Four FBI agents were waiting outside a building in St. Paul Monday afternoon as Isabel Lopez left an interview with a local journalist, according to her attorney.
A “violent” arrest followed, attorney Jordan Kushner alleged. Local journalist Georgia Fort posted a video of Lopez’s arrest on social media, showing multiple plainclothes officers shoving Lopez into a van.
“She didn’t know who they were,” Kushner said. “They didn’t identify themselves.”
The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Lopez, 27, Tuesday with three counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and one count of obstruction of justice for her alleged behavior last week as federal agents searched a Mexican restaurant in south Minneapolis.
Lopez, a St. Paul resident, was among at least 100 community members who protested the June 3 law enforcement action on Lake Street near Bloomington Avenue, a diverse area with many immigrants. She is the first protester to face charges.
Kushner said he’s regularly in touch with Lopez, and that she is “doing pretty well under the circumstances.”
Around 70 people rallied Wednesday morning outside the Sherburne County jail in Elk River, where Lopez is being detained, to protest the charges. Several attendees said they know Lopez personally as a longtime poet, artist and activist.
Protesters carried signs that read, “Free Isa,” and, “Justice para Isabel.” Many referred to Lopez as Isavela, which she also goes by in her social media accounts.
“[Expletive] 12! [Expletive] the Feds!” they chanted as they marched from a parking lot to the jail’s front gate. They rallied for about an hour; the county sheriff’s office, which runs the jail, did not react to the group.
Little Crow Bellecourt, a south Minneapolis resident and founder of Indigenous Protector Movement, said he first met Lopez a few years ago when she worked for Little Earth Residents Association. She later joined Indigenous Protector Movement, a local advocacy organization, he said.
“I’m hurting, because she’s a young lady trying to stand up for her people,” said Bellecourt, who was at Wednesday’s rally. “I believe that she was just reacting to what ICE and the other agents were doing there, pushing people around and acting like thugs.”
Federal prosecutors allege that during the June 3 search of the Las Cuatro Milpas restaurant on Lake Street, Lopez kicked an FBI agent and pushed another FBI agent as other protesters held her back in an apparent attempt to stop her. She also allegedly stood on top of a trash can and refused to move, pushed and kicked officers while they tried to move her off the trash can, and later threw a softball at a Hennepin County Sheriff’s deputy.
“Let me make clear: It is against the law to assault or obstruct federal law enforcement agents,” Acting Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said in a statement announcing the charges against Lopez. “We do not punch cops.”
At least 30 federal agents clashed with protesters on June 3 outside of Las Cuatro Milpas on Lake Street near Bloomington Avenue. The officers were dressed in military clothing, armed with military weapons and accompanied by military trucks.
Community members and activists had quickly mobilized at the scene after video of the law enforcement action was posted on Facebook, concerned that it could be related to immigration issues. Law enforcement officials have said that the case was related to drug and labor trafficking.
Federal agents at the scene wore clothing or badges that identified them as agents with the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Minneapolis police were also at the scene, reporting that they had no knowledge of the federal investigation and were only providing crowd control for safety, an explanation many activists and community members reject.
The charges against Lopez alleged that her “obstruction of and assaults on federal agents” during the investigation “forced” federal agents to leave before they could collect “all the desired evidence” from the restaurant. Lopez’s obstruction charges stem from her standing on the garbage can and allegedly refusing to leave.
Kushner denies the charges, and said that video footage of Lopez that federal prosecutors are relying on are inconclusive.
“They’re snapshots,” he said. “I don’t think they tell us anything other than a confrontation by citizens and police.”
He added that it’s a common tactic for prosecutors to charge people with misconduct after a confrontation where law enforcement officers have engaged in misconduct of their own.
“Someone might have a human reaction to force by the police, and then that gets construed as resistance,” Kushner said.
In her own social media posts recounting the incident, Lopez said law enforcement yanked her off the trash can and slammed her to the ground. A corresponding video shows an officer pinning her on the ground, then pulling her up by her shirt and pushing her. She also posted a picture afterwards of bruises on the back of her right calf and her left thigh and calf.
Minneapolis resident Susan Phillips, who attended Wednesday’s rally, has known Lopez for the last three years, and described her as a “fellow environmental and climate justice activist.”
“This is a tactic to intimidate community activism,” Phillips said of Lopez’s arrest and charges.
Tucked in the complaint for Lopez’s arrest warrant, federal prosecutors included information about the drug trafficking investigation: federal agents seized 900 pounds of methamphetamine at a Burnsville storage facility. Agents estimate the value of the meth to be worth between $22 million and $25 million.
The search of Las Cuatro Milpas was one of eight search warrants carried out on June 3 in Minneapolis, Burnsville, Bloomington, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville and Northfield, according to federal prosecutors. The investigation, according to federal prosecutors, involves alleged drug trafficking, money laundering, bank fraud, human trafficking and firearms violations over the course of several years.
Prosecutors have not charged anyone in the investigation, nor have they unsealed any of the search warrants.
Kushner said that including the drug information is unfair to Lopez, emphasizing that anyone who looks up her name on the internet will now see her associated with drugs and human trafficking.
“They’re using Isabel’s face as a mechanism for them to put out their PR about the separate investigation they’re doing,” Kushner said.
Protestors at the Sherburne County jail also criticized the inclusion of the drug information.
“That’s their ongoing effort to lead us to believe that the raid on Lake Street last week didn’t have anything to do with ICE,” Phillips said.
Toward the end of Wednesday’s protest, the crowd chanted, “I am sacred, you are sacred,” lines from Lopez’s own poetry.
Lopez is scheduled for a detention hearing Thursday morning at the federal courthouse in downtown St. Paul.
