A crowd of neighbors and protesters confronted federal agents conducting a raid Tuesday morning outside St. Paul wiper distributor Bro-Tex Inc. Some of the family members of those arrested also showed up at the scene.
Several people at the scene said they received calls Tuesday morning that federal officers were “staging” to make arrests at the manufacturing facility in the Hampden Park neighborhood.
About 40 people showed up at the facility by 9:45 a.m., said Vash Lamp, a member of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee.
At least two people were arrested, according to Wendy Zuniga, communications director of Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL). She is part of the Immigrant Defense Network, a statewide group of advocacy organizations that provides direct services and legal resources (IDN).
Erik Godinez Alarcón came to Bro-Tex on Tuesday after hearing that federal agents were at the facility. He said his cousin, who has worked for Bro-Tex for six years, had likely been arrested. His cousin has no criminal history, he added.
“Our country needs change,” Godinez Alarcón said. “This is not the solution.”
“What happened today is not law enforcement — it is an assault on our community,” Ryan Perez, an IDN representative, said in a statement. “No one should fear that simply going to work, providing for their family, or standing up for their neighbors will result in federal agents storming a workplace, detaining people en masse, and deploying chemical weapons against Minnesotans.”
IDN is hosting a vigil and news conference tomorrow morning at the Bro-Tex facility at 9 a.m. in response to the raid.
Officers on the scene wore vests identifying them as police, drug enforcement agents, FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Protesters asked federal officers to present a warrant, but Lamp said they ignored their requests. The officers were also physically and verbally aggressive, he added.
It’s unclear how many people were arrested. Sahan Journal reached out to ICE for comment and did not immediately get a response. A Bro-Tex spokesperson declined to comment.
Elizabeth Evans said she arrived at the scene around 10 a.m. after her friend’s father, who works at the Bro-Tex, reported federal agents at the facility. He was later arrested, she said.
Around 10:25 a.m., federal agents began pushing crowds out of the way as protesters blocked their SUVs from leaving the scene. Agents used tear gas and paintballs to disperse the crowd.
In an interview at the scene, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said federal agencies did not inform him of enforcement activity or arrests happening at Bro-Tex.
He said St. Paul has a policy that prohibits city employees, including police officers, from enforcing federal immigration actions or asking residents about their immigration status.
“Obviously, they don’t coordinate with us so we have to try to get our information the same as everybody else does,” Carter told Sahan Journal. “We’re trying to get our arms around what exactly their [federal] action is.”
Carter said he heard reports of federal agents in the area and began tracking enforcement activity. He plans to work with the city attorney to file action that limits federal agents from wearing a “POLICE” badge on their vests so there is less confusion on the involvement of St. Paul officers.
“It’s problematic,” he said, referring to the vests.
“We were only notified this morning that a search warrant that was going to be executed in relation to a criminal investigation into a business,” St. Paul Police spokeswoman Nikki Muehlhausen said.
