MANKATO — City leaders indicated support Monday for an ordinance that would force federal agents to unmask, clearly identify the specific agency they work for and wear body cameras that record their actions when conducting law enforcement operations within Mankato.
The City Council unanimously instructed the city attorney Monday night to draft the ordinance for consideration at an upcoming meeting. The council also unanimously directed city staff to prepare a court filing supporting the lawsuit filed by Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office seeking an end what the suit calls a “federal invasion” of the state by the Trump administration.
And staff was instructed to explore the possibility of city grants to nonprofit organizations that could get food and prescription drugs to residents fearful of leaving their homes.
The actions came two weeks after more than 300 people flooded a council meeting with passionate calls for immediate action in the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ramping up activity in south-central Minnesota, Macing protestors in Old Town and killing a 37-year-old mother of three on a Minneapolis street. The Mankato elected officials promised on Jan. 12 to explore a list of demands from the group and provide a progress report on Jan. 26. With a standing-room-only crowd once again packing the meeting, the council did quite a bit more that.
It’s far from certain the actions of a small city in south-central Minnesota will have any impact on the much larger conflict enveloping the United States, but the council chambers were filled with people wanting to try.
“We can go to the streets with signs. We can write letters. We can observe or report. We can join a lawsuit,” longtime Mankato resident Dick Liebendorfer told the council. “But we have to do something. … Silence is complicity, an unpatriotic failure to love our country. We all have to do something.”
The raw emotions from two weeks earlier — which some attributed to fear, others to anger — were less visible Monday night, replaced with a quieter but still determined atmosphere. The meeting was held two days after another Minneapolis resident was gunned down by an ICE agent in an action some attendees called “murder.”
Unlike the previous meeting, the council didn’t try to squeeze the ICE topic into an already busy agenda. Instead, city leaders rescheduled an Economic Development Authority meeting and a council workshop and postponed other agenda items to provide nearly two and a half hours of time for ICE-focused public testimony and discussion.
Some talked about personal experiences, including a 64-year-old Mankato woman who identified herself only as “Sheila.” She said she was detained on Jan. 15 after trying to observe an ICE operation, describing what it was like “when you’re standing up for your neighbors and their children and there’s armed thugs in masks surrounding you.”
A high school senior named Salma said the terror felt by some students during finals week at Mankato West had nothing to do with exams this time. Instead, many of her classmates were convinced they or family members might be the next targets, and high school staff were rumored to be stationed at school doors.
“Where does that leave schools? Where does that leave the vulnerable children in this town?” she said. “I’ve heard about ICE waiting for children at bus stops in St. Peter. … I want to know, what’s going to be done about that?”
City Attorney Pam Whitmore ran through the available options in an 11-page legal memo.
Her conclusions and another memorandum by city administrative staff covered virtually all of the written demands and requests submitted during the raucous meeting two weeks earlier. The council at the time had only promised to provide a timeline by Jan. 26 for when a full response could be compiled. So most of the roughly 120 attending the latest meeting seemed pleased by the city’s more aggressive response.
“This seems to be a complete 180 from the last City Council meeting,” said a woman who gave only the first name of Barbara, calling herself a lifelong resident who loves Mankato. “… We’ll get through this together — I hope.”
Whitmore’s document provided guidance on which demands from the protest group are legal and potentially feasible and which are either a violation of law or unrealistic to implement.
Most fundamentally, she emphasized, the city does not help ICE find undocumented immigrants, and the law does not require it to. But the city is also strictly limited in its ability to block federal agents from doing that work, according Whitmore. Interference could potentially result in everything from loss of federal funding for the city to criminal charges against any individuals accused of undermining ICE’s efforts.
And what specifically is and isn’t permitted has not been settled by the courts.
“What actions rise to the level of interference remain unclear,” she wrote. “Certainly, interfering in a physical way with legal process or law enforcement qualifies. That is true even under state law.”
Simply notifying the public about ICE activities could be deemed criminal interference if it’s not handled in very precise ways, according to Whitmore. Essentially, the city could post information about ICE activities in Mankato only if those updates are similar to what has typically been done for other police activity.
“The federal government may consider warning communities about impending ICE raids as harboring or shielding immigrants, which is prohibited under (federal statute).”
Those answers did not sit well with some in the audience.
“You just keep saying repeatedly all the ways you can’t help us,” a woman named Danielle said. “… Be bold. Be brave. Say more.”
A man who called himself “Benton” encouraged some law-breaking in the name of ethics and morality.
“’We were just following the law’ rhymes with ‘We were just following orders,’” he said.
But most in the crowd applauded when Council President Mike Laven made a motion to file the amicus brief in support of the lawsuit against the Trump administration, and the council quickly passed it.
The lawsuit — filed by the Twin Cities and state Attorney General Keith Ellison — asks a federal judge to, among other things, rule as unconstitutional the activities undertaken by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in recent weeks. If successful, the lawsuit would end “Operation Metro Surge,” remove the roughly 3,000 additional agents sent to the state and return the immigration force to the traditional level assigned to Minnesota.
Mankato’s “friend of the court” brief would explain why the city supports the lawsuit and identify how the operation has impacted Mankato. Whitmore cautioned that the plaintiffs and the judge will have a say in whether an amicus brief is accepted, and the ultimate success of the lawsuit remains uncertain.
Another Laven motion quickly followed, instructing staff to draft an ordinance barring mask-wearing by law enforcement agents and requiring body cameras. Council member Jessica Hatanpa suggested, and Laven agreed, that the ordinance should also mandate that agents identify the agency they work for. That, too, passed without dissent.
The council’s longest-serving member, Laven said it’s time to act, even if it means not moving as deliberately as usual: “Logic, reason and rationality have left our country right now.”
A final move suggested by Council member Kevin Mettler — providing direct city support for residents afraid to leave their homes to get groceries and prescription medicine — needs a bit more study, according to Whitmore and City Manager Susan Arntz. Whitmore warned that tapping money provided by the federal government, such as Community Development Block Grants, could cause a backlash from the Trump administration. Arntz said state-based Public Safety Aid might be an alternative source of funds for those efforts. A report on options is expected next month.