At least 14 people were arrested in a federal raid on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at Bro-Tex Inc. that led to a standoff with neighbors and activists in St. Paul’s Hampden Park neighborhood.
In a statement to Sahan Journal on Friday, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said all 14 were arrested on immigration violations. One had past domestic abuse charges and another “committed a felony by illegally re-entering the U.S.,” the statement said.
Ryan Perez, organizing director of Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL), said it’s the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raid that he knows of in Minnesota this year.
Seven people were arrested in St. Louis Park at HardCoat Inc. in February, two people were arrested on their way to work at the Nupa restaurant in Rochester in February and four people were arrested in October while working on a roofing project at a house in St. Paul’s North End neighborhood.
On Wednesday, a day after the raid, about 100 neighbors, immigrant advocates and elected officials gathered at a vigil and news conference outside the Bro-Tex facility.
“This could have been my dad, my brother, my mom,” Edwin Torres DeSantiago, COPAL board president, said at the vigil. Torres DeSantiago said he was undocumented and a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient until last year.
St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Vang Her said the federal agents, some of whom wore patches that simply said “POLICE,” might have led some to think local officers were involved in the action. She called for more transparency by federal officials in such actions.
“SPPD [the St. Paul Police Department] works hard to keep our community safe and when federal agents mislabel themselves, it creates confusion, undermines trust and raises fundamental questions about who those officers really are,” she said.
St. Paul Council Member Vice President Hwa Jeong Kim said she would introduce an amendment to the city’s budget committee later Wednesday morning to fund services that support naturalization and legal defense for immigrants.
“We are here today to publicly condemn all violence against immigrant workers and our brave, peaceful observers,” she said.
Perez was among the speakers on Wednesday who called on Minnesotans to document and respond to immigration arrests. He is part of the Immigrant Defense Network, a statewide group of advocacy organizations that provides direct services and legal resources with more than 2,000 members.
“We’re asking folks to be trained as observers because there’s a lot more of this to come,” he said.
When he received a tip that federal agents were at the Hampden Park manufacturing facility on Tuesday, COPAL quickly mobilized a volunteer to document and observe enforcement activity, Perez said. Many more people started to show up, he said.
As federal officers began to move away from the scene Tuesday morning, they used pepperballs and pepper spray to disperse the large crowd of protesters.
Local men arrested
Erik Godinez Alarcón rushed to Bro-Tex on Tuesday after hearing that his uncle, Camilo Morales Sanchez, and cousin, Jamie Solano Godinez, had been arrested. In an interview with Sahan Journal on Wednesday afternoon, he said his family was shaken by the raid.
He described the two men as hard-working and devoted to their family. His uncle recently got married, he added.
They both had a goal to eventually return to their home country, he said, but the federal raid upended their plans. His uncle planned to return to their home country and retire, he said, while his cousin intended to eventually return “enjoying the fruits of his labor.” He said the two men will likely not fight any charges.
Another man arrested Tuesday is Carlos Alberto Alarcón Avila, according to a fundraiser organized by his daughter, Karla Alarcón Avila Hernandez. She started a fundraiser to help with legal fees and other costs.
In the GoFundMe post, she said her father worked hard to raise his family and contribute to the community. For more than a decade, Alarcón Avila was a cook at Turkey To Go at the Minnesota State Fair, she said.
Godinez Alarcón said he is not related to Alarcón Avila.
“Every single person that comes into this country does not intend to make this place their country,” Godinez Alarcón said. “They know that they’re on borrowed land.”
Over the years, his family has endured many hardships but it has strengthened their resilience, he said. “We will get back stronger and we will move forward, and we will continue to support them from this side of the border.”
This story has been updated to reflect new information on the number of arrests at Tuesday’s raid.
