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A 55-year-old woman who is an American citizen was arrested early Tuesday after confronting ICE officers over the arrests of three of her neighbors in the Willard-Hay neighborhood of north Minneapolis. She appears to be the first observer arrested by federal law enforcement officers since the agency launched an immigration surge in the Twin Cities last Monday.
ICE spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment or confirm the arrests.
Susan Tincher was awakened a little before 6:30 a.m. by alerts on her phone that an ICE arrest was happening in her neighborhood. She walked over alone and asked one of the officers across the street from the home that was being raided if they were ICE. She said the officer told her to “get back.” Tincher refused, and said multiple agents approached her.
Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement agent while they’re conducting their duties. Tincher, a white woman in her mid-50s who stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall, insists she was at speaking distance from the agent and said that she did nothing to “impede” their actions.
“Pretty soon they were throwing me on the ground and handcuffing me and putting me in their unmarked truck,” Tincher said, estimating that the whole interaction just took a few seconds. “There were other watchers, who were asking me what my name was and everything, so I identified myself to them, then I started yelling, ‘Help!’ because I was being kidnapped.”
Video shared with MPR News shows three officers escorting Tincher to an unmarked truck as observers yell, “Where are you taking her?” Agents don’t appear to respond.
Tincher said agents told her in the truck that if she didn’t watch herself “they were going to pull me over to the side of the road and give me this OC,” law enforcement shorthand for pepper spray.
Katy Rollins lives next door to the house being raided and was woken shortly after 6 a.m. by pounding on the home’s door.
“I got up, looked out my bedroom window and saw eight vehicles, all unmarked,” Rollins said, “One was parked up on the sidewalk — it was an armed personnel carrier.”
Rollins found her whistle, which is being used to alert neighbors to the presence of ICE agents, and alerted rapid response groups to the ICE presence before going into her front yard in her bare feet to observe. Rollins saw two of her neighbors taken out in handcuffs and was told by the family afterwards that a third person had also been arrested.
About eight observers were on the scene, Rollins said.
“I’m very worried about the folks who are still there, worried about the folks who were kidnapped — actions like this spread fear and anxiety,” Rollins said.
A camera crew was present at the arrest and Tincher later saw them in the courthouse, but it’s not clear whether they worked for the agency or for media friendly to the Trump administration that embedded with ICE agents. In other cities like Chicago, ICE agents have been accompanied by camera crews.
Susan’s husband Jim Tincher said he was shocked to be notified by neighbors that his wife had been arrested. He spent all day trying to find where she was being held, with Minnesota elected officials like U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith assisting in the search.
Jim Tincher said it’s incredible to see “that the government can do this, arrest somebody for doing nothing illegal, and throw her down, handcuff her,” Jim Tincher said. “Seeing the video of Sue being handcuffed on the ground? That was chilling.”
Being unable to locate loved ones is a common situation for the families of people detained by ICE, said attorney Julia Decker, policy director for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.
“It can often be very difficult for family, friends, even lawyers, to get information about where a person is being taken or where they’re going to be taken,” Decker said. “The administration itself, the government itself, has not always been particularly transparent about that.”
Decker said detainees are often transferred with no notice between facilities or even between states, and that detainees don’t have many opportunities to communicate from inside the facilities.
Decker said they’re now seeing cases where ICE agents violate constitutional protections on a daily basis. She and other immigration attorneys advise clients about the rights they should have but warn about the areas where ICE agents have been violating them.
“If this administration is able to sort of run roughshod over these laws and rules that we believed to be so well established, and there is no mechanism by which there can be accountability, or that the harms can be rectified, where does that leave us?” Decker asked.
It’s not clear how many people have been detained in Minnesota by ICE during the last two weeks, although the agency has identified 19 people arrested by agents who are in the country illegally and have criminal histories.
The anecdotal evidence coming into Decker’s office shows that ICE arrests in Minnesota may follow a similar pattern to immigrant enforcement surges in other places like Chicago, where reporters discovered that the majority of people detained had no criminal record.
It was at about noon that Jim Tincher learned that his wife was being released. He picked her up at the Whipple Federal Building.
Tincher has marks on her neck and wrist from where agents restrained her. Agents cut off her wedding ring and held her in leg shackles at Whipple Federal Building for about five hours, where she saw about seven other detainees.
Tincher said she’s even more motivated after her arrest to volunteer to support immigrants in her community.
“I’m just so concerned about our neighbors, our peaceable neighbors, being abducted, and the worries their families are going through,” Tincher said. “I just don't want this to be happening in our country.”
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