You Talked about the scenes in Minnesota, and you talked about people blowing whistles, running around, warning businesses that ICE is coming. All we have are whistles. They have guns, right. What do the protests against ICE really look like on the ground? Just how dangerous are the interactions between protesters and ICE agents? Agents deployed chemical irritants. And at one point, an agent used a taser before taunting the crowd. And are there any forms of immigration enforcement that protesters and activists could accept? The death of Renee Good in Minneapolis has put a spotlight on the aggressive tactics used by ICE agents doing immigration enforcement in American cities. And also on the group’s training ordinary people to follow and film ICE agents when they’re making arrests. Witnesses captured video. Many cameras on the street that captured Renee Good’s fatal encounter. My guest today is doing just that kind of training. He’s the executive director of a Minneapolis nonprofit that’s on the front lines of the current wave of anti-ICE activism. Francisco Segovia, welcome to Interesting Times. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. So we’re going to talk about what it means to train people to protest. We’re going to talk about the goals, the larger goals of the anti-ice protests. But I just want to start by getting something immediate from you about the situation in Minneapolis. We’re taping this on Wednesday. It’s about a week out from when Renee Good was shot and killed. Can you just describe what you see as the current dynamic on the ground, both with ICE agents and with protesters. It is a scary moment for thousands of families in Minnesota. We see ICE agents all over the city driving their cars, stopping people, and we see people chasing them as well. People whistling, alerting others that ice is present. A lot of videos of ice, arresting people and people crying, windows, cars, windows being broken. So it is I will say, being in maybe in the middle of a Civil War where people are running yesterday, for instance, right outside my office. We saw a woman running. I think she was telling businesses to close doors because ice was around and we all from the office ran out, put our vest up to see what was happening, and right immediately came to the corner, stopped the vehicle and arrested two people. That’s what we are going through right now. How many people do you think are involved in the different kinds of protests. It depends. If there is a March, hundreds or thousands of people will show up. But when there is an ice action, what we have noticed that, for instance, yesterday, a lot of people get out of their houses, get into the street and become present and to begin chanting things like shame and I mean, and just a matter of minutes, you can see 30, 50, hundreds people coming to witness and chant and saying various things to ICE agents. So what is copal? Tell me, what is the organization do in normal times. Copal stands for communities organizing power and action for Latinos. We came about in 2018, and what we did or what we created the organization was to better the quality of lives of Latino families in Minnesota. But then right after we began, COVID came in. And so that it was then when we created the helpline that we have now. So supporting families across the state to keep healthy. But our main mission is to better our communities through a range of activities that we do. One of them is a Worker Center. We have a Worker Center where people come to look for jobs, careers, youth and adults. We also support people who have been victims of wage theft, which is pretty common in some industries. And we have offices as well that we have opened in two other cities, Rochester and Mankato. And what about immigration work. Again, prior to the current protests, obviously there was immigration enforcement in Minneapolis before the current wave. If somebody called your helpline. Having been taken into custody by ICE four years ago, would you have done something Yeah the most that we could have done is to refer that person to a lawyer. So we didn’t have obviously the level of an activity that we have now, but most of our work would have been someone was arrested. What do we do. O.K, let’s connect that family or that person with a lawyer. And the lawyer will take it from there. That’s how much we did. O.K give me just a little bit of your own biography. You’re from El Salvador originally. Tell me your story of coming to the United States. So my country was going through a Civil War. I am a teacher by trade. And so in 1990, there was a major, actually. 89 there was a major military offensive that and some priests were killed by the Army. And so the situation was unbearable. And I couldn’t be in El Salvador anymore because how many people teachers remain being a target of the government. So then with my ex-wife, who was expecting she was six months pregnant, we had to migrate. I looked for the Canadian embassy in El Salvador, look for political asylum. But there was no Canadian embassy. And then the only idea. Some relatives said, why don’t you come to the United States. I hesitated a little bit about coming to the United States, because understanding the role of the United States in El Salvador. But eventually, we didn’t have any other options, so we did. And many millions of people in many Salvadorians in the 80s, I traveled North without documents. So cross three borders and the last one, the United States without documents. How did you cross the US. The US border specifically at that point Yeah at that point in the 90s, Tijuana. And was they were building the wall. There was no fence. There was no fence at that moment. I do remember