet.
Which may be Very important, as we KNOW they are not taught the Laws they are SUPPOOSED to not Cross.
Welcome to the Police State. It’s been in preparation ever since the start of the Patriot Act. Earlier administrations found it quite handy, and now you can see it in all its glory.
In Minnesota, would the person filming have been legally in the wrong for using force to defend themselves? If a group of masked & hooded men jump out of a red Mazda with guns drawn at your face, what can you even do?
Also, what rental agencies are supplying these vehicles? Maybe they’ve already been named & shamed, but not enough. Every business and individual that has assisted in this atrocity needs to be socially excommunicated, at minimum. We will not forget, and we will not forgive. In 2050 I want to hear people saying “oh don’t use that company, they were Republicans.”
Ah, so other LEOs can intervene.
Now if some state would grow enough spine to deploy the National Guard themselves (and i guess hope they do not get co-opted) to, i don’t know, guard the nation from illegal paramilitary thugs, that’d be great.
It’s perfectly ‘normal’ for a regime whose only guiding light is ‘I do what I want’. As I’ve said many times before [i]this isn’t an administration[/i] and people need to stop hoping it will act like one; ‘administration’ implies a system of rules and processes.
What you have is rule by whim and decree from the mad king down. And it needs to be opposed on that basis.
The pussyfooting that your nominal opposition leaders are doing right now is sickening; anybody whose response to the sturmtruppen is ‘we want the sturmtruppen to be slightly nicer’ is not reliably in the fight against the fascist takeover currently in progress.
I’ve asked this before, and I’ve never gotten a direct answer. What legal distinction should exist between and citizen and a noncitizen? Or, should there be no distinction at all?
Re: bill of rights makes not much distinction at all
The Bill of Rights does not make any such distinction on its face. There are mentions of the ``rights of the people” which should be protected.
It was understood at the time that people referred to white land-owning males, but that was not generally in the text. It has since been argued that the definion of ``people” should be expanded to include women and persons who were not white or who did not own land. Citizenship has not historically been included implicitly as a barrier to personhood.
US 1st Amendment provides prohibitions to congress and refers to the ``right of the people to peaceably assembly and to petition”.
US 2nd Amendment provides for the ``right of the people” to have weapons.
US 3rd Amendment does require land ownership, in that the consent of the owner is required or else the government may not quarter soldiers in their houses.
US 4th Amendment refers to the ``right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”. Nothing in there distinguishes rented houses from owned houses.
US 5th Amendment contains implicit ownership requirement in ``nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”, though that is not a land ownership requirement in that personalty may also be taken for public use.
None of the others have citizenship requirements, either.
(yes, preview w/o javascript is still broken in the [not-so-]new BestNetTech platform)
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Thank you for this reply!
So, if everybody should be treated the same, why IS there a legal distinction between citizen and non-citizen? Can’t we just make every living person on Earth a citizen of the USA?
I guess what I’m getting at is what distinction does the different titles conference to the individuals? If there is absolutely no difference at all under the law, then why do we have the distinction at all? What is its utility?
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Aren’t you a lawyer? Then you should know that a citizen has obligations and allegiance to the country which in turn confer political rights which is something noncitizens don’t have or are entitled to, other than that there aren’t much of legal differences to which rights they are entitled except those specifically dealing with noncitizens rights to stay in a country.