Third warning. Gas, gas, gas.
The Battle of Minneapolis continues.
Federal agents deployed smoke and chemicals on Jan. 21 as they clashed with protesters and observers at two spots in south Minneapolis.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino lobbed a smoke canister at Mueller Park in the Whittier neighborhood. “I’m gonna gas. Get back. Gas is coming. Gas is coming, second warning. Second warning,” Bovino can be heard saying in a video captured by Ben Luhmann. “Gas on film! Gas on film!” Luhmann shouts in response.
“Third warning. Gas, gas, gas,” Bovino says, before tossing the canister and pushing people away from the street. Plumes of green and gray smoke burst over the crowd as protesters and observers run from the scene. Some were hit in the face with orange spray. The smoke left behind green stains in the snow.
Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.
I suppose this is what Trump wants. There could be a slower, calmer, less sadistic process by which people who have overstayed their visas (or never had a visa, and so on) are given notice to leave, but that wouldn’t provide MAGA with the thrills it craves.
Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.
The violent encounters between federal agents and local residents set off just before 2 p.m. Wednesday after the detainment of two people near Blaisdell Avenue and West 28th Street drew dozens of protesters who began to yell at the officers.
The encounters came soon after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed a lower court’s order that had sought to prevent immigration agents from detaining and pepper-spraying protesters and observers.
This sounds kind of familiar. I wonder what it’s reminding me of…
Sounds to me as if the federal agents are the ones being violent.
28th and Blaisdell is only a few blocks from where my daughter lives, and in our discussions she wavers between terror and resolute defiance. It’s also near a business district that has a large immigrant, majority Somali neighborhood, and quite often there are goons out in the street in front of her home.
There are people even here who admonish “stay inside and stay out of trouble,” even as their neighbors’ doors are being bashed in. They cling to the hope of being invisible to the state police once the state police run out of immigrants. And there are also those who want the state police to bring in the firehoses.