that basically we went to the border and from there, which is gross. And I mean, there were hundreds of people trying to cross and the agents were chasing many people. There were so many people trying to cross, and that’s what happened to us. But you just carefully walked straightforwardly across. So we went to Florida, where our family live, and eventually another friend who used to live in Minnesota, a skateboarder. You come to Minnesota. And that’s how we ended up in Minnesota with a two-month-old baby. And there were some nuns that offered us shelter at that moment. No, didn’t speak English. Didn’t have documents. Fearful of a lot of things. And Minnesota became home. And so what happened then in terms of your legal status. Eventually, I was able to get legal representation. And so I had to leave the country, go back to El Salvador to get the visa and entry back again. So it was in 1990 when I was already with a green card. How would you say, just as obviously someone who works on these issues, it’s now been 1990. Sorry, I’m going to do the math in my head. It’s been 35, 35, 35, 35 years. 35, 35 years. So there’s been probably infinite changes in the Immigrant Legal experience. But like, what are the biggest what are the biggest changes that you’ve observed between then and now. When I came, I heard, for instance, that the Reagan administration has given amnesty to a lot of people. And historically, there has been always a hostility toward immigrants. If you Mexicans already have been deported in and massive numbers before. But there are some. At least when I came, there was a different perspective. I think the wars in Central America, even the Republicans, had a different perspective. You had people like George Bush and others with different perspective of immigrants than what we have now. So what I see is that we see more waves of immigrants from Africa, for instance, from Latin America. And in Minnesota when I came in 1990, there hardly was anyone that spoke Spanish. So, so so over these many years, I have seen how the community have grown and the Latino business community has grown the here. So which is something good. And had you ever been involved in any kind of direct protests on immigration before the second Trump administration, before the last year. So immigration is something that I mean, human rights. Civil rights is something that always has been. I am a teacher, as I said before, and as a person who has grown in a country where government was so abusive, your level of consciousness is awakened. And also thinking that as people, we deserve a good life. Probably one of the most relevant moments has been, I think it was after the 9/11 where immigrants began seeing us, the enemies, and here in Minnesota, they removed the access to driver’s licenses. Personally wasn’t impacted because I already was a US citizen. I became citizen in 1998. But I saw a lot of people that were impacted. And also, I noticed that how. Immigrants became the scapegoat for a lot of other issues that were impacting that society. And that’s as a person who I am the first generation immigrant to feel like, no, we’re not. And so that has been for that many 20 years. Trying to restore the access to driver’s licenses that was the main political cause. O.K yeah. So what happened after the last election. What has it meant to turn your organization into a group that is active in helping people who want to protest Yeah in 2024, when we saw the results of the elections and we obviously knew the promises that were made by back then candidate Trump. Promises Promises to do mass deportations. We began the process of thinking. Can we create something that would allow us to teach people about their rights. And it’s not that we are teaching people to protest. Although protesting peacefully protesting is a right that we all have. But it was about how do we teach people their rights. How do we ask people who are not impacted by immigration issues to participate. So that was the core of this work that we do. And so eventually we created the immigrant defense network, understanding that we had to work on issues of narratives, what the dominant narratives think about immigrants. What is it that we need to do to keep creating a counter narrative that we are not the problem, but we are part of the solutions that society faces. How do we train our people so they utilize their rights. And so that was the core of what we had been doing. So protesting is not the vehicle that the way that we frame it is know your rights and use them to do what the Constitution allows you to do. And do you use the term constitutional observer. This is a yes. So what is a constitutional observer. So basically under the Constitution of the United States we all have rights. Now obviously the rights for people without documents are more limited. We still have rights to due process and representation and all those things. And so the constitutional observer became a tool for people who wanted to document the actions of eyes and those by documenting that not interfering with the obstructing an eyes action, but documenting was a tool that we have been using and relaying that information to either lawyers or anyone else who can follow up on behalf of the person that has been arrested. So let’s say, I call you up or I come to your offices and I say I’m concerned about ISIS presence in Minneapolis. I want to become a constitutional observer, or I want to be trained in how to be present at ice actions. Just give me a precis of what kind of training or instructions you would give. So first, I will thank you for expressing your interest, and then I will suggest that to show up to the next training that we have. And