Minnesota

Live updates page, so posting text. I could not find the article "freestanding".

2:49 p.m. Feb. 8 | Kidney recipient detained by ICE still hasn't received life-saving medications

Four days after ICE arrested a Rochester man who is the recipient of a kidney transplant, federal authorities still have not given him the life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife.

The Department of Homeland Security said late Friday that ICE is aware of the man’s recent kidney transplant, that the family gave authorities the medications and that ICE was working to ensure he gets them, but he apparently still has not received them.

Javier Abreu-Vasquez was arrested by immigration agents in Rochester on Friday while he was delivering groceries as part of a local mutual aid group through his church. He was taken without his medications to the Whipple Federal Building near the MSP airport, where he was held until being flown to a federal detention center in Texas Friday.

State Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, said a lawyer for Abreu-Vasquez was told Friday morning that he would need a doctor’s note to be able to access the anti-rejection medication vital to his transplant survival.

Hicks drove to the Twin Cities Thursday night to deliver the medication to Abreu-Vasquez at the Whipple building. After conferring with his attorney Friday morning, she got a letter from his doctor at Mayo Clinic, where the 38-year-old had kidney transplant surgery in July of 2023.

Hicks and Abreu-Vasquez’s family grew quite concerned though, because they hadn’t heard from federal officials as of Friday afternoon — after Abreu-Vasquez was scheduled to be transported by plane to a federal detention center in Texas.

By late Friday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement regarding Abreu-Vasquez’s situation.

“ICE is aware of his recent kidney transplant, and his family sent the medications and medical documentation. ICE is working with the family to ensure he gets all of his needed medications,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

“It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,” McLaughlin’s statement continued. “This is the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

Abreu-Vasquez’s wife, Carolina Rosario De Abreu, told MPR News Sunday that she talked to him by phone, and he told her he still has not received his medications. She says he needs to take his pills daily to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, and that going without them could be life-threatening.

Hicks said community members alerted her Thursday that Abreu-Vasquez had been detained after federal agents rammed into his car and broke his car window on Civic Center Drive in Rochester. She said he had been delivering groceries for a mutual aid network through his church when he was detained.

In the statement, McLaughlin described Abreu-Vasquez as “an illegal alien” from the Dominican Republic.

Hicks, though, said the man has an alien registration number, which people often receive after applying for a green card, receiving a work permit or taking part in immigration court.

“I don't understand why the federal government is taking Minnesotans who are not criminals, who are part of our communities, and violently ripping them off the streets after running into their cars, and then denying them access to life saving medication,” an exasperated Hicks said Friday morning.

“For what purpose? What is the end goal here?” she said. “This is not the worst of the worst.”

— Molly Castle Work and David Schaper, MPR News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42605005

Archived at https://archive.ph/vJJdU

Minnesota's four Republican members of Congress are supporting new legislation designed to force the state's election officials to turn over private voter data to the Trump administration, withholding federal funding if it doesn't.

Rep. Pete Stauber introduced the Minnesota Voter Integrity Act of 2026 in the U.S. House on Monday, with Reps. Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, and Michelle Fischbach as co-sponsors.

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7485198

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23464

Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in St. Paul on Tuesday to demand that state officials take action to bring the federal agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti to justice.

"We are demanding that they bring charges against the killer officers," said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for Minnesota, which organized the protest. "We want the identity of the officers. We know the federal government is not investigating. They are lying to the American people. They are denying us justice. It is time for the state to do their job."

The crowd then broke out into a raucous chant: "Do your job! Do your job!"

— (@)

The protest, which took place outside Walz's office in the Minnesota state Capitol building, came as the governor negotiates an end to federal immigration agents' takeover of Minnesota with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who was recently dispatched to oversee the Trump administration's operation in the state following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino.

The Trump administration appears on the back foot after the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, over the weekend, by a gang of federal agents, which was caught on camera and heightened the already simmering national anger at Trump's deployments around the US.

Minneapolis has become the epicenter of this outrage, with more than 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents deployed as part of what the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said is "the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out."

