The Training Fetish

Six weeks into the immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities, observers say federal agents are employing violence more frequently and with little apparent restraint against citizens and noncitizens, and that stories like Brauch’s have become alarmingly common with some 3,000 federal agents now on the streets.

“They know that they will not be held accountable internally by their supervisors, by their commander in chief, and they also know that it will be very difficult to hold them accountable in the courts if we don't know their names,” said Anna Hall, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Legal Rights Center. “They’re acting with impunity, and they believe that they have the right to do that.” 

This kind of response isn’t new to immigrants. The difference now, Hall said, is that many white people acting as ICE observers are also having their basic constitutional rights violated.  

Hall said attorneys are seeing violations of basic rights not just in the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but across even the most rural parts of the state. 

Democrats on the Hill have been pushing for reforms at ICE following the shooting, and many of their demands have centered on increased training to help officers better defuse tense and potentially violent encounters with protesters and civilian observers. A group of House Democrats is looking to include language in this year’s Homeland Security funding bill that would increase training requirements for ICE officers.