Democrats insist their calls for supporters to protest ICE agents are not irresponsible, and the portrayal of out-of-control demonstrators resisting federal agents is a distortion by Homeland Security.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged residents to always carry their phones to record federal immigration actions, and promised during a statewide address on Wednesday night that “accountability is coming at the voting booth and in court.”
“Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity but to bank evidence for future prosecution,” Mr. Walz said, one week after Minneapolis anti-ICE protester Renee Good drove her SUV toward ICE agent Jonathan Ross as her partner recorded the incident, which ended with Mr. Ross fatally shooting Good.
“I don’t think anyone is doing what they’re doing without understanding fully the risks that should not be risks to them, to film, to continue to make sure that they see what ICE is doing when they kidnap and detain people from the streets,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington Democrat, told the Washington Times.
She said, “We have a right to protest in this country, to peacefully protest. We have the right to walk down our streets. We have the right to not be arrested without a warrant.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, said the anti-ICE protesters’ actions are “what America is about.”
“What made it dangerous?” she said. “The fact that ICE people are out shooting into an open car? Shooting where there are private citizens around?”
Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis have continued to heed Mr. Walz’s call and have taken to the streets with their camera phones and their vehicles as they stalk ICE agents who are carrying out raids and arrest warrants. However, some have gone as far as hurling projectiles at officers and ramming their autos at agents and their vehicles.
On Thursday, Mr. Walz attempted to tamp down the rhetoric after President Trump threatened he would invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in Minnesota if protesters continued to attack federal agents carrying out immigration raids.
“I am making a direct appeal to the President: Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution,” Mr. Walz wrote on X. “This is not who we are. And an appeal to Minnesotans: I know this is scary. We can—we must—speak out loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. We cannot fan the flames of chaos. That’s what he wants.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Mr. Trump and Mr. Walz had not spoken since Mr. Walz posted his afternoon X post.
“The president is always willing to pick up the phone when people call. There was a tragic shooting many months ago in Gov. Walz’s state,” Ms. Leavitt said. “He spoke directly with the governor [at the time], but I would ask the governor to stop inciting the harassment and the legal obstruction of law enforcement in his state.”
The Washington Times reached out to the Justice Department on whether the department is seeking incitement charges against state or local officials in Minnesota.
Law enforcement within Minnesota and other sanctuary states is forbidden to cooperate with federal immigration officers, so police perimeters are not set up to protect protesters, federal agents, or the individuals whom ICE officers are seeking out, which has led to subsequent ICE-involved shootings.
This includes three men who “ambushed” an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday night, spurring him to fire his gun and wound one of them.
All three came to the U.S. during the Biden administration and are in the country illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged one of the illegal immigrants shot by Border Patrol in Portland, Oregon last week with assaulting a federal officer, saying he repeatedly rammed his pickup truck into a government rental car, forcing officers to react.
Authorities said Luis Nino-Moncada, the driver of the pickup, and a woman who was his passenger are associated with Tren de Aragua, the Venezuela-based gang that has been declared a terrorist organization.
