MANKATO — Jacob Bases describes himself as being “cautiously optimistic.”
“I think that anybody who has been organizing with the immigrant community or has been observing or confronting ICE in the streets have the mindset that they will believe it when they see it,” he said.
Bases reaction followed news of ICE’s planned departure from Minnesota.
The pullout was announced by federal border czar Tom Homan, who’d been overseeing Operation Metro Surge since the end of January. The operation, beginning in December, brought turmoil to streets across Minnesota that was compared to the reaction following the death of George Floyd. Since the beginning of the new year, it’s led to a few thousand arrests, but also to the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alexi Pretti. And while the news of ICE’s departure has been meet celebratorily, there are concerns about how permanent this move will be.
That’s how Jim Dimock feels. The Minnesota State University and member of the leadership team of Indivisible in St. Peter said his reaction to the news was complicated. It brought up a lot of questions, he said, including whether or not they’d leave Minnesota entirely and if ICE will return. In his view, the question is when ICE will return, not if.
“As soon as somebody calls Trump chicken for leaving Minnesota, if somebody says taco in front of him about leaving Minnesota, then he might throw somebody at us the very next day,” Dimock said. “If I had to speculate (on when they’ll be back), I’d say after the election. I think that what the polling has been indicating is that the way immigration is being handled … nobody likes what they’re seeing from ICE.”
To many, the past few months have revealed the harsh realities of how ICE operates and has led some to question whether or not the organization should exist at all.
“I’m not going to be celebrating until I see some substantive change in the state’s posture towards dealing with the ICE agents that are still here,” Bases said. “We don’t need to be doing this at all. I think we could abolish ICE, and that would be where my position is regardless if they are in Minnesota or somewhere else in the country. Just because they’re not here does not mean that I will be resting, and I hope that my community members are not either.”
Dimock said instead of ICE just leaving Minnesota, he wished the announcement had come with a promise to reorganize and reform how the organization acts. Without that, he said there’s still a lack of accountability for what’s happened over the last month.
Bases is one of the administrators of Stand Up! Mankato, a Facebook page dedicated to organizing community action and protests in response to the presence of ICE. With the news of ICE’s planned departure, he says it’s important for community organizations and concerned individuals to keep the pressure on and make sure their voices remain heard.
“Protest movements generally are about getting people activated and staying on task (and) keeping things front of mind. … I imagine there’s still going to be protests going on because this is still happening,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who are working in tandem right now …. I don’t really foresee the people who were doing that work before stopping.”
Dimock, for his part, feels sympathetic toward the difficult work of local officials responding to incidents such as this on a local level, while acknowledging work still needs to get done.
“I know that there were a lot of people who really wanted to see more and I don’t think they were wrong,” Dimock said. “I think that, on an individual level, so many people were doing so much that I really hate to even appear critical. That said, of course, they can do more.”