Watching ICE isn’t a crime, but officers tell people it is anyway : NPR
On January 29, federal immigration agents confronted observers monitoring their activity from their cars while patrolling a Minneapolis neighborhood.
Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images
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Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images
Like many Twin Cities residents, Jess observed ICE agents: following them in her car and documenting their actions. Earlier this month, she was in north Minneapolis when immigration agents told her and another observer that they were obstructing a federal investigation.
“We followed them from a distance. We never passed them. We never honked our horns. We never made any noise. We were just watching them,” said Jess, who asked NPR to use only her first name because she fears retaliation from the federal government.
She said she continued to follow the officers from a distance. But then the three vehicles she was following turned around and headed toward her. The federal agents came out.
“They all had their guns drawn. I kept saying, ‘What you’re doing is illegal. You have no right to do this,'” she said. “At that point, they started breaking my window. All I was thinking about was not getting shot.”
A police officer smashed the driver’s side window with a baton. With that, she opened the door. The officers took her out and handcuffed her. She was detained for approximately eight hours.
Now Jess is waiting to see if the feds will charge her with a crime for observing his actions. She is not the only one in this position. NPR spoke with several other Minnesota observers who said immigration agents told them they were obstructing federal investigations.
Jess, a resident of a Minneapolis suburb who legally observes ICE activities, told NPR that agents broke her car window and detained her for hours.
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“Perfectly lawful behavior”
Increasingly, the Trump administration is attempt to criminalize the actions of people who follow and observe its immigration officers, using a specific federal law: A law that makes it illegal to forcibly obstruct or interfere with a federal officer.
“While the Trump administration supports everyone’s First Amendment rights to free speech, assembly and petition, this must be done lawfully and peacefully, as we will not tolerate illegal actions by agitators who only cause havoc,” White House border official Tom Homan said at a Feb. 12 news conference announcing plans to end the crackdown in Minnesota.
Homan pointedly pointed out that “assaulting, resisting, opposing, obstructing, intimidating, or interfering with the force of a federal law enforcement officer is a crime.” But legal experts say that’s not what observers do.
“A lot of activities that the government claims are interference or obstruction, in the vast majority of those examples, they are engaging in perfectly legal conduct,” said Scarlet Kim, a lead attorney for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, which is continue administration for violating the First Amendment rights of protesters and observers in Minnesota.
At least three dozen people who gave sworn statements in the ACLU lawsuit said that while observing immigration activities, federal agents told them they were obstructing or interfering with an investigation, or that what they were doing was illegal.
It is legal to observe and record officers and to yell, whistle or honk at them. Following them in a car from a safe distance is also legal, Kim told NPR.
There are limits: getting in the way of an agent or touching an agent is more likely to cross the line between observing and obstructing, for example. But this line also depends on the circumstances. Recording an officer from 20 feet away may be different than doing so from two feet away. Yelling at an officer may be acceptable, but it may also depend on what the person says.
Training for legal observers led by organizations like the Immigrant Defense Network in Minnesota advise people to keep a safe distance away and avoid physical contact with immigration officials.
“People want to know exactly where the line is. But I think it distracts from the fact that the vast majority of cases don’t even come close to that line,” Kim said.
She says the administration’s animosity toward people who document its immigration enforcement activities is clear: “I think it’s really rooted in their desire to keep what they’re doing as secret as possible.” »
Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said people film and watch local police all the time, and federal agents are no different in that regard, although they prefer not to have observers present.
“The question is not, ‘Is this annoying or frustrating for the officer?’ » The question is: “Is this discomfort or frustration constitutionally protected?” “,” Stoughton said. “Criticism of government actions is at the very heart of what the First Amendment protects.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to NPR’s request for comment.
“Blatant intimidation”
Beyond the initial arrests, the federal government has so far found it more difficult to pursue the charges it brought against observers during its immigration crackdown.
In Los Angeles, a a federal judge recently rejected the government’s argument that protesters who hunted federal agents during the wave of intervention had met the criteria for interference.
In Chicago, court records show that most of those arrested for obstructing repression efforts in that city for several months were released without charge. Among those who were accused of obstructing or assaulting officers, many cases were closed without further action.
“It shows what’s going to happen in Minneapolis six months from now,” says Steve Art, an attorney with the law firm Loevy + Loevy in Chicago. In Minnesota, federal prosecutors have already returned or was fired charges in more than a dozen cases.
Art, who represented the plaintiffs in a recently fired lawsuit which alleged federal agents raped Under the First Amendment rights of journalists and protesters in Illinois, even if a charge is dismissed, the idea that the government considers you a criminal may be a “terrorist mechanism.”
This fear often begins when interacting with ICE agents, long before charges are filed.
“They’re resorting to blatant intimidation,” said Will Stancil, a Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney who has also been told he is obstructing investigations by following immigration agents.
He claims that immigration agents took his photo, including in the presence of Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol officer previously in charge of the operation in Minnesota.
“I would go up to them and give them my name and address, and tell them, ‘What I’m doing is legal. And if you think it’s illegal, come and arrest me. And I suspect you won’t,'” Stancil says. “It’s not just bravado. It’s that I think it’s important to demonstrate that this is a bluff, that they’re trying to scare us, but they don’t actually have the authority to do it.”
Stancil has said publicly that he follows immigration agents, but he understands why others might feel intimidated. Police officers drove him home twice. One time he was with other people and he didn’t care.
“The other one was a lot scarier because it was me and there were three ICE cars surrounding me and taking me home,” he said. “It was just me alone. And, you know, I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
These instantaneous interactions scare him more than any possible legal repercussions. After all, he says, two people were killed by federal agents in his town while they were doing what he was doing: watching and filming.
