[Below is an abridged transcript of the podcast interview with Minneapolis-based sociologist and state violence expert Nicole Bedera]
After Renee Goode was shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis, neighbors flooded into the subzero streets, witnessing, protecting, and refusing to look away. I reached out to local organizers to understand the lessons they could share with other cities bracing for an ICE invasion.
That outreach led me to today’s guest. We recorded just days before Alex Preti was shot and killed by ICE.
From Sexual Violence Research to ICE Watch
Nadine: Nicole Bedera is a sociologist who studies violence and how communities respond to state force. She’s also an author and co-founder of an anti-violence consulting group called Beyond Compliance. In recent weeks, she has been explaining and organizing around community responses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tactics in Minnesota, including the informal civil action known as ICE Watch.
Nadine: Thank you for making time. What you’re doing is so important, and I think what is happening in Minnesota is something the rest of the country and the world needs to understand. Help ground us.
Living Inside an ICE Occupation
Nadine: Most of us are observing this through mainstream media or social media feeds, as snippets and bits of information. What do you want people who are trying to understand what’s happening in Minnesota to know that they might miss if they’re simply watching from afar?
Nicole: I think that a lot of us here are also experiencing the ICE occupation in snippets. We are learning about what’s happening in our own neighborhoods from what has been recorded and shared via videos online. In the past two weeks, there have been a lot of things happening around me that I don’t necessarily see myself, but I recognize the background of the daycare that’s being targeted because it’s in my neighborhood.
Or I’ll see a statement on Instagram from a restaurant that had to close for the day because of ICE’s activity right in front of their business. A lot of the time, what you experience when you’re walking around here is actually an eerie quietness. You can tell a lot of people are missing, sheltering in place because it’s unsafe to be in public.
Then there are moments where you might see ICE, you might see someone being detained, but they’re acting so quickly that if you’re just driving around Minneapolis, you’re more likely to see the aftermath: your neighbors, a couple of blocks from your house, standing out in the street where it is very cold. And if someone is being detained on your block, people are still rushing outside in their bathrobes, not taking the time to grab a coat or gloves or a hat, because it’s so important and because there’s so little time to spare. It is flurries of activity, and really anybody can get caught in the crossfire.
Racial Profiling and Everyday Risk
Nicole: ICE is targeting specifically people who are non-white. They claim to be concerned about immigration, but they are clearly racially profiling, detaining people and asking questions about citizenship later. There are many examples of U.S. citizens who’ve been detained over the past month to six weeks that ICE has been in Minneapolis, but really anybody who is around ICE is someone who can get caught up in the violence.
ICE will remove people from moving vehicles to detain them, not bother to stop the vehicle or put it in park, and it can hit anybody who’s nearby. When they’re tear gassing businesses in retaliation, or tear gassing the general public to keep them away, that can affect anybody who just happens to be on the street at that time.
Who Is Really Meeting ICE?
Nadine: You raise a really good point, because I think for a lot of people, the assumption is that the people who are encountering ICE are protestors. But what we are seeing is a baby sent to the hospital because a car nearby was tear gassed, or a DoorDash driver seeking shelter in the home of the person they were delivering to. You find all these instances of people who weren’t seeking this encounter at all, and they’re having to decide in real time where they stand. Will I shelter this person or will I give them over?
Nicole: Right. The Trump administration is using the language of “protestor” to make it sound like there are huge, unruly protests in Minneapolis—people escalating violence, becoming hostile. That is not what protest looks like in Minneapolis right now.
When they say “protestor,” they want you to picture that. But in reality, it is people running out of their houses because their neighbor is being detained. It’s people who are sometimes holding up signs, sometimes very vocal in their opposition to the Trump administration, but it’s really diffuse. It’s happening in every neighborhood, anywhere between two to maybe fifty people at a time. There isn’t one specific site of protest; it’s ordinary people who are horrified by the violence they’re seeing and protective of people in our communities, including immigrants and people of color, who are showing up.