so it is a 90 minutes training where you go through various presentations. One is what is a constitutional observer. What is it that we do and don’t do the importance of documenting when I ask you to step back. Step back. Do not obstruct when I tell you to. To turn your camera off. You don’t have to obey that because it’s your right to video. Record what your government is doing. Do not. Do not point to the face of the person who is being arrested. Pay attention to details like the actions of eyes. Which division of the DHS are they representing. The process and the procedures in which they do their work. And so. And then once the raid has happened, submit that information to our network, that immigrant defense network. And so with all the documentation that you did. And then the next step is to support the family that was impacted. Sometimes there are children, sometimes there are other vulnerable people and support them. And that’s where the support system kicks in. And sometimes we help people with paying the rent, especially if the person who was arrested is the one who provides the food. And if there is a lawyer needed. Although the situation with lawyer is pretty difficult right now because many lawyers are busy, many lawyers would provide this for free. Are busy. Let’s go back to something you said at the very start. You talked about the scenes in Minnesota, and you talked about people blowing whistles, running around, Warning businesses that ice is coming. Is that part of the training. Is that something that you tell people to do or urge people to do. Actually, we don’t. We don’t. But we provide whistles and we provide vests, and we have a booklet that is the constitutional observer booklet. You can find that online on our website. And, and so we provide copies of those books. And so that’s part of the training. The weasel is part of that. For instance, if you as a citizen, observe the presence of ice in your neighborhood, you can call the helpline and say, I have witnessed this. That information come to us. We assess the fact and then we activate constitutional observers. So if you become a constitutional observer, we may say, Rose, that is I presence in your neighborhood. Will you show up to do your constitutional observer duty. And so that’s how we activate you. And so then but then the expectation, if you’re giving me a whistle, right. The expectation is I will be out. I will be documenting in some way with a camera, but I will also be doing things to alert the neighborhood that or that. That’s you don’t insist on it. But it’s clearly part of what people are doing. Because most people are using I mean, all what we have are whistles. They have guns, right. And they do have guns. And I want to talk about what that has meant in a minute. But just on so on. And at the end of one of these incidents or observation periods, someone comes to you. They come back to you and they deliver the documentation, they deliver. And in most cases now it’s going to be video Yes Are you guys responsible then for what I think is one of the most important features of the protest, which is clips getting edited, cut up and put on the internet. Are you guys doing that. Are you guys doing curation. Who to what is the transmission of the clips from documentation to. Social media, which is where they’ve been huge. We don’t do that. We work closely with ACLU. And if the family we had a family, for instance, whose dad was taken. And so we asked the lawyer of the family if they want access to those documents. We don’t make any changes. We don’t. Because what we want is to have factual information. And that’s what we give to either the lawyer or ACLU or any institution that may follow up on the case. And so we don’t go online and post anything. O.K let’s talk then about risks about the guns. Yes What do when you give when you give me when you give a hypothetical person a training. How much time do you spend telling them what not to do. I mean, the whole training is 90 minutes. For instance, yesterday I went to do a training that were about 300, mostly teachers on the training. And so the situation, I believe, is that many of us are driven by a lot of emotions when we see someone taking and sometimes abuse in front of us. And what do we do. So it is essential for us to keep ourselves together. So, so yesterday there was a gentleman who was. Was there. And then I came close to the car. I don’t know exactly what happened there, but ICE agents came out and arrested him. He was not affected because I’m assuming that was just a citizen tired of what he’s seeing. But he did something. He did something physical. He did something that would not advise people to do. Exactly yes. And that’s why it is key for us to say your job is to observe, not to obstruct. Keep distance from the agent and just documents. And again, we are not there to condemn what people does or doesn’t do. It’s just we’re there to observe. And that’s what we ask. The people who come to our training used to be an observer. Can we just talk for a minute about the specifics of Renee Good yes. I’m very confident that you think the shooting was unjustified and wrong. I’m curious what, as someone who trains activists, trains people for observation. At least. You see, when you watch the video and watch what she was doing and what her partner was doing, because to me, just watching it, it just seems like there’s a sense that neither of them had a clear sense of the gravity of the situation that they were in. I don’t think that based on what I’ve seen, she was trying to run over the ICE officer. I do think she was trying to drive away, peel away from law enforcement. And there’s this moment where her partner is