Transcribed from the 10 March 2026 episode of the Minneapolis-based Outlaw Podcast (crossover with It Could Happen Here) and reproduced in a spirit of well-meaning autonomy. Links to support resources for defendants will appear in the text and listed at the bottom of this post.
We can thrive, and we can be in this place together, and we have every right to. Together we are America, Abya Yala.
Olive: Hi and welcome to the first crossover episode of It Could Happen Here and Outlaw, an anti-repression podcast where we demystify how the law is used to neutralize dissent in the US. I’m your host, Olive.
I live in Minneapolis, and if you’ve read a single headline over the last two months, you probably know that we are battling the largest immigration enforcement operation in US history. Since early December, Minnesota has been occupied by three thousand agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who have already abducted, imprisoned, and deported at least four thousand people.
In the face of this devastating federal occupation, people are showing up every single day to defend their migrant neighbors in unimaginably beautiful ways. On the other side of this effective resistance is expansive legal repression: all of the many ways the state uses the law and its enforcement mechanisms to crush dissent. More than four hundred people have been arrested for protesting ICE or following ICE vehicles, with thirty-five of them now facing federal charges under 18 USC §111: “assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer.”
It’s really important for those outside Minnesota to know how law enforcement and political prosecution are working here, because it might come to where you live too, and it’s different than other kinds of movement repression I’ve seen. Instead of the agencies that normally police citizen protesters, like local and state cops or the FBI, it’s primarily ICE and CBP who are carrying out arrests, and it’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) doing the investigations.
It’s happening this way because arrests are happening when people are responding to ICE activity, and those are the agencies who are present to make arrests. This impacts everything from how arrests go down and the conditions of incarceration to the kinds of charges people are catching. To understand what all this actually means, we need to hear from those experiencing it—the people who have been detained and prosecuted for protesting ICE.
On this episode, you’ll hear two interviews from Minneapolis rapid responders. First, you’ll hear from Clem and Rae about their experience being arrested out of their car and taken into ICE detention. Second, Lucy and Isavela will talk about catching charges and navigating cases during the surge. Stick around at the end for a special treat.
Just a heads up before we get into it: in this episode you’re going to hear people talk about their firsthand experiences with police violence, so take care of yourself.
* * *
Welcome to Outlaw. You’re both here to talk about legal repression of ICE-watch in Minneapolis over the past two months. Can you introduce yourselves and your connection to the Twin Cities?
Rae: I’m Rae, I use they/them pronouns, I’m from here. I grew up here and have lived most of my life in the Twin Cities. I now live in Powderhorn Park—that’s in south Minneapolis.
Olive: Site of high ICE activity—the highest, I believe.
Rae: I would think that is true. And quite close to the sites of George Floyd’s and Renée Good’s murders.
Clem: My name is Clem. I’ve lived in the Cities for five years now—I grew up in the southwest. I also live on the border of Powderhorn and the Central neighborhood, halfway between where Renée was shot and where George Floyd was killed.
Olive: You both were arrested while you were doing ICE watch in your car (this gets called “commuting” here). It can look different ways, but it often involves a hyperlocal Signal call with a dispatcher and commuters, to be able to notify and dispatch rapid responders when ICE is around. Commuters track ICE vehicles, often following them around—which ICE doesn’t like.
What kinds of tactics have you witnessed state agencies use to stop this kind of rapid response organizing?
Clem: They have escalated—it always depends on the agent: there are times when they will slow roll and act like a normal person, and there are times when they’ll run red lights, they’ll brake-check you, they’ll go in loops around the city to try and lose you. And then, depending on how aggro they are, they’ll try and pull you over and intimidate you, or they’ll try and lead you to a police station or have a sheriff pull you over. They threaten people with stalking charges and stuff like that.
We’ve had agents come up to our windows when we’re commuting, the two of us. We’ve followed agents all the way to Northeast, for a long time, probably an hour, and eventually downtown they had sheriffs pull up on us and pull us over, and tell us to stop following. Then we have the other thing that I’m sure you want to talk to us about.
Rae: A lot of what we’ve been seeing is recklessness: speeding through red lights, not signaling—a lot of traffic violations. And once you’re pulled over, having your windows smashed in and them using intimidation tactics, but not necessarily detaining people.
Clem: And these vehicles don’t necessarily look like a cop car. It’s pretty rare for them to turn on their lights and sirens when they’re going through intersections as “law enforcement,” it’s rare for someone to see them. There are times we’ve almost witnessed t-bones, with them recklessly running a red light.
