The five civil liberties violations of the invasion of Minnesota

Pema Levy observes that no less than five constitutional amendments are being systematically violated by the Trump adminsration’s incursion into Minnesota. It starts at the beginning:

The First Amendment protects the rights to speak freely, to assemble, and to protest. This includes the right to observe federal government action and to protest against it. Crucially for Minnesota, this includes a right that CBP and ICE really don’t like: the right to record their actions. The First Amendment also protects against government retaliation for these acts—these rights would be meaningless if the government could chill them through retaliation. The government cannot target and punish you because of your views or other First Amendment-protected actions.

But under Trump, it’s impossible to count the ways in which all these rights have been violated every day in Minnesota, not to mention around the country. Obstructing law enforcement is not a protected act, but every video of an ICE officer arresting or pepper spraying an observer who is not obstructing them serves as documented evidence of unconstitutional retaliation for a protected act. Every time an officer physically assaults or detains someone who is simply observing or protesting, that’s a violation of the First Amendment. 

This isn’t just theoretical. In a case filed by a group of Twin Cities observers demanding relief from ICE’s tactics, federal Judge Kate Menendez found this month that ICE likely violated the First Amendment rights of two plaintiffs when agents arrested them in what appeared to be retaliation for watching them. Menendez likewise found that a third plaintiff likely suffered unconstitutional retaliation for protected activity when an ICE officer pepper sprayed him as he stood aside a road. Menendez’s opinion provides a glimpse of how ICE is using chemical agents to chill Minnesotans’ free speech: “In one instance, agents drove slowly past, opened the car door, and ‘sprayed [a bystander] directly’ as the bystander ‘held their arms out’ and ‘was standing on the edge of the road.’ As the bystander moved away from the car, ‘another agent on foot came behind them and sprayed them directly in the face again,’ before spraying ‘into the small crowd.’” Menendez issued an injunction against against arrests and pepper spraying for people peacefully observing, but, in a move that shows the limits of local judges’ ability to intervene, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals soon blocked the order.

Reports from the Twin Cities show that the reprisals can sometimes be petty, but no less unconstitutional. One woman who followed a CBP vehicle in her car was stopped by an officer who warned that he was using facial recognition software and knew who she was. Three days later, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the woman’s Global Entry and TSA PreCheck. The government cannot revoke a privilege as punishment for exercising First Amendment rights. A local toy store says DHS initiated an audit of employment and payroll records mere hours after the owner’s daughter criticized ICE to the media. (DHS denies that the investigation of a store with just five part-time employees is tied to her critical comments.)

More broadly, every resident of the Twin Cities has had their First Amendment rights violated. That’s because this entire operation appears to be reprisal against Democratic cities in a Democrat-led state for its collective choice not to vote for Donald Trump in the last three elections. “I won Minnesota three times and I didn’t get credit for it,” Trump said this month when asked about his federal occupation. “That’s a crooked state. California’s a crooked state. We have many crooked states.”

And there’s four more where that came from. If the United States had a functioning federal appellate court system this would be a serious problem for the administration.