To the editor,

I write on a brutally frigid night. According to meteorologists the coldest weather in seven years is moving in on us for a few days. Wind rips howling through the trees and cracks its whips of snow across the yards. We think of anyone who has to be out in such dangerous temperatures, those on the road or without warm homes to shelter in.

It’s as if the weather has taken on the job of physically symbolizing the chillingly heartless assault on civil society by the rogue extrajudicial police forced called ICE, currently terrorizing our neighbors in Minnesota.

The most notorious example is the cold-blooded murder on Jan. 7 of a 37-year-old woman named Renee Good, for whose death the Department of Justice seems to be investigating almost everyone except Jonathan Ross, the man who pulled the trigger.

On Jan. 19 in St. Paul ICE agents without a warrant broke down the door of a Hmong grandfather named ChongLy Scott Thao, handcuffed him, and marched him out into 10-degree weather in only his underwear, ignoring his plea for warmer clothes. The ICE men drove him around for an hour before deciding that this US citizen was not the man they were looking for.  

In Columbia Heights on Jan. 20 ICE apprehended 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on his way home from pre-school and used him as bait to arrest his father, a law-abiding immigrant applying for asylum. Both father and child were flown to a detention facility in Texas reportedly housing many children under deteriorating conditions that include rampant illness and malnutrition.

Why is this happening? President Trump has apparently targeted our neighbors to the west for their progressive tradition and out of a personal hatred for Gov. Tim Walz, US Rep. Ilhan Omar and, shamefully, the entire Minnesota Somali immigrant community. But these new storm troopers who deny 4th amendment rights to their victims are being deployed all over our country, not least in River Falls where recent raids have also taken place.

It’s increasingly obvious that the word “immigration” as wielded by our Republican leaders is simply code for white supremacy. As a result, in the Twin Cities and elsewhere, people of color are routinely arrested by ICE agents, some reportedly rammed in their cars in incidents of extreme racial profiling. Parents are rightly terrified of sending their children to school, and even showing up at their jobs is risky.

I write on the eve of a general strike in Minnesota, “ICE Out of Minnesota,” that state’s first large, organized stoppage of business as usual since 1934 when troops mowed down 67 Teamsters striking for recognition of their union. I wish the besieged people of Minnesota well. They are taking the full brunt of the Trump administration’s vicious cruelty toward diverse America.  

Given ICE’s lack of legal accountability and contempt for due process, I wonder who will pay expenses for cars violently crashed for traffic stops and Mr. Thao’s broken-down door.  Citizens must stand and act together on each other’s behalf, because we can no longer expect from the present administration the most basic human decency.

Thomas R. Smith

River Falls