In addition to the slayings of Good and Pretti, agents have been documented engaging in relentless brutality against the people of Minnesota, including many US citizens. Cases abound of residents being subject to explicit racial profiling, being threatened and assaulted for engaging in First Amendment-protected protest and legal observation, and being detained and interrogated as part of unconstitutional "citizenship checks."

Minnesota state officials, including Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, have faced mounting pressure to pursue criminal charges against Jonathan Ross, the agent who killed Good earlier this month. But Minnesota’s public safety commissioner has said “it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible,” for a local investigation to continue “without cooperation from the federal government.”

According to Walz's office, he outlined two main goals in his closed-door meeting with Homan: He wants the administration to dramatically reduce the massive presence of agents in the state and to give state investigators a role in the investigations of Good and Pretti's deaths.

— (@)

A drawdown of agents reportedly began after a call between Walz and Trump on Monday, during which the governor said he would look for the state to work with the federal government “in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.” Trump characterized it as a “request to work together with respect to Minnesota.”

But Suleiman Adan, the deputy executive director of CAIR Minnesota, told Common Dreams that such a compromise is inadequate, calling on Walz “to use every legal and political tool at his disposal.”

"That means empowering county attorneys to open their own inquiries, collecting and preserving bystander video and witness statements, and going to court when necessary to try to compel or preserve evidence," he said. "It also means using the governor’s political leverage, public pressure, legal action, and intergovernmental channels to make non-cooperation itself a public issue, not something that happens quietly behind closed doors."

According to a report on Wednesday by NBC News, DHS itself is conducting federal inquiries into its own agents' killings of Pretti and Good, which has raised immediate concerns about impartiality, especially after top officials have jumped to preemptively exonerate the agents while labeling the victims as "domestic terrorists."

Rather than simply serve a role in a federal investigation, CAIR wants Walz to demand an independent state-level investigation run by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which attained a restraining order to prevent federal agents from destroying evidence in Pretti's case.

"Minnesotans are asking, 'Are we safe here anymore?' and they need actionable leadership, not half-measures," Adan said.

Adan said it was unclear at this point what guarantees Walz has secured to ensure proper oversight of agents and the protection of civil rights.

“While Governor Walz has met with Border Czar Tom Homan as part of efforts to address the situation, that meeting has not yet translated into real protections for community members on the ground,” he continued. “We are concerned that any agreement that normalizes or legitimizes an expanded federal enforcement presence without binding constraints, transparent accountability, and independent oversight does not protect Minnesota residents and undermines public trust.”

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/42541446

A man attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) while she was speaking during a Tuesday town hall meeting in Minneapolis, according to local police. According to an initial police statement, the man used a syringe to spray an unknown liquid at Omar.

The man was immediately arrested and booked into Hennepin County Jail on suspicion of 3rd degree assault, the statement added.

A live stream of the event shows the man being tackled and taken away by security. Omar appears unharmed and continues speaking.

“We will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us,” she says.

Omar’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hours earlier, President Donald Trump spoke derisively of Omar at an event in Iowa. “She comes from a country that’s a disaster. Probably it’s considered, I think, the worst — it’s not even a country, okay? It barely has a government,” he said, referring to Somalia.

Any Minnesota lawyers have answers on this?

cross-posted from !law_us@lemmy.sdf.org.

From the linked PDF:

Give the officers my ID?
If the ICE officer demands your ID, only show a driver’s license or another ID issued from the U.S. government. DON’T give the officer any false or foreign documents such as a passport, consular ID, or an expired visa.

In NY, the DRIVER must show any officer a driver’s license. If you are the PASSENGER, you do NOT have to show the officer an ID or give any personal information, including your name, address, or place of birth.

This seems off.

My understanding: in the US, nationals need not carry ID (while immigrants must carry their docs). Exceptionally, if you are driving a car, then the state requires you to carry your driver’s license. The DL is the property of the state. The fed does not issue driver’s licenses.

There is no such thing as a US federal driver’s license. The quote above refers to “ID issued from the U.S. government,” that would be a passport. A passport is not going to be carried daily inside the issuing country.