And ordinary people are the ones being caught in the crossfire, many of whom have never attended a protest in their lives.
Get Ready; Stay Ready
Nadine: I was in an Uber going to the airport, and the driver was an older white man wearing a bright red hat. I was on the phone with someone talking about getting psychologically ready in case they had to take action. The decision they’d made was: I will pull over and record, but I won’t confront.
I could see the driver listening. When we got to the destination, he said, “Just so you know, I would pull over too.” There are a lot of ordinary people trying to come to terms with what they will do—not in bravado, but in stark, real terms.
How do you talk to people in Minnesota who are coming to your gatherings or talking about this, who aren’t activists—just neighbors, scared and trying to figure out how to show up? What are some of the things you ask people to contend with?
When Violence Comes to Your Block
Nicole: The conversation you’re describing is almost exactly what it looks like. The reality is that there isn’t one place in Minneapolis where the violence is happening and everywhere else is safe. That’s hard for people to contend with, because our neighborhoods are racially and economically segregated.
A lot of people have lived their lives, especially if they’re white and have enough wealth, seeing public violence as an “over there” issue. If I stay in my neighborhood, I won’t see it, I won’t confront it, I don’t have to worry about it.
But in this moment, ICE really is everywhere. We’re seeing videos and reports of ICE in the suburbs, going door to door, asking people to identify neighbors who are people of color and help ICE find them to kidnap them into detention centers, again asking questions about citizenship or criminal records later.
Witnessing as a Strategy
Nicole: Ordinary people are having the conversation you’re describing. If you see something, your options are either to turn away—which is to be complicit and enable the violence—or to stop, take out your phone, and record. A lot of people without any formal training are making the second decision. They’re saying, “I can’t imagine how I would sleep at night if I knew that was going on and I didn’t at least witness it.”
That act of witnessing can really change the behavior of ICE agents—or anyone on the cusp of committing violence. If they know people are watching them, especially from a position of disapproval, they’re less likely to complete the mission they set out to do.
There are videos of ICE agents surrounded by relatively calm, peaceful neighbors. Some are yelling, some are saying, “We want you out of here,” expressing disapproval. Surrounded by that disapproval, they seem to think, “I don’t know if this is worth it. I don’t know if I want to continue with these actions.”
Sociologists know that many people who commit violent acts—and men in particular—do so because they’re looking for power and status. If they’re surrounded by people who say, “I will think less of you if you go through with this,” that can make them second-guess, hesitate, and choose nonviolence. It undermines the reason they’re being violent.
So all of these conversations that very ordinary people are having—“I’m going to stop my day to observe, to try to de-escalate”—can be more powerful than people think, especially if there’s a big enough group.
From George Floyd to ICE Raids
Nadine: In the aftermath of the killing of Renee Goode by an ICE agent, the crowd seemed to swell immediately. It looked like the people showing up changed—you were seeing people who clearly had never been to a protest before, people who didn’t have a political analysis that “of course this is what ICE would do.” They seemed genuinely shocked that their government would do this, and then double down. Is that an accurate assessment?
Nicole: I think there’s some truth to that. One of the reasons we’re seeing widespread resistance in Minneapolis is that this city organized very recently in response to Black Lives Matter in 2020.
A lot of the people who came out quickly after Renee Goode’s murder had already been thinking about what they would do when ICE arrived—how to protect their neighbors. Some efforts were disrupted by holiday travel; people left the state to visit family or friends. Renee Goode was killed shortly after people got back into town.
I also think it’s true that there are people who had never protested before, who thought, “I’m not going to join resistance efforts, but I support them.” For a lot of people, there was a switch that flipped: “I’m going to be a more active participant. I’m going to clear my schedule. I’m going to take time out of my day.”
It’s not that people in Minneapolis didn’t care until it was Renee Goode; it’s the opposite. As the violence from ICE escalated, Minneapolis met that challenge by escalating resistance.