telling her. Drive drive. And all I can think watching it is someone should have told her that this is a very serious situation. You’re dealing with armed officers of the state involved in some kind of ongoing operation, and you want to behave as if it is a dangerous situation. So I’m curious what your reaction is to what you saw in those videos Yeah, I think as a principal, as a principal, I don’t think no one should kill another person. And I believe that law enforcement has to maybe has to use it in extreme cases, but pull out your gun and just kill someone because. Because you are the law enforcement. I don’t think a civil society should tolerate that. And so that is a principle Yeah guns shouldn’t be used because you have a green uniform. So that’s the principle. But then when you look at the video, one thing is and reinforcing the idea that a video is so essential because it allows us to see a lot of things that otherwise we wouldn’t have seen. Now, let’s keep in mind that street is a one way street. And many of us were wondering, was she Renee being a observer. Was Renee some one from the community who was doing something else. So they are still so many unknowns to us. That is hard to say. Anything else. What I saw onto video is on one living. You can see the tires turning to the right. And the officer was, I don’t know if it was touch. I don’t see that. But obviously that officer pulled out the gun and shoot to a very short distance. And so that’s what we see and everyone sees it. We know that the administration immediately said that the officer was injured and taken to the hospital, which many other videos showed that he just basically was walking. And so again, right. I guess I’m just curious about as someone who trains protesters, right. We don’t know for certain exactly the details of what she was trying to do or what her partner was trying to do, but they did seem to be acting. They’re interacting with the officers, they’re filming them and so on. And I’m just wondering how when you talk to people in the aftermath of something like that, how focused are you on making sure that protesters behave with caution. Yes so in my training yesterday, as I was talking to people, I said, listen, if you have this vest that says immigrant defense network and somebody else showed up with the same vest, coordinate with that person. Keep an eye on that person. And if someone is in a place like behind an ICE car, make sure that the person is not behind a vehicle. Make sure to keep in our booklet we suggest to keep 8 feet away from the agent and keep yourself safe. So don’t so right. Using so using cars for protests is a bad idea Yeah. That’s that within I mean again the scenario was so unique, I think in a way that my assumption and the guidance is you walk into the place use your phone, your document and keep yourself safe. Those are some of the things. And in spite of that, we have several legal observers have been impacted by in following all those procedures. So we said this is a risky thing that you’re doing. So do it as your own, at your own risk and comfort. And, not everyone that is trained is willing to do it, so it’s fine to. Are there any other groups out there that are doing this kind of things that you’re worried about. I asked this because again, these things are uncertain. But one of the claims was that Renee Good had been involved with a group called Ice Watch, and if you go online, you can find images from their alleged training that are very different from your own that are of encouraging people potentially to intervene when they see arrests being made and so on. Like, do you have a sense that there’s a range of different activist strategies. Are those groups outliers. What do you think is going on. I believe that in the landscape you will find many, many different people doing many different things. And it is to the own discretion of the group that calls that or provides a training, and it’s up to the discretion of the people who decides to participate. I don’t have a number, I don’t know. I have seen a lot of different groups doing different things, and that’s what the landscape is. I want to ask more just about specific ice tactics, but just a last just to underline that last point. You don’t have any control over ice, but you are in a position of training in some kind of leadership. What do you do to make sure that protesters protest safely and don’t make bad decisions. Like, how much influence can you have, do you think. I think I don’t know how much influence I have, but that is hard to know. I know that we have a lot of emotions. And again, last night in my presentation to this group of people, I said, listen, I understand we have a lot of emotions, but we had to work on keeping our emotions together because our emotions are not going to be useful. And if we make a mistake and then the consequences can be greater. So we keep relying on the use of the legal means that we have. And so we encourage you to keep doing that as well. That’s how much we can say because at the end of the day, we don’t want another death to happen. Agreed All right. Let’s segue from there a little bit just into larger political and legal questions. I’m curious in terms of and I know you don’t. We’re not calling them protests. We’re calling them observation. But they clearly work. You’re doing clearly has the function of a kind of political protest against this kind of immigration enforcement. I want to try and separate, different things that ICE is doing. How much of the backlash the community fear all of this is based around the kind of paramilitary presentation of ice. The fact that they’re masked, the fact that they are dressed in what looks more