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Dave Decker/ZUMA
Over the past few weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been terrorizing Minnesota, as documented instances of egregious brutality flood our social media feeds.
This week alone, one ICE agent pepper-sprayed a protester directly in the face while pinned to the asphalt, and another was caught tackling and handcuffing a child in the snow while they pleaded, “I’m legal,” in Spanish.
But the instance that shook me the most was the detention of 5-year-old Liam Ramos. ICE agents detained the preschooler along with his father earlier this week, but not before reportedly using the child as bait in an attempt to capture other family members in their home.
His photo, depicting him standing in the snow as an ICE officer grips his Spider-Man backpack, went viral on social media. As my Mother Jones colleague Inae Oh wrote, the visuals of his arrest are excruciating. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and his administration stand by their occupation of the Twin Cities.
While Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis has been nothing short of horrifying, it isn’t new. Radley Balko, a journalist and author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, has tracked police militarization for decades and tells us that Trump has turned ICE into his own personal paramilitary, like other autocrats before him.
“He is using these forces as basically the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges to inflict pain, violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies,” Balko said.
In our latest episode of More To The Story, Balko discusses with host Al Letson how Trump’s crackdown, the militarization of police, and America’s long-running drug war are all connected.
It’s an eye-opening piece you won’t want to miss.
-Arianna Coghill
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