With the wind whipping outside, driving wind chills down to minus 20, First Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester was full of people looking to help their neighbors.
Nearly 100 people came out last Thursday for the Immigrant Defense Network’s (IDN) constitutional observer training to document federal immigration enforcement activity in Minnesota. As thousands of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents have flooded the Twin Cities, these observers have been a constant presence on the streets, recording federal agents and alerting the community of their actions.
The training program in Rochester was part of the IDN’s Brave of Us Tour, a 30-city campaign to expand the organization’s reach across the Midwest. According to the IDN’s network manager, Edwin Torres Desantiago, the need to expand the network’s training efforts was apparent.
“We knew with that amount of agents in our communities, we needed to quickly mobilize every corner of our state,” he said.
The IDN was founded as a network of immigrant, labor, legal, faith, and community organizations in Minnesota last year in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s election. It has since expanded to more than 110 organizations and has a statewide reach.
Torres Desantiago said constitutional observers have been the backbone of the network’s ability to respond to immigration enforcement activities. At its core, the observer program is designed to uphold constitutional protections.
“They [constitutional observers] are the ones keeping watch,” Torres Desantiago said. “They’re the ones that are making sure our constitution is upheld, and when those rights get violated, we work with legal partners to bring a remedy through the court system.”
For many, documenting federal agents provides an outlet to resist federal operations in the state. Rochester resident Macaila Eick said that with thousands of federal agents currently in Minnesota, she had to do something.
“I love history, I’ve read a lot of World War II history,” Eick said. “I always ask myself what would I have done? Ten, 20, 30 years from now, when people ask me ‘what did you do during this time,’ I want to be able to answer that question and be proud about it.”
Special education paraprofessional Jennifer Meyer was at the Rochester session to support her students. She said some hadn’t been coming to school out of fear of encountering federal agents.
“They need to be in school, and they need to have that safe space,” Meyer said. “When they feel they can’t even come here because they fear they may get pulled over, detained, I can’t sit here and do nothing.”
Meyer said that coming to the training provided reassurance in an inherently scary time.
“I’m afraid, I’m scared, but it gave me a way to move forward,” she said. “It gave me a way to protect my kids, so if the fight comes to my school, I know what I’m doing.”
According to Torres Desantiago, without these observers on the streets, some of ICE’s most flagrant violations would never have come to light.
“That viral photo of the 5-year-old who was detained a couple days ago, the killing of Renee Good — they would not have come out if not for people who had been out to observe and document what’s happening,” he said.
As immigration enforcement agents have inundated the Twin Cities, communities outside the metro area also are taking note. Torres Desantiago said the IDN has received an influx of requests from cities across Minnesota for training should similar enforcement come to their doorsteps.
“Right now, the community is telling us, ‘please, we want to be trained on how to respond for our neighbors,’” he said.
Expanding the effort
Prior to Thursday’s event in Rochester, the IDN had already held training sessions in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Mankato, and Duluth. On Tuesday evening, it visited Fargo, North Dakota, with stops across the Midwest planned in the coming months.
Organizing director at the IDN Yeng Her said that as the geography of the tour changes, the strategy needs to as well.
“One of the biggest goals for us is to connect with the local organizations and communities,” Her said. “Our main purpose is, we want to connect it with the local, but also ensure that the communities know of these local resources. We introduce them so they [organizations] can say ‘hey, we’re here, and this is how we can support you.’”
Her said the IDN is making it a point to travel to counties that have signed agreements for their local law enforcement to cooperate on immigration enforcement with federal authorities. Her said that any trainings held in these counties need to be tailored to the local context to account for this cooperation.
“Those take on a different approach to how we’re going to come in and provide information, but also the specific organizations we work with,” Her said. “For those we plan it very strategically in terms of what we can do, and most importantly, our messaging there.”
Her said that it is particularly important to partner with organizations that understand the nuances in communities that have clear pro- and anti-ICE factions.
“When we pick organizations to support us, we find those who have done the work there, who are local there and understand their community and that division,” they said.
For now, ICE and other immigration enforcement activities have been focused primarily on the Twin Cities, though other communities such as St. Cloud have seen agents in their streets as well. With so many immigration agents now in the state, no community can be completely sure they won’t be present on their own streets, Torres Desantiago said, and the IDN’s training program has expanded to reflect that.
“We’ve been doing trainings for over a year but not to this scale,” he said. “We knew once it was nearly 3,000 agents, with that kind of human capital, they can go anywhere.”
Despite the announcement Monday that some federal agents would be leaving Minnesota, Her said the Brave of Us Tour would continue as planned.
Know your rights
The foundation of every constitutional observer training is equipping participants to know their rights when documenting actions by federal immigration agencies.
Among other things, the training teaches best documentation practices, how to report that information to the appropriate channels, and how to identify judicial warrants, which long-established legal precedent says are required to enter private property, despite the federal government’s claims to the contrary.
Torres Desantiago said that the IDN’s constitutional observer trainings can equip communities with the skills they need to utilize existing response networks more effectively.
“We don’t tell people how to run their chats,” he said. ”But if you’re going to see a federal enforcement, what are the ways actually helpful [to document it] so you don’t continue to create fear or unintended misinformation?”
At its crux, Torres Desantiago said the constitutional observer aims to teach participants to share useful information.
“We teach you how to share good information, verified information, so you can continue to protect your neighbors,” he said.
“I can’t sit here and do nothing”
Every community member in attendance had their reasons for attending Thursday night’s training.
One woman who spoke up during the training wanted to take the lessons learned from the training back to her community group in Winona. Another man said his career in criminal justice motivated him to speak up about the violation of people’s civil rights.
Rebecca Gardner lives in the Twin Cities, and had already attended one of the IDN trainings held there. She said that with the situation changing so quickly however, it was important to stay up to date on what’s happening.
“A lot has changed in the two weeks since my first training, and I did in fact learn a lot here tonight,” Gardner said.
For Torres Desantiago, the Brave of Us Tour is a source of inspiration. Seeing other people willing to fight back against federal operations in Minnesota provides much needed support during a stressful time.
“Honestly, it’s what keeps me going,” Torres Desantiago said. “From a human level seeing this amount of violence, this amount of despair, the amount of families that have cried on my shoulder; it takes a toll on the mental health of anyone. Places like this are a place I feel a little bit renewed in my energy.”
Torres Desantiago said that like many others, he is afraid during this time. He believes how you respond to that fear is what matters, however.
“I feel recharged seeing so many neighbors step up to say ‘I am afraid too, but I’m choosing to be brave,’” Torers Desantiago said. “Right now people are choosing to be brave and not succumb to fear. Right now, people are choosing love for their neighbors.”