Traffic enforcement is not in the jurisdiction of federal ICE agents, is it? Can they really demand your driver’s license under this kind of false pretense of ensuring that drivers are permitted to drive when in fact the real reason they want to see the DL is to snoop on citizenship?

There are some interstate highways that traverse state borders. Does it make a difference whether or not someone is driving on one?

And what about cyclists? If you are cycling and happen incidentally to be carrying a driver’s license (which is not needed to cycle), must you produce it on demand?

It’s bizarre how that doc singles out New York. How does it differ from other states?

what the ACLU says

The ACLU has some advice:

https://www.acluva.org/know-your-rights/stopped-by-police-or-ice/

This is also a bit imprecise. Of course drivers must show their DL to “police”, but what about ICE? They just leave that up in the air.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7454314

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22706

As Minnesota residents and people across the US were reeling from the killing of protester Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents on Saturday—the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents in the city in less than three weeks—US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz, telling him it is in his power to "restore the rule of law" in his state.

One suggestion the attorney general gave amounted to a "shakedown," said US Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and had nothing to do with the Trump administration's persistent claims that immigrants have caused a crisis in Minnesota. Bondi demanded the Democratic governor turn over voter rolls for the state, as she has called on all 50 states and Washington, DC to do, prompting legal challenges from voting rights groups and voters.

Bondi wrote that Walz must allow the Department of Justice (DOJ) to access voter rolls to "confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law."

"Fulfilling this commonsense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law," she wrote.

Gallego accused the DOJ of "using fear to get their hands on voter information."

— (@)

The Trump administration filed a federal lawsuit last September against Minnesota and several other Democrat-governed states to demand personal information for all voters, including driver's license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

Considering President Donald Trump's persistent, debunked claims of so-called "voter fraud" in the 2020 election, including the baseless claim that noncitizens are permitted by Democratic governors to vote in federal elections, advocates have said the DOJ's demands for voter rolls are aimed at further spreading lies and misinformation.

In the letter, Bondi also denounced Minnesota officials for speaking out against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the wake of an ICE agent's fatal shooting of Renee Good earlier this month, saying a "national tragedy" has resulted from the "anti-law enforcement rhetoric."

The "tragedy" the attorney general was referring to wasn't the killings of Good and Pretti, but a rise in "violence against ICE officers and agents" that the Trump administration has cited frequently. She didn't provide examples of violent attacks in the letter.

She also demanded that Walz turn over records on Medicaid and food assistance programs and "repeal sanctuary policies that have led to so much crime and violence in your state"—also providing no evidence of such a rise. According to data from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minneapolis Police Department, crime has gone down in recent years.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said Bondi's letter suggested that Minnesota can expect more violence from federal immigration officers unless Walz turns over his constituents' sensitive data.

This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail.

The Department of Justice has now told Minnesota officials that they will remove ICE if they hand over their voter rolls - this is not how the law works. pic.twitter.com/V9udMnJgPn
— Arizona Secretary of State (@AZSecretary) January 25, 2026

"They're not entitled to that data," said Fontes. "This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I'm embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction."

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, noted that Bondi's demand came days after the DOJ acknowledged that a group aimed at challenging election results reached out to two Department of Government Efficiency Employees who were working at the Social Security Administration and requested they analyze state voter rolls.

"This is not a coincidence," said D'Arrigo. "Authoritarians crave legitimacy, and manipulated election results can provide that."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Minnesota DHS has a website devoted to debunking DHS claims.

This page exists to correct the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) repeated false claims regarding the Minnesota Department of Corrections' (DOC) cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Please see the below media fact sheet, press releases, and videos for more information.

Page devoted to Alex Pretti:
https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/news-releases/?id=1089-720842

Found on bluesky post via mastodon. May be more discussion there:
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/post/3mdczpr56ak2g

https://tankie.tube/w/vswLh68i6dqAbhhi11BMj8

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33220298

Good to see our neighbors showing up for our neighbors.

I was fortunate enough to have an employer that lets us participate as well.

Ice Out of MN!

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/maxnesterak.bsky.social/post/3md4jdvytbk2s

A real-time oral history of the ICE assault on Minnesota