Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

ICE Watchers Worry Democrats Are Trying to Co-Opt Their Movements For Votes

Minneapolis activists are accusing a local House candidate of “cosplaying” as a protester, blurring the line between solidarity and opportunism.

A seventeen-second video shows a dark-haired man rapping his pale knuckles gently below the tinted windows of a silver minivan. He stands back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his puffer coat, his boyish face twisted into a severe expression. The car drives off, and the camera pans to follow it down the suburban Minneapolis road. No words are spoken.

Splashed across the screen, a bright red and white caption reads, “ICE was circling a local elementary school. I knocked on their door to have a conversation, but they ran away instead.”  

The man is Matt Little, 41, a former mayor and state senator from nearby Lakeville seen as the front-runner to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional district. 

He’s staking much of his campaign on one of the most politically salient issues in the Twin Cities. In a series of videos pinned to his campaign Instagram under the name “GET ICE OUT,” Little documents himself at protests and in encounters with immigration enforcement agents. “When I’m elected to congress,” wrote Little in a January post, “we will hold ICE accountable.” 

Not everyone in his district is buying it.

“For me, it smells like, ‘I’m going to try to use this to bolster my chances in a time of crisis,’” Paul Peterson, a local ICE rapid responder, told The Intercept. “Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?”

Trump’s War on America

In his mostly suburban Minneapolis district, Little’s top political issue is at once highly motivating and highly fraught. As 3,000 federal agents descended on Minnesota for “Operation Metro Surge,” killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good and wounding or abducting scores more, Minnesotans who had not so much as lifted a protest sign a year ago joined ICE rapid response networks. Given the gravity of agents’ often unpredictable violence, many saw their work as putting their lives on the line. 

Democratic politicians are eager to turn engaged protesters and observers into door-knockers and voters. Nationwide examples point to a proof of concept: Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka’s approval ratings skyrocketed after he was arrested for trespassing while monitoring an immigration detention facility. Brad Lander, then a New York City mayoral candidate who is now running for Congress, saw his star rise after his arrest outside of a Manhattan immigration court. Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh finished second in a crowded primary after generating high-profile headlines for her federal indictment over a protest outside an ICE processing center near Chicago. (Baraka’s charges were dropped days after his arrest, and on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they planned to dismiss felony charges against Abughazaleh. Lander rejected a deal to drop his charges last year and said he’d prefer to go to trial.)

“That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.”

“That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.”

In the area around Minneapolis, the surge was “surreal,” Little told The Intercept in a joint interview with his wife, Coco. “It was kind of all-encompassing there for many months. We knew we had to be out there. That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.” 

The Intercept spoke with nearly a dozen people involved in ICE rapid response networks in and around the Minneapolis suburbs, including in leadership positions, several of whom felt that Little was “cosplaying” as an observer and overstating his activism for political clout. Others speculated that the outrage was manufactured to ruin his chances at the nomination.

There’s an inherent tension between enraged protesters who take matters into their own hands, outside of official political channels, and politicians who want to harness their rage into electoral energy. It raises the question of who gets to wear the mantle of resistance and blurs the line between when politicians are supportive — and when they’re extractive.

“There are many different legitimate ways for politicians to amplify our movements, like resistance to ICE,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard Law School, “but how they do it is of the utmost importance.” 

In the suburbs of Minneapolis, the question of “how” would eventually tear a small community in half.

Jessica Vinar carries with her the hallmarks of progressive Minnesota politics. She’s a teacher, wearing a school lanyard adorned with pride pins, political buttons, and a small 3D-printed whistle, the preferred ICE-alerting tool seen on residents’ keychains and in small bowls at cafe entrances across the city.

In a bustling coffee shop in the heart of Minneapolis’s South Side, Vinar recounted the events of February 17, when she joined a group watching the roads for blacked-out SUVs in the once-sleepy Minneapolis suburb of Savage. An online ICE-monitoring website had reported multiple federal agents armed with weapons and clad in tactical gear.

Vinar learned that one of her companions was congressional candidate Matt Little, and the others were journalists from the New York Times. Dashcam videos from the scene shared with The Intercept show Little standing with two other people next to a dark gray car that appears to be his, and one white SUV, which he identifies as ICE’s. “There’s two more down that way,” Vinar tells Little in the video. He responds: “All right, will you hang out here with us for a little bit?” 

There’s a six-minute gap in the dashcam video, when Vinar’s car is off and she’s standing outside. Vinar said she watched as the journalists photographed Little interacting with ICE agents and standing outside of a home. Then, “I hear him say something like, ‘I’m gonna see if they’ll chase me,’” Vinar recalled. “And they all pile into his vehicle, and they drive off.”

The day’s events received coverage in the New York Times and The Intercept, and Little confirmed this version of the events. But Vinar and Little........

© The Intercept