Police arrest protesters at airport as Minnesota gears up for anti-immigration enforcement protest

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Police arrested anti-immigration enforcement demonstrators at Minnesota’s largest airport Friday after they overstepped their permit, officials said, as a mass mobilization to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown began across Minnesota despite Arctic temperatures seizing the state.

A network of labor unions, progressive organizations and clergy had urged Minnesotans to stay away from work, school and even shops Friday to protest the immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“Roughly 100 clergy” were arrested, according to Trevor Cochlin of Faith in Minnesota, one of the groups organizing the protest at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. They were protesting the involvement of Delta Airlines in the deportation of immigrants.

Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Jeff Lea said the protesters were arrested outside the main terminal when they went beyond the stipulations of their permit for demonstrating and disrupted airline operations. Authorities have not said how many people were detained at the airport.

Bishop Dwayne Royster, leader of the progressive organization Faith in Action, arrived in Minnesota on Wednesday from Washington, D.C.

“We want ICE out of Minnesota,” he said. “We want them out of all the cities around the country where they’re exercising extreme overreach.”

Protesters have gathered daily in the Twin Cities since Jan. 7, when Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Federal law enforcement officers have repeatedly squared off with community members and activists who track their movements.

Organizers said Friday morning that more than 700 businesses statewide have closed in solidarity with the protest, from a bookstore in tiny Grand Marais near the Canadian border to the landmark Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis.

“We’re achieving something historic,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, one of the more than 100 participating groups.

DHS confirms the detention of a 2 year old and a 5 year old

A 2-year-old named Chloe was detained with her father as they drove home from a grocery store in South Minneapolis on Thursday, according to a GoFundMe page created by Minneapolis city council member Jason Chavez.

Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Border Patrol arrested Elvis Tipan Echeverria of Ecuador and that the toddler’s mother refused to take her so she was reunited with her father at a federal detention facility.

According to an emergency petition filed in federal court, a district judge granted an emergency injunction ordering Chloe’s release into the custody of her lawyer. The child, a citizen of Ecuador who was brought to Minneapolis as a newborn, has a pending asylum application and is not subject to a final order of removal.

DHS repeated its allegation Friday that the father of 5-year-old Liam Ramos abandoned him during his arrest by immigration officers in Columbia Heights on Tuesday, leading to the child being detained, too.

Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Liam was detained because his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, “fled from the scene.” The two are detained together at the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, which is intended to hold families. McLaughlin said officers tried to get Liam’s mother to take him, but she refused to accept custody.

The family’s attorney Marc Prokosch said he thinks the mother refused to open the door to the ICE officers because she was afraid she would be detained. Columbia Heights district superintendent Zena Stenvik said Liam was “used as bait.”

Prokosch found nothing in state records to suggest Liam’s father has a criminal history.

On Friday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino sought to shift the narrative away from Liam’s detention by attacking the news media for, in his view, insufficient coverage of children who have lost parents to violence by people in the country illegally. After briefly mentioning the 5-year-old during a news conference, he talked about a mother of five who was killed in August 2023.

BLM hails those arrested after St. Paul church protest

On Thursday, a prominent civil rights attorney and at least two other people were arrested for their involvement in an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Sunday service at a St. Paul church, where an ICE official serves as a pastor.

Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a national hub for local BLM chapters, on Friday expressed its “gratitude” for those activists.

“Grassroots organizers in the Twin Cities are putting their own bodies, freedom and livelihood on the line to secure community,” according to a statement from the organization. “Our courageous freedom fighters who put themselves on the line to protect humanity deserve our gratitude.”

Will the extraordinary cold discourage protesters?

The mass mobilization coincides with a blast of cold air hitting the Upper Midwest and ahead of a severe winter storm that is expected to affect millions.

Organizers hope Friday’s mobilization will be the largest coordinated protest action to date, with a march in downtown Minneapolis planned for Friday afternoon. Early Friday afternoon, the temperature in Minneapolis was minus 12 with a wind chill of minus 28 (minus 24 Celsius with a wind chill of minus 33 Celsius).

Havelin compared the presence of immigration officers in Minnesota to the winter weather warnings.

“Minnesotans understand that when we’re in a snow emergency … we all have to respond and it makes us do things differently,” she said. “And what’s happening with ICE in our community, in our state, means that we can’t respond as business as usual.”

Somali businesses especially have lost sales during the enforcement surge as workers and customers, fearing detention, stay at home.

Many schools were planning to close Friday, but cited different reasons. The University of Minnesota and the St. Paul public school district said there would be no in-person classes because of the extreme cold. Minneapolis Public Schools were scheduled to be closed “for a teacher record keeping day.”

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Associated Press journalists Jack Brook and Tiffany Stanley in Washington contributed.