Olive: There’s been a good number of car accidents also, involving their cars, right?
Rae: Yeah. Not even caused by community; they’ve just slipped on ice and ran into poles, and then teargassed observers who were heckling them because they don’t know how to drive in Minnesota.
Olive: Let’s turn to January 7, 2026, the same day Renée Good was killed by ICE. You were out commuting. Can you tell me how that day started for you?
Rae: I was me picking up Clem, and immediately there was a sus car that zoomed off. Clem checked the plates, and it was ICE. We think they were waiting outside the house.
Olive: To intimidate?
Rae: Unclear, but it certainly felt that way.
Had anything like that happened to you before, Clem? With them targeting the house?
Clem: They’ve used the tactic of when an observer is tailing them, they’ll run your license plate and then drive you back to your house that the car is registered to, as an intimidation tactic, and they’ll get out and take pictures of the house.
At that point, that hadn’t happened yet to me and my roommates. But we had spent a lot of time at Whipple observing the cars going in and out of the gates, and trying to record all that data. When you’re there, there are intimidation vehicles that will just drive up right next to your driver’s side window and film you and take pictures. I was certainly in some sort of database at that point.
Olive: What’s Whipple?
Clem: Whipple is the federal building that is near Fort Snelling state park, by the airport. That’s where ICE has been operating out of; it’s the command headquarters for the entire upper Midwest—Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa.
Olive: Okay, so the day starts off, there’s an ICE agent outside your house, and you get in the car to start commuting. Tell me about what happens next.
Rae: The abandoned car.
Clem: Yeah, the first thing we responded to was near Little Earth, which is an urban reservation. There was a call of ICE at a park near there, and we showed up and there was just an abandoned car. When I went and talked to someone on the street standing next to it, they explained the situation: ICE rolled up on them and they ran on foot and left the car. They had to push the car out of the road and ended up locking it, because of the person’s documents.
So I was staying with the car and calling tow truck companies that have offered free tows for people who have gotten abducted. We were there for probably thirty minutes. I think as that was happening is when Renée was shot, so neither of us were on the call or looking at chats. We went home for a break, and that’s when we heard the news of that.
Rae: I live really close by to there. There was a lot of swirling information, people saying someone was shot. At first people were like, Come down to this area, but shortly after people were like, It’s totally cordoned off, don’t come down, there’s enough observers and we need people to be out there doing this still, because we can’t invest all our resources into this one thing that’s happening.
Within the hour we got a message saying there were vehicles staged in a parking lot down the street, so we drove down there. There were already observers, people in cars and on foot, around thirty people. It was a standoff of around five vehicles, and people blowing whistles and honking horns. Clem and I were there in the car during that.
Olive: So you see the message that Renée was killed for doing exactly what you were doing—driving around your neighborhood to look out for your neighbors—and you get back in the car and keep going.
Rae: Yeah, that didn’t stop us. If anything, it made us feel like we need to be out there. They’re not stopping, we’re not going to stop either.
Olive: You arrive at the next scene. Where are you and what is ICE doing there?
Clem: It’s the Dollar Tree parking lot, on Lake Street in the Uptown area. There are five vehicles, presumably staging—there aren’t any agents out of cars, just a bunch of cars sitting there that we knew were ICE.
Olive: And a bunch of observers were responding.
Rae: We were in the parking lot. They could still have driven around us; there was room on either side of our car. There were several options for them to get around us. At that point some agents got out and were like, Move your vehicle, move your vehicle!
One of the cars, this huge SUV, rammed the back of my car to get it out of the way.
Olive: While you were in it?
Rae: Yeah. At that point, Clem turned to me and was like, They’re going to smash out the windows.
I was like, Yep.
We were both prepared for what was going to happen (although once they smashed the back of the car, I was thinking, Okay, they got us out of the way, that might be it). They all got out of their vehicles. First they maced the windows—there’s a bright orange dye in it—they maced the passenger and driver windows and the windshield. Then they smashed both the passenger and driver windows and sprayed bear mace through Clem’s side, into both our faces.
Right before they smashed the windows, we grabbed each other’s hands and held hands as it was happening around us. Then I saw that bright orange mace coming from the passenger window; they sprayed it directly in Clem’s face and then reached over and sprayed me. They were able to open up the doors with the windows smashed, and they dragged us out, and he punched me in the jaw (in the lip really) while they cuffed me.
They used pain compliance—it’s torture: they pulled my hand up against my arm with the cuffs on, and then pulled me up against the vehicle, where I was detained separately from Clem. Clem, you can talk about what happened to you at that same time.
