I know we're all thinking it: how far will this madness in Minnesota go? ICE agents are out in the streets arresting illegal immigrant criminals because elected leaders refuse to allow local law officers to turn those criminals over to the feds. Agitators obstruct those agents, track them, film them, dox them at the direction of local elected leaders. There have been years now of violent protest, from the BLM riots following the death of George Floyd to J6 to trans protests to anti-Jewish protests on college campuses to assassinations and people have been killed over their political and ideological views—repeatedly.
The Pentagon is readying troops should they be needed. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has readied his National Guard. The Minneapolis police are out on the streets but they are outnumbered by everyone, sporting a force of only 600. After the George Floyd riots in 2020, the city's police force took a hit both with defunding and morale and staffing is still far under what's needed. The FBI is in town along with 3,000 DHS agents.
Local protesters have joined with national agitators who are in town for the mayhem. Members of the immigrant Somali community, led by state senator Omar Fateh and Rep. Ilhan Omar, have declared that "white supremacists," meaning any white people who are not leftists, basically, will not be permitted in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, where many of them live.
The stage is set for violent confrontations between leftist agitators and law enforcement, and that's been playing out for nearly two weeks, not to mention six years since George Floyd. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey indicated that there could be clashes between law enforcement and that residents had been calling on police to engage ICE on the front lines. This comes as Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner said that he would move to arrest ICE agents in the City of Brotherly Love and California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell said he would revoke the driver's licenses of federal immigration officers.
An agitator was killed as she obstructed ICE enforcement and rammed an agent with her car and it turns out that she and her partner were part of ICE Watch activist groups. An illegal immigrant criminal was shot and injured. A mob of anti-ICE leftists stormed a Christian church in St. Paul, terrorizing worshipers. Men have been harassed and assaulted in the street when mobs of agitators suspect them of being MAGA.
Agitators led by black activist Nekima Levy Armstrong stormed into the Christian Cities Church in St. Paul. Armstrong had sussed out that David Easterwood, one of the pastors there, and since he's also the acting director of ICE's St. Paul field office. Armstrong spoke to Don Lemon outside the church. He was alerted by the activists as to their plans and invited along to document it, which he did.
He asked Armstrong "Why are you doing this?" He seemed very supportive of her actions. He must have forgotten how many houses of worship are shot up in this country. Government workers should be able to keep their jobs without being hounded out of church by activists who don't like those jobs. The Department of Homeland Security, which operates ICE, has 260,000 employees. Will all of them be forced out of their homes and churches?
"This is Operation Pull Up," Armstrong said, "more of a clandestine operation. We show up somewhere that is a key location. They don't expect us to come there. We disrupt business as usual. So that's what we're about to go do right now." This is one of many agitator "operations" that are organized and implemented. Armstrong said she and her followers stormed the church "in the power of almighty God."
Inside the church, she and her collaborators screaming "ICE out!" An agitator from DC who fundraises for his protest activity said the church was "white supremacist" and harassed worshipers. Later, he went to a mosque, spoke about how beautiful it was, and complained that worshipers there were too afraid to attend services—perhaps less scared than those he had terrorized in their own house of worship earlier that day.
Lemon tried to interview the pastor who was delivering a sermon that day. "This is unacceptable," the pastor said. "It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship." Lemon tried to engage the pastor in further conversation, apparently not realizing that the safety of the church had been violated. The pastor kept saying he had to tend to his family and the parishioners. Nicki Minaj shared a photo of a frightened family sitting in their seats, their child crying.
AG for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the government was looking at charging the agitators with violations of the 1994 FACE Act, which prohibits "intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship." Sounds about right. Frey and Walz are also under investigation for inciting rioters and violating the FACE Act.
"This is not just about resistance here, in Minneapolis," Frey said. "It's about love. We are showing something far more powerful and consequential here which is love. We are standing up for one another. You've got neighbors helping neighbors. You've got people coming together and uniting in this beautiful way."
Which brings me to Bleeding Kansas, a series of clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery agitators. The whole thing was sparked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which said that popular sovereignty would be how the issue of slavery's legality would be decided in the state. Settlers flocked in on both sides of the divide in order to influence which side became the majority. There was election fraud. There were attacks and raids. Some 55-60 people were killed by 1859. The Civil War began just two years later.
What are we facing? Minnesota is just one of dozens of sanctuary states in these United States where elected leaders have determined that they are not beholden to federal immigration law. In so doing, they encourage residents to stand up to officers of the law and put their own local police forces in direct conflict with federal law enforcement. They also put federal officers in direct conflict with agitators and residents as those officers have to seek their suspects in the community rather than have them handed over by local cops.
The sanctuary states do not appear to even close to backing down. The leaders seem to relish the conflict and the fight with the federal government. President Trump and his administration will not back down. Trump has only increased the number of agents in Minneapolis as the local recalcitrance grows.
The standoff is not coming, it is already here and playing out in real time. What we do in Minneapolis will determine the fate of our nation, just as what happened in Kansas in the 1850s dictated our country's course of action. Nothing good can come when neither feds nor state refuse to back down and while these electeds haggle over who has primacy, state or nation, it will be our American people, agitators and law enforcers, who pay the price with their lives.
