"-On Friday, beneath blue skies and orange leaves, a group of protesters gathered outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Building and held a moment of silence for those who have been killed, detained, or disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chants of "Say his name!" followed, as the protesters waited for a press conference from Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security."
"The Bishop Henry Building, where deportation hearings take place, is located just minutes from the Minneapolis airport on Fort Snelling, which houses a military landmark of the same name. Dred Scott and his wife were enslaved at Fort Snelling before unsuccessfully suing for their freedom. Fort Snelling also served as a concentration camp for Dakota people following the US-Dakota War. At Friday's midday gathering outside Bishop Henry, Brooke Bartholomew, cochair of Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, connected those camps to ICE detention today."
"Just after 4:30 pm, Noem took to a podium inside Bishop Henry to reiterate DHS's commitment to "making America safe again" by ridding the country of "the worst of the worst," a phrase consistently applied to immigrants of color. In front of her, assault weapons were splayed out on a table, alongside piles of confiscated drugs. On either side was an oversize photograph of people her office had arrested. Their names weren't listed, but their nationalities were: Mexican, Salvadoran."
Protesters gathered outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, holding a moment of silence for people killed, detained, or disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chanting "Say his name!" The Bishop Henry Building sits minutes from Minneapolis airport on Fort Snelling, where Dred Scott and his wife were enslaved and where Dakota people were confined after the US-Dakota War. A protest speaker linked those historical camps to contemporary ICE detention and described a through line from genocidal settler-colonial governance to what she called modern fascism. Inside, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem framed enforcement as making America safe again and displayed seized weapons, drugs, and photos identifying arrested people by nationality.
Read at The Nation
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