Clem: I could feel the door open, and they tried to yank me out and undo my seat belt—I was holding onto the seat belt. Eventually they got that undone, and I was trying to hold on to you as hard as I could until they were able to break that grasp.
Then two agents pulled me out and slammed me on the floor, got on top of me, and put me in cuffs. I still have my eyes closed so the mace doesn’t get in them. From there I fell a few times, and kept being dead weight. They kept trying to take me to cars but didn’t know which car they were supposed to go to, or they would go to a car and not have the keys for it. So I kept getting walked in circles, not seeing what was going on, and hearing the confusion of all of them.
Eventually I got put in the back of a car, and you got put in a separate car.
Rae: On the way to Whipple, I was mostly focused on breathing through the pain. What was so disgusting to me—it was so fresh in our minds that Renée had just been killed, and I’m hearing them singing on the radio (there was one agent singing “I Got a Pocket Full of Sunshine” or something like that), and a lot of laughter. I remember the phrase fucking Somalis, and later one of them complaining about all these fucking whistles.
I remember thinking, Fuck yeah, they’re working.
It wasn’t too long before we arrived in this giant garage where they process people. There’s mostly agents’ vehicles, and a line of people who have been detained.
Olive: I just want to point a couple things out in what you both have said that’s a little different than we normally see in protest-related legal repression.
One is detention of people who are citizen protesters, or people arrested for protest activity, by immigration enforcement or federal agents in general—that’s usually done by state or local law enforcement, cops or sheriffs, and people are taken to the local jail for processing. But here you’re being taken to Whipple, which is the ICE detention center where all non-citizens detained by ICE for immigration reasons are also taken and processed.
You’re also being brought there, so you’re getting a window into ICE operations—you’re taken into a place people don’t normally have access to. It’s a pretty high-security building that they don’t like people from the outside, inside. But there you are in the garage.
Rae: We’re on our knees. At one point I commented on how young the people looked who were holding Clem, and they pulled us apart. They brought me to the opposite side of the garage; they’re still using pain compliance, and are filming me the whole time. There were a bunch of agents filming me, and three agents that were, like, on me.
I said to them, Make it hurt daddy! I was being mouthy. This one guy in particular seemed really freaked out by that, and he pushed me to the ground, with my face to the floor, and he said, You like the dirt, queer? My reaction for a lot of the time this was happening was laughing. I was laughing and laughing. I said, Yeah, I fucking love the dirt! I love the dirt more than anything!
I don’t know how long I was like that. But they kept me on the ground, and eventually brought us in to bring us to the cells.
Clem: We walked past a central command hub with all these people working in this so-called “Metro Surge” operation. On the left were cells of people who had been detained. We passed at least five cells, from what we could see, and they were filled wall-to-wall with Black and Brown people. They had like one toilet in there, for probably two or three hundred people.
Rae: The desolation sticks with me.
They led me to a separate cell than Clem and another person we were detained with. These were seemingly the remaining cells available in the whole area; it was just full up, completely at capacity with the number of people they’d abducted.
Clem and I were in there for hours with mace in our eyes and no relief from that. I remember laying on the ground and an agent coming in and being an asshole. He was like, We’ve got gourmet potato and chicken and brussels sprouts and he hands me this little plastic container with white paste, just nasty.
Clem: A microwave meal of goop.
Rae: Disgusting goop. We were in there for a while before being taken back. I think they took me back first, and I refused to say anything without a lawyer, obviously. They hand me a piece of paper after reading me my rights, and said, We need you to read these back to us to confirm that you speak and understand English.
I was like, Weird, but okay. So I start to read it. It’s all pretty normal, and then I get to a paragraph that says something to the effect of, I waive my rights. I was being tricked into waiving my rights—I thought I was going crazy. I did not understand at the time, and I stopped halfway through the sentence. I read it over and over trying to make sense of it. I said to them, I don’t understand what I’m being asked to read, I’m not going to keep reading this.
They were like, That’s okay, we have what we need. And they took it back.
I got a phone call, Clem did not.
Clem: I got taken into the interrogation room. It was two Homeland Security detectives or whatever. They opened it with saying, I know this can be a lot right now, so feel free to let it loose in this room. I looked at them like, What are you talking about?
It was jarring to go from dealing with a month of seeing only these people in masks, as this horrible monstrosity of a fascist, and then being inside of there and seeing that command center of all those people working on computers making this whole thing work, and then all these detectives who think they’re detached from it, think they’re not a part of what’s going down on the streets right now just because they’re working inside the building.