like military gear than police gear. Like if ICE were doing the same general kinds of things, going into neighborhoods looking for people, but was presenting as normal police, would that create a different environment in Minneapolis, do you think. I believe that I mean, immigration has been detaining people for long. So this is not New. They go after people, they detain the person. But what we see now is a whole show. There is this show that we have the head of DHS coming to town with cameras and rifles and going after communities, after people. So it’s a whole show and the show is pretty risky because it’s dehumanizing to begin with. But also it doesn’t look to create a safer community. So enforcement has been happening all the time. But also think about, for instance, the President of the United States called the Somali community garbage. The Somali community in Minnesota is a pretty large. It’s a very large diaspora. So right after he said they are garbage, then you can see a bunch of agents coming into town to go to Somali businesses. So it seems that it’s mostly a political show to. But this is I mean, that was also I agree, it was a political move, but it was also, I think a specific reaction to stories about fraud related to Somali community. That was what made Minneapolis a target. And the president’s rhetoric is downstream of those issues for God. That is not only done by a segment of the Somali community. So that’s part of the game, right. Because the person, for instance, who was the mastermind of the $250 million was not a Somali person. And so this was the Feeding Our futures scandal. Exactly just so listeners are aware Yeah I mean, I guess what I’m trying to get at a little bit here is the country is having a debate about immigration enforcement, and I’m trying to figure out how much of the debate is about tactics and the show and the rifles, and how much of it is about just the legitimacy of enforcement itself. Because if you talk to a spokesman for the administration, an advocate for these things, they say, they would say, look, the primary goal of what we’re doing is deporting people who have criminal records. Liberal cities and liberal states have not cooperated with the federal government. And from their point of view, essentially they’re doing legitimate law enforcement work, and they’re being followed by people with whistles who are filming them, which you would not presumably do for any other. If you had federal government doing drug raids, even if you thought there were problems with drug laws, you wouldn’t urge people to go to follow them with whistles. I guess I’m asking a simple question. What kind of immigration enforcement is legitimate in your view. That’s a good question. That’s a good question. It’s a pretty tricky question. Let’s not be naive that the administration has an agenda and has an anti-immigrant agenda. And obviously it’s going to use all the institutions under his power to execute his agenda, to demonstrate to whoever he promised that was going to fulfill that promise. So now I said before, this is not the first time that I immigration enforcement arrest people. It has been happening all the time. What we are seeing right now is a heavily armed individuals, masked, as you said, going to places and stopping people based on their appearance. And no civil society should allow that. Assuming that because you are a Brown skin, you are undocumented or there are documented cases of going into a targeted store arresting two US citizens. I think it’s actually just to pause there because I think it’s a good case study in how in some of this stuff. You can find video online of the beginning of that arrest and those. It’s actually a case study in one of the guys. The US citizens is filming an ICE agent as they enter target. I’m not sure for exactly what purpose. And then they have a kind of altercation in the doorway that people have been arguing about online. Like who started the altercation. And then both of the men are arrested. They’re not arrested, as far as I can tell, for not being US citizens. They’re arrested for the altercation and then released. So it’s just an example of again, it’s a kind of Rorschach test of whether you think the person observing the agent went too far, or whether you think the agent went too far, or maybe they both went too far. But I just wanted to stipulate that I guess I’m interested in stabilization. And I say this as someone who I think has a pretty strong understanding of why voters became especially concerned about immigration under the Biden presidency, where you had an unprecedented level of what I would call illegal and you would call undocumented immigration into the United States. But then I to recoil from some of the ice behavior that I see in the videos, I think walking around with masks in an American city, the way they’re doing is un-American in some way. And I’m just trying to figure out if there’s a balance that can be struck, if there is a form, a form of enforcement, basically that is essentially livable for people in the immigrant community that also satisfies people who are concerned that the US has essentially opened its borders under the Biden presidency, and something had to be done about that. That’s a statement, not a question, but just tell me if you’re talking to someone and you must know people who are skeptical of illegal immigration, who don’t hate Latinos or Hispanics but thought the Biden policy was a failure. What do you say to people who voted for Donald Trump and want a secure border and expect some kind of enforcement. Number one, I will say to everyone, including your history, know the history of the United States, understand the role of the