They go by call signs like “Mr. Grinch,” “Ratatouille” and “Cold Toes.” They work within pods to patrol their neighborhoods by car, on foot and on bicycle. They sign up for shifts and have protocols for how to document ICE’s abductions of their neighbors.
These are the folks the Trump administration has variously decried as “gangs of wine moms” and “domestic terrorists.”
On Tuesday, I did a ride-along with two of these volunteers, Sam and Ben Luhmann, teenage brothers. Homeschooled by their mom, Audrey, they helped organize rapid-response groups in Chicagoland, where they live. The day Renee Good was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, they packed their bags and drove to Minneapolis where their aunts, uncles and cousins live. They now spend the mornings on patrol and the afternoons staying caught up on school work.
They’ve captured some of the most shocking video and photos since the assault on Minneapolis began. Take, for example, this clip captured Wednesday in Minneapolis. The clip shows ICE and Border Patrol pinning U.S. citizens to the ground and spraying an irritant in their eyes. Their crime? Coming out with whistles and loud voices when the agents violently abducted a neighbor.
Mara Richards Bim
On Wednesday, I was on my own. I began the morning by having coffee with Pastor Travis Norvell of Judson Memorial Baptist Church. After filling me in on what’s been happening in Minneapolis, he let me know Greg Bovino, the person leading the Border Patrol’s assault on Minneapolis — and Los Angeles and Chicago and New Orleans — was back in town.
Through another contact, I was added to one of the rapid-response groups and began patrolling the neighborhood where Bovino and a convoy of agents were rumored to be circling. It was truly inspiring to see how neighbors have taken up the task of protecting themselves, their neighbors and the neighborhood children.
Without going into details that could jeopardize the remarkable coordination happening, I will say the experience of seeing people with whistles on every icy street corner in the area was humbling. I spoke with more than one person who expressed the people of Minneapolis know they’re on their own. The U.S. government is occupying their city, and no one is going to save them, so they have to save themselves.
“The U.S. government is occupying their city, and no one is going to save them, so they have to save themselves.”
As ubiquitous as these neighborhood watch groups are, caravans of federal agents also are found everywhere in the city. Before I knew it, I found myself accidentally behind Bovino’s caravan. I realized what was happening when I fell in behind a number of vehicles marked “press” that were following.
For the next half hour, I followed the group that included Bovino’s caravan, press vehicles and neighbors in cars out patrolling. This performative show of force from Bovino and his entourage — weaving in and out of small icy streets, waving to those following them — is part of the government’s attempts to intimidate the residents here.
I eventually peeled off and headed toward an area nearby where ICE had done a smash-and-grab of a teenager. When I arrived on the scene, people were on the ground having their eyes washed out from the deployment of chemical agents. I’d missed the abduction, but the car remained.
ICE had smashed the driver’s side window and pulled an underage teen out, shuttling them into an unmarked vehicle and driving away. Some agents stayed behind and dispersed chemical agents against the neighbors with whistles. That’s how I learned that the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals had rescinded the injunction issued just five days earlier against the use of these kinds tactics against individuals whom the government deems to be “protesters.” That injunction also had prevented federal agents from stopping and detaining drivers who happened to be near ICE action.
On Thursday, I joined about 900 clergy for a daylong grounding and training session to prepare us for Friday’s daylong walk-out in Minneapolis.
During this session, the clergy who made the call for us to join them in Minneapolis shared what it’s been like here. What is happening is unlike anything the administration has attempted in an American city before. This is truly an occupation, and it is likely just the first.
“What is happening is unlike anything the administration has attempted in an American city before.”
The majority of Somalis living in Minneapolis are here legally. They were refugees who came to the U.S. in the 1990s and early 2000s. They are part of the fabric of community in Minneapolis. So targeting them — the extreme violence of masked men sweeping them away in unmarked vehicles to locations unknown — is terrorizing everyone who lives here.
I’ve heard of more than one instance when someone was snatched up and released hours later in some random location in the freezing cold.
Federal immigration agents walk 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos to a vehicle in front of his Minneapolis home on Tuesday. (Photo: Columbia Heights Public Schools)
I’ve also heard numerous times and have come to believe that if this level of state violence is allowed to go unchecked here, it will happen with greater intensity and frequency in other cities across America.
I recently reread Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. I was struck by just how relevant his words are today, especially in light of the government’s assertions that it’s “protesters” and “outside agitators” who are creating the violent conditions here:
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
I’d like to invite those who call themselves Christians to pause today and read King’s letter in its entirety as an act of solidarity with those experiencing state violence in Minneapolis.
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas where she recently was ordained to the gospel ministry. She earned the master of divinity degree and a certificate in spiritual direction from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.
Related articles:
Calls to defund ICE go unheeded in House vote
Are we OK with children going missing? | Opinion by Braxton Wade
ICE officers rounding up legally resettled refugees in Minnesota