When federal agents pulled up in front of her little red car, got out of their car and headed toward Minneapolis resident Patty O’Keefe and her longtime friend Brandon Siguenza, O’Keefe immediately thought of Renee Nicole Goode, who had been shot to death by an agent just days before.
Like Judd and her wife, O’Keefe and Sigüenza are American citizens. On Sunday morning, they were responding to the alert of a federal agent using pepper spray on someone watching them, O’Keefe told the Sahan Journal.
They said the agents fired pepper spray into their car’s hatches, then smashed the windows and arrested the two on charges of obstructing the road. They were released eight hours later without charges. But their experience illustrates the chaos and cruelty of the federal immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, and offers a rare look inside the offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, where hundreds of U.S. citizens and immigrants have been processed after being arrested in the past few weeks.
The day before the arrests, three members of the US House of Representatives made a surprise visit to the Whipple Building to examine the conditions of the detainees. Minnesota Democrats Kelly Morrison, Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig were briefly allowed into the building and saw 20 people without beds. Then federal officials suddenly intervened to prevent them from getting elsewhere.
“Most of those eight hours were incredibly boring, interspersed with moments of real frightening terror when I saw the faces of the detained people,” Siguenza told Sahan Journal.
O’Keefe and Siguenza responded to an alert at 16th Avenue S and E. 42nd Street, near Bethel Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis, and followed federal agents halfway down the block when the agents stopped and quickly got out of their cars.
O’Keefe, 36, had followed federal agents in the past and attended training to prepare to confront them, but she told the Sahan Journal that this was the first time she had been arrested. For Siguenza, 32, Sunday’s incident was the first time he had seen and spoken with federal agents in person and been arrested. The two grew up in St. Louis Park and have known each other for years.
“I was glad they were driving me as an American citizen, rather than being out in the community scaring people and possibly kidnapping them,” he said.
O’Keefe said agents began taunting her once they were arrested and placed in separate unmarked SUVs. A federal agent took her photo without permission, calling her ugly and laughing. The same ICE agent who sprayed her car told her, “Stop holding us back, that’s why that lesbian bitch died,” referring to Judd.
O’Keefe said she made those comments to several other clients while she was in custody, hoping someone would hold him accountable.
“I wanted them to know that this is how they treat community members.”
But Siguenza’s experience, which he recounted in a detailed Facebook post, also spoke to the chaos in ICE’s operations. When they removed him, he said he asked someone to fasten his seat belt and was ignored. Agents refused to remove his handcuffs, even though he was losing circulation, and the agent in the passenger seat realized his driver’s license was on the back seat next to Siguenza. The client “tried to stealthily grab it without me seeing it.”
At ICE headquarters, he wrote on Facebook, agents couldn’t open doors, didn’t seem to know where they were going, couldn’t figure out how to use the building’s phones and complained about a lack of cell service. The agent who interviewed him complained that he had to fill out a new form listing his assets and then put the wrong date on it.
O’Keeffe and Siguenza were held in separate small cells for male and female American citizens. Both said that while in detention, their requests for water or to use the toilet were repeatedly ignored. Finally, when she threatened to urinate on the floor, an officer came, O’Keefe said.
Through the window, they saw several people tightly packed into a large holding cell, most of them Hispanic men, standing around them.
“We knew we would be released, and then we realized we had to leave,” Siguenza told Sahan Journal. “We can plan ahead, and these people don’t.”
He added that federal agents later brought in a Hispanic man and “torn off” his shirt after arresting him and pushing him into the car. He said that another man was brought to his cell with a large wound on his forehead after a number of officers confronted him and arrested him. He added that neither man received medical assistance.
“When we went to the bathroom, we were allowed to pass in front of people’s cells,” Siguenza told Sahan Journal. “I saw people with their heads in their hands, people with low energy and looking weak and tired. I heard screaming, I heard crying.”
“I clearly remember seeing a desperate woman,” he wrote in his Facebook post. “She was staring at the floor with her head in her hands, crying, desperate, while her friend or family member sat on the toilet seat watched by three men.”
The two said they were not allowed to speak to any of the detainees, and did not know how long they had been there, whether they had any contact with the outside world, or whether they had been given food or water.
Both O’Keefe and Siguenza were interrogated by a handful of federal agents for approximately 20 minutes during their eight-hour detention period. Federal agents asked questions about why they were involved in ICE surveillance and the names of groups or people organizing the protests. They also wanted to know if any group or person had potential plans for violence against federal agents.
O’Keefe and Siguenza said they declined to provide names and were not aware of any plans.
Siguenza said he eventually asked federal agents what specifically they were looking for, and they responded with an offer. In exchange for money or legal protection for undocumented people he knew, federal agents told him they wanted the names of protest organizers or other undocumented people.
“It was the deal they offered me,” he added. “I was stunned.” He declined their offer.
While she was detained, a few women were eventually brought in, O’Keefe said. Two of them are US citizens and former US Marines, and were also arrested after being pursued by federal agents. One woman saw her arm swollen, her ankle sprained, and sharp cuts from broken glass on her arms as a result of several agents pulling her from the car that day. In an adjacent cell, O’Keefe said she heard several women burst into tears at one point in a different holding cell.
O’Keefe’s and Sigüenza’s married associates were notified of their detention and were eventually released at around 6pm on Sunday.
His release was equally chaotic, Siguenza said in his Facebook post. He said he was prevented from using the phone to call his wife to pick him up, until the agent relented. After leaving, he was directed towards the protest area where tear gas was deployed five minutes later. Even though he was on the other side of the street, he was hit by a paintball. He helped one protester who was having an asthma attack find an inhaler.