Mutual Aid as Resistance
Nicole: A big part of why Minneapolis is reacting the way it is now is because so many people have been organizing for a long time, well before this moment. This is not all spontaneous. Many people have been thinking in advance about what the needs would be, what their role would be, and how they could help.
The needs go far beyond protesting. It’s mutual aid—helping people who can’t leave their homes get access to essential services, protecting schools and making sure children can get in and out safely. Some of what Minneapolis residents are doing in this moment are mundane things most of us do regularly—but now they are doing it not only for their own household, but for people who can’t leave theirs.
Targeting White Solidarity
Nicole: One way this shows up is where ICE is targeting. For example, last week ICE set off tear gas on Lake Street in a neighborhood called Uptown, one of the whiter and more affluent neighborhoods in South Minneapolis. If ICE were concerned about immigration, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to be in Uptown.
But if one of the things they want people to take home from the terror in Minneapolis is that white solidarity is dangerous—and that you can lose access to white privilege by standing in solidarity with people of color—then it makes perfect sense to be in Uptown, where protestors marched during the George Floyd protests.
As someone living here, the message I’m getting is that ICE is so focused on destruction and hostility that they aren’t protecting anyone. In many videos, some of the people at highest risk of violence or inhaling tear gas are ICE agents themselves.
When they act this way—where the focus on hurting people outweighs any sense of protecting a group—what I’m taking from this as a white woman in Minneapolis is that it’s important to double down on solidarity, because there is no other way out of this.
Lessons from the Pandemic
Nicole: It’s a lesson I learned during the pandemic in 2020. At one point, the people most likely to die from the pandemic were white Republicans. Instead of changing policies and practices to protect them, the calculation seemed to be that in the long run it would “even out”—that Black Americans would die and have higher rates of long COVID than white Americans. Those white Republicans who were dying in that moment were treated as collateral damage.
That’s the lesson I think we should take from this moment in Minneapolis too. They’re not interested in protecting anybody. Their focus is on destruction, and the rest of us are at risk if we don’t find a way to stop that destruction.
Preparing Your City Before ICE Arrives
Nadine: If I live in a blue city that didn’t go for Trump, what notes should I take? What checklist would you give me to begin preparing now for the eventual arrival of these shock troops?
Nicole: One thing I recommend is talking to people you know who already care about these issues. Start talking about how you can build solidarity with each other before ICE arrives.
A lot of those interactions can be really simple and even joyful: getting together on a regular basis and having dinner. During Trump’s first term, around the Kavanaugh hearings, some friends and I held a “stitch and bitch”—knitting or crocheting together, which has a long queer and feminist tradition as a site of resistance. We met every other week.
When there was a protest or action, it was much easier to go because we had a group chat. Someone would say, “Did you see this protest? Do you want to go?” When something was happening, we already had time reserved in our schedules. Instead of hanging out on Thursday night, we’d get together Saturday morning and help.
It’s less scary when you know people in your life will support you and go with you. That’s what I think people need to be doing now: getting together in small groups with people you know, trust, and have spent the past ten years texting, saying, “Can you believe what’s going on in the news?” Try to see those people more often. Deepen your bonds.
Building Welcoming, Durable Movements
Nicole: Whenever there’s a big influx of resistance or activism, many people want to start something new. Some things need to be new. But I also advise people to look for those in your community who have already gotten to work. How can you help them? And if you’re already doing the work, how can you be as welcoming as possible to people who are just waking up?
Solidarity really is the way through this. All the issues we’ve talked about under the Trump administration are interconnected. Go to whichever issue feels right for you and that you deeply care about, and while you’re in that space, think about how to connect with others.
This is a long way of saying: get around people who care. Focus your efforts and energy on people you think are most likely to come with you to protests, participate in mutual aid, or whatever it might be. That’s where you build the muscle you’ll need when ICE shows up in your city.