Same thing happened: they tried to ask me questions, and I said I wouldn’t say anything without a lawyer present, and I asked for a phone call. They did the same thing with the rights, where they were going to read them to me and the other detective said, Actually we don’t need to do that. Then they left for a bit and I was just left in the room with the assistant detective, and he asked me some How’s your day going question. I just dead-stared him for twenty minutes, which felt pretty good because he was very uncomfortable and kept avoiding eye contact. It’s the small amount of power you can have when you’re in a cage.
I got taken back to my room, and tried the intercom and asked if I could get a phone call. They said I would get a phone call after booking. I was pretty worried about what was going to happen. Eventually they said they had a lawyer present. These two real cool lawyers were there who we know and are friends with. They explained that we’d be out pretty shortly.
Rae: Then we were able to get out and go home. But I feel really haunted by the fact that we were in there for maybe a handful of hours and of course there are all these people who are stuck there and aren’t able to go home the way we did.
Then I took the most painful shower of my life. I did the cold water thing. My lawyer friend had warned me about it—Try not to get it in your bits—but I totally did. It was excruciating.
Olive: One of the things we talk about on the show is how to counteract the chilling effect of repression and the trauma of a day like this, that having violent interactions with law enforcement can cause. I really appreciate you both sharing and going back into this experience that happened almost exactly a month ago from when we’re recording today.
I’m curious if you have thoughts on what you’ve learned moving through this experience, lessons you’ve learned that you’d want others to know about how to move through something like this and keep getting out there, as I know you both have.
Clem: I don’t really know how to move through it. It still lives in my body; that fear has definitely changed me.
But it’s been nice to have friends and community, and there’s been a lot of free body work—I tried acupuncture for the first time, which was really nice. Just having people who have your back and knowing you’re not alone in this—since we were arrested there’s been hundreds of people in the same exact boat as us. It feels good to know we’re not an outlier here.
* * *
Olive: Like most anti-ICE protesters arrested here during the surge, Clem and Rae were released pending charges. But the legal landscape is rapidly shifting. At least thirty out of the thirty-five federal cases from the past two months were charged retroactively in the past few weeks.
To give you a sense of how these cases might unfold and what it’s like to face these charges, you’ll hear from two Minneapolis-based anti-ICE protesters facing criminal charges for responding to a raid at Taqueria Las Cuatro Milpas that took place back on June 3, 2025. Isavela López faces federal charges, and Lucy faces state charges, from that day. Their June cases are still open today, and Lucy also caught federal charges after responding to an ICE raid that took place during Operation Metro Surge.
Welcome Isavela and Lucy. We’re going to talk today about the legal repression you both are experiencing for protesting ICE in Minneapolis. But before we even start that conversation, can you both introduce yourselves, your connection to the Twin Cities, and share a little bit about who you are outside of the topic of today’s conversation?
Isavela: Hi, my name is Isavela. I’m a community organizer, helper, and poet. I’ve been writing and doing performances here in the Twin Cities since 2020 with the whole George Floyd thing. I’ve also done other organizing when it comes to the climate justice movement and Indigenous rights—I have Zapotec Bën Za raices, and that’s important for me.
I was born in Chicago, raised here in the Twin Cities.
Lucy: Hi. Lucy. I’ve been in Minneapolis since the early 2010s, but I’ve lived in Minnesota forever—I’ve been in and out. I feed people, I’m a loud bitch, I make noises, I make songs, I make good trouble.
Olive: You were both arrested and charged after a multi-agency raid that took place back on June 3, 2025, at Las Cuatro Milpas, a Mexican taqueria in south Minneapolis. Officials still say it was not an ICE raid and that they were executing a warrant for drug trafficking, but ICE agents were confirmed on site alongside ten other federal agencies and local cops, and the owner of the taqueria ended up in ICE detention.
The raid and response went pretty viral. The operation was heavily militarized, and hundreds of neighbors turned out in protest. Isa, you were charged with three counts of “obstructing, impeding, or assaulting a federal officer,” and a fourth count of “impeding a federal investigation.” Lucy, you’re facing state-level charges from that day and federal assault charges.
I’d love to hear from you both a little bit about your experiences getting arrested and catching charges. What do you want people to know about what that experience was like?
