The Jackson family was just trying to get home.
Shawn and Destiny Jackson, both 26, loaded their six children into the family SUV the evening of Jan. 14 and drove them from their 11-year-old’s basketball game to Cub Foods in North Minneapolis to grab something for an easy dinner.
They found their normal route home blocked by federal agents at Lyndale Avenue and 24th Avenue North. Shawn has lived in the neighborhood his whole life and tried cutting through a residential street, but found that blocked, too.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pursuing a Venezuelan man had just shot him in the leg. They were swarming the area, surrounding the home where the man had fled and facing off against a growing crowd of protesters. Shawn and Destiny got out of the car to see what was happening. Shawn said one agent told him to “get the (expletive) out of here,” but ICE vehicles were blocking all the roads.
ICE started deploying “less-lethal” weapons used to deter crowds.
“It was everywhere,” Shawn Jackson said. “Every side of the street there was stuff going off— boom!”
Then a federal agent threw a tear gas round that went under the family’s GMC Denali and burst.
“It lifted up my car,” Shawn Jackson said.
The airbags went off; gas started to flow into the vehicle. Their kids, ranging in age from 6 months to 11, began to cough and scream. Shawn and Destiny scrambled to get them out of the car, a process complicated by the vehicle’s crash response system that locked most doors. A family in a nearby house ushered the Jacksons into their home.
Their infant son, D’Iris, lost consciousness. Shawn and Destiny Jackson work in Minneapolis Public Schools and are trained in child CPR, he said. Destiny, also a certified EMT, brought D’Iris back to consciousness about two minutes later.
“I was going to give him all my breath until he could have his own breath,” Destiny Jackson told Sahan Journal.
ICE and Border Patrol have liberally used tear gas and other crowd control weapons throughout Operation Metro Surge. Agents have been recorded and observed throwing tear gas canisters and shooting pepper spray pellets at observers and protesters.
Most national attention has focused on the fatal shooting of observer Renee Nicole Macklin Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7. But “less-lethal” weapons have serious health effects, as well, and have become a focal point in lawsuits aiming at curbing the aggressive immigration enforcement.
“The euphemistic term ‘tear gas’ does give us that illusion that the only research we have is that it causes tears,” Asha Hassan, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, told Sahan Journal. “There are well documented, long term and really devastating impacts including blindness, glaucoma, respiratory failure— and in large amounts, obviously, death. ”
Those effects are particularly strong for young children, Hassan said.
Last week, a federal judge issued an injunction ordering federal agents in the Twin Cities to restrain their use of tear gas and other crowd dispersal tools. The order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union objecting to violence against protesters, violation of constitutional rights of observers and the detention of U.S. citizens.
But on Wednesday a federal appeals court paused that injunction, and chemical use continues. Border Patrol Commander-At-Large Gregory Bovino was filmed on Wednesday afternoon throwing green gas grenades into a crowd protesting the arrest of two people near Mueller Park in south Minneapolis.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
‘Made for war’
When Shawn Jackson tried to get ICE agents to allow an ambulance through the crowd to take his children to the hospital, the agents weren’t helpful, he said. One agent he spoke with kept grabbing his gun handle as they spoke, he said.
The Minneapolis Police and Fire departments were eventually able to get through and help the Jacksons into an ambulance that brought them to nearby North Memorial Hospital.
At the hospital, doctors and nurses had the family strip naked, go into a decontamination unit and get sprayed down with hoses, Shawn Jackson said. The liquid used was very cold, Destiny Jackson said.
“I felt like it was everywhere,” she said.
Most of the family is still feeling the effects a week later, they said. D’Iris has a lingering cough. Destiny Jackson and three of their kids have previously been diagnosed with asthma and had to receive special treatment and additional testing.
Doctors told the family they were exposed to dangerous chemicals.
“They [the doctors] were telling us that their tear gas is made for war,” Shawn Jackson said.
Rohini Haar, an emergency medicine physician and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies crowd control weapons, said calling tear gas and pepper spray “less-lethal” is a misnomer. How dangerous they are depends on the level of exposure and the vulnerability of the people targeted.
“These chemical irritants can injure any different part of your body—everything from the tears, obviously, in your eyes, to a lot of skin injuries, lung injuries and mucosal injuries,” Haar said.
The canisters can also cause serious harm to people hit directly, she said.
“They have to be used judiciously, which is not what we’re seeing in the news right now,” Haar said.
Hassan first got interested in tear gas in 2020. She was living in south Minneapolis when George Floyd was murdered by then-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin. Several protesters and journalists were hurt by police tear gas and rubber bullets in May and June 2020; The city of Minneapolis settled a lawsuit from the ACLU on behalf of 12 injured protesters in 2022. Current Minneapolis City Council Member Soren Stevenson and photojournalist Linda Tirado were blinded in one eye by rubber bullets..
Hassan’s main focus is on reproductive health, and she heard of neighbors and patients who immediately began menstruating after being exposed to tear gas, even if they were on birth control or hadn’t menstruated in years.
She tried to learn more, and contributed to two studies on the impacts, including one focused on Portland, Oregon, where protesters had repeat exposures. The more people are exposed to tear gas, the more issues they have, she said. Small kids are particularly susceptible to cardiovascular effects.
“I would operate under the assumption that being exposed to these gases is harmful for your health, regardless of what your health background is, particularly for children,” Hassan said.
‘They’re all harmful’
Most research on the impact of tear gas was done decades ago by the U.S. military, overwhelmingly on healthy men in their 20s, Hassan said. Much less is known about the effects on women and small kids, but what is known is worrying, she said.
Women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant should be especially wary of tear gas, she said. Anyone extensively exposed and feeling symptoms days after should see a doctor.
Researchers often don’t know how much gas is being used, meaning there is no good way to understand the threshold between causing tears and longterm, serious health problems, Hassan said.
Most of the gas and chemical irritants ICE and Border Patrol are using in Minnesota are made by Defense Technology, a Wyoming company specializing in riot control munitions.
Deployed canisters observed by Sahan Journal include products labeled CS and CM, for their respective chemical composition. The gas often has a color dye added to it. Almost all products sold by Defense Technology include a warning stating the gas can expose people to hexavalent chromium, or HC, which is known to cause cancer.
Tear gas is banned in international warfare under the Geneva Convention, but has been commonly used domestically by law enforcement. No matter the label, people should take exposure seriously, Hassan said.
DHS blames family
The day after the Jackson family was gassed, the official DHS X account criticized them for bringing their children to a dangerous area.
“It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots. PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN,” the post, which has since been deleted, read.
On CNN, DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the post was deleted upon learning the Jackson’s didn’t intend to bring their kids to the area, and blamed “rioters” for what happened.
The Jacksons are still processing the event. Their oldest children talk about it a lot. Their kids are afraid to ride in a car, Shawn said, and feel safest at home.
“I want to get into therapy,” Shawn Jackson said. “I felt like as a father and a man, there’s only so much I can do.”
ICE activity has been high in north Minneapolis, they said. A man was arrested this week near Destiny’s grandmother’s house. She saw another arrest on Penn Avenue on her way to the doctor’s Tuesday. ICE is always being discussed in the schools where Shawn and Destiny work. It’s hard to protect kids when the chaos is playing out in neighborhoods.
While ICE is blaming ‘rioters’ for the chaos, Destiny has a different view: “You guys are bringing it to us.”