United States around the world, but particularly in Latin America, and how the US policy in Latin America has been play the role of being a destabilizing force that provokes migration. If the United States has a pretty good memory, they wouldn’t repeat the same thing that they do often times. But we don’t teach enough or good history. We don’t teach how. For instance, just a recent example, the situation in Venezuela. The Venezuelans, regardless of Maduro being a good or bad person. But Venezuela was going through some challenges. The United States participated in creating more chaos in Venezuela. Thousands of Venezuelans left home to different places, including the United States. Venezuelans came to the border. They were put in places to process them. My understanding is that the United States many other societies, first world countries, as they call they have this process where you can ask for political asylum. So some of them were of some or many were allowed to get into the United States. So the issues of Latin America, the Council on migration of Latin America has also a level of connection between US policy. I wouldn’t say US is responsible because we have local governments in our countries that are very responsible as well, but there is a link between those two factors. So all these things create instability and instability creates my migrations. And also the receiving economy needs people. And so we have a broken immigration system that needs people, that needs their labor but don’t want to see people. People wants to eat their tacos, but don’t want to see the ones who put them together as people, wants to see their houses clean or hotels clean, but don’t want to see the labor that produces that. So that’s I think, is something that the United States people needs to understand that you cannot have that labor without the person. This is last question. Then off that though, is there any limiting principle on that view. Is there any place where it’s reasonable for someone who disagrees with you politically to be able to say, here is just way for the US to limit immigration. I believe so, I believe so. And I don’t think no one speaks about open borders. I don’t think I mean, at least the people that I understand and myself wouldn’t say no. Well, no one wants to use the term open borders, I agree. But what I see from activists is a sense people will say I’m not for open borders, but it then is very hard for them to define a limit on any form of sympathetic migration. So is there just limit that you could set. I believe that for instance, let’s say I’m from Salvador. My country was going through political reasons, situations in that moment. So the idea that I can show up to an embassy and say, hey, I feel persecuted, what can I do. Can you help me. That is the vehicle that many opportunities can open up for situations like that. But let’s say there is a situation is economics would then be better for the United States to have a visa program that would allow workers to come safer and legally to the United States and work and produce and participate. That, I think, can be a one way. The other reality. And believe me, the Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible for not fixing this issue. For long, we have been fighting for an immigration reform, understanding that there are a lot of people here that are already absorbed by the economy. So the economy needs it. Why don’t we fix that issue and then fixing that issue if there are still workers needed, why don’t we have a visa program that allows companies to hire people, and they have obviously rights because people have to have human rights. So that can be a perspective, but it is not the political will to solve that. There’s also, though, the question of again, where the limits come in, because if you are an American company, there will always be some incentives to hire people from poorer countries because they will, for totally understandable reasons, work for lower wages. So I think there is still this question of from a kind of pro-immigrant perspective, how you set limits. Are there things do you think it’s legitimate to deport immigrants who commit crimes, which is again, the core justification that ice is offering. That’s not obviously the only thing they’re doing. But when ICE says we’re deporting this person who had a drunk driving infraction, do you think that’s a legitimate function of government. I believe that crime. Has I mean, there are very different levels of crimes. And I believe that people I mean, obviously that I don’t want to say, oh, no, don’t deport someone who has committed a crime. Let’s define crime within the theme of what is a criminal offense that deserves a deportation. So I wouldn’t defend a person. I mean, someone committed a murder or anything like that. Many of us wouldn’t be like, oh, yeah, let’s defend this person. No, that wouldn’t be the case. The question is the gravity of the crime. Exactly so because I mean, some people can I mean, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to drive and being drunk. That’s not a smart decision. Did this person get into an accident. No one got killed, for instance. And is it an accident. Would that be a reason to be deported. Those are some of the things that I think is key for a civil society to be able to put that in a better, in a different perspective Yeah well, that’s obviously something that we’re going to continue having a political debate about for some time to come. I just want to say, before I let you go, that I sincerely wish you good luck in keeping people on the streets of Minnesota safe. And Francisco Segovia, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you and your audience.