Isavela: I wasn’t arrested until days later—I was arrested on June 9. It felt very planned, like a puppet show. It was the day after two [house reps] here in Minnesota were shot. Georgia Fort, who is a close community friend of mine (we’re both from the East Side), called me to do an interview. I was unsure about it, but she assured me that she just wanted to hear my story. I didn’t really think much of it, so I went and did the interview. I was still shaken up about what happened that day.
Around three or four I was coming out, and by that time there’s not a lot going on in downtown Saint Paul—it’s kind of a dead city by that time. As I was coming out, that’s when four officers came from behind me and arrested me, and pushed me to the ground. My shoulder hit the concrete and I started bleeding. They took me to a black SUV. They waited there for a second—just then Georgia came out and saw everything that was happening and started recording, and from there let the community know about what happened.
That’s when I started realizing what this administration is trying to do. It felt very orchestrated. It felt very calculated, especially after there was a lot of news about my arrest, and adding my face and my case to this whole drug raid. I know other people were arrested, but my arrest felt very intentional and calculated, and kind of racist.
This is an abuse of power, and this isn’t okay. I don’t care who you are or how you see things; I’m not even five-three, and these huge men felt the need to tackle me. This is all “allegedly,” but I want people to understand that they can make their own calls and own judgment, and how this “justice” system isn’t that at all—it’s repression.
Olive: Am I also remembering correctly that I had seen you post a video on Instagram about that raid? In my impression it also felt like maybe retaliation for you speaking out.
Isavela: Yeah, definitely.
Olive: Your case feels important for people to know about. Especially since in the past two weeks in Minneapolis, twenty people have been charged with assault on a federal officer and are facing federal charges now. There was a handful before that, but we’ve just seen a massive spike of people who were charged after being released pending charges. Your case feels like a test case that’s being looked to for how they’re going to handle this and what’s going to happen. I appreciate you talking about it.
I’d love to turn to you, Lucy, and hear about what you’re facing and what your experience has been like.
Lucy: They charged me with assault, and then downgraded it to lesser-degree assault—because it was ridiculous. They had like six cops tackle me, and my shoulder has never been the same. That was in June. Then in another instance, I also have charges for “assaulting a federal officer.”
It seems like they just charge everyone. All these legal observers are also getting doxxed by the AG. They’re trying to raise the stakes of resisting the administration as much as possible, because it’s a popular movement. It’s generally popular to hate ICE, but they’re trying to make it as expensive and as irrevocably life-destroying for US citizens as it is for people who aren’t US citizens.
Olive: It’s important to highlight the ways these targeted political prosecutions are being used to raise the stakes of showing up to defend your community from abduction, from death, from surveillance and intimidation and fascist violence.
Isavela: Do you know who else was arrested that day?
Lucy: There were two people arrested on June 3. They were both arrested in the same interaction with a police officer. A young woman was standing in front of a police vehicle, and an officer approached her super rapidly, and then someone approached that officer. From the video, it seems like that person ripped off a thin-blue-line lapel velcro from the officer, and then that officer proceeded to assault that person—then that person was accused of assault.
And then my federal charges: the government has motioned to dismiss them, but we are motioning to dismiss them with prejudice. During that interaction—I can’t really speak to what happened between me and federal officers. But a pregnant woman was assaulted by federal officers; people were tazed, people were hit with batons. And that woman had an ICE agent on top of her for like a half hour. People said that she miscarried.
She was pregnant; everyone was saying she was pregnant. She was dragged by one arm between the legs of the ICE officer. They said that she spray-painted a car and that was the reason for the arrest. They also said there was no proof of that, either.
Olive: That incident was one of the first immigration operations in the surge, or one of the earlier ones that went pretty viral. There was a lot of coverage; it was a huge raid, big community turnout. It was also like ICE was on the wrong block: they were in a Somali neighborhood and people were mad and showing up, and not letting them get away with it. A lot of the response, in my understanding, was to ICE having their knee on this pregnant person’s back for such a long period of time.
From what I’ve seen in the complaint for that day, for your case—which is a public record; I’m not asking you to speak to whether or not it’s true or anything about it—part of what you’re being charged with is de-arresting the pregnant person while they were dragging her. As a result you got assaulting-a-federal-officer charges. Just some context for the case as we’re following it. Those are the public allegations that the government has made.
It was one of the earliest federal cases during the surge, and one of the earlier assault cases of this kind. Interesting to hear that it looks like it’s headed for a dismissal—exciting for you that that is the case.
Isavela, there has been community mobilization to support you starting back in June. Could you speak to what’s been effective about that, and what you’ve learned fighting these charges related to this political prosecution?
Isavela: In the grand scheme of things, there’s been so much repression when it comes to the Brown community. Mercado Central, which is a really dope place on Lake Street right across from Las Cuatro Milpas, is raising funds so they don’t close. The Star Tribune reported that Latino businesses have lost $46 million this past month. What I’m trying to say with that is that my community is very much on scarcity, so when my community showed up for me that day, it showed for me how resilient we are and how much it’s scary but we can’t keep having other people in our communities disappear—people that we can’t afford.
For my case, because I’m a US citizen, I feel very responsible and want to be present in community, because that’s what I can do. I can’t really do a lot because of the fear that if I come into certain spaces, am I being watched? They’ve been showing hints at having an eye on me throughout this.
Being present with community and being there for organizing and know-your-rights and things like that has helped a lot of people in my community to be a lot more careful and to know what we’re going up against, and it’s a way of survival to keep going and to have our rights grow during these times. We’ve had observer trainings and a lot of low-key smaller trainings we’re not trying to tell too many people about (for the same reason).
For my case in particular, it’s been really hard because a lot of people are scared and intimidated to speak out and advocate for what’s been going on in my case. They want us to keep having this scarcity mentality and being afraid of what’s going to happen, what’s to come. For me, it’s been really important to be with community, to be with people, and to share my story in the small ways that I can.
We’ve been doing phone banking campaigns and writing letters. They have a radar on me for sure, and know where I’m at, where I stand. But I also know that I have a really big community behind me, and I know it’s not just about me, it’s bigger, it’s about what could happen to somebody else in our community. It’s been hard, but it’s important for us to know that we can keep pushing and be together in community despite all this.
It has been kind of hard, especially with the surge—it got even more messy with a lot of people trying their best to keep their head above water and helping the families that they can. A lot of families haven’t been able to leave their house.
Olive: When you say we’ve been hosting trainings, are you referring to your support committee? You’ve been doing events that are jointly raising awareness about your case and also helping get community trained up?
Isavela: It’s one and the same. The people who I’m working with do a lot of grassroots things in the community. Me just showing up to those trainings and talking about my case helps a lot. We’ve done a couple events here and there; we talk about immigration. We did one in July. We still have set to do more things with community, to know that we’re all here in it.
But it has been very nerve-wracking. It’s been very hard because I don’t know who’s watching, I don’t know who’s in the room, I don’t know who I can trust. But I know I’m not alone, that’s the best part about it.
Olive: There’s so much intentional isolation of people facing charges. That’s so much of how repression works: to isolate people, to make them scared to go be in community and do important work. So thanks for continuing to show up. It’s cool to hear you speak to both navigating the fear and continuing to show up where you can.
I’d love to hear you both speak a little bit more on what it’s been like navigating these cases amid the last couple months of the surge here in the Twin Cities. It’s a pretty unique moment to also have these high-stakes cases going on.
Lucy, if you want to start?
Lucy: It just sucks. There’s lots of ways of doing things, but I don’t want to be afraid that I need to call my pretrial release person every time a cop talks to me. Not that I interact with cops all the time, but I’m in Minneapolis. I keep talking to the probation guy about this: if a cop drives by me, is that a police interaction? If I’m on the street and the fucking feds are in the street in front of my house, is that a police interaction?
It makes you so stressed out. Renée Good was shot in front of me. Normally I’m not the kind of person who runs away from a situation like that. I would go towards where that happened to make sure people are okay or see if there’s anything I can do. And in that situation, I was like, What if I’m going to go to jail for trying to do something? It’s contrary to my instincts.
If I see someone getting brutalized in the street—they say you can go to a protest, but that’s just what repression is. They come into your house, and they look in every single room. They say you need to go and do drug tests and that you can’t have a firearm. They wanted me to have 24/7 monitoring. I don’t know if you had that kind of shit, but this shit’s insane, and it’s over fucking nothing.
I see people on the internet being like, But all those charges get dropped or whatever—then fuck you. You never dealt with this. It doesn’t matter if the charges get dropped. I’m going to try to apply to fucking Target to be a cashier and they’re going to be like, Actually, you have an active case. I tried to work at a theater, and they were like, Can you come explain what happened here?
It doesn’t matter if you end up going to jail. Yeah, going to jail sucks. But repression is the thing in and of itself, the cruelty is the point.
Olive: I want to hear from you too, Isavela—I just want to say for people listening that what Lucy is talking about are release conditions. When a case is initiated against you, the government could argue that you should be held in detention while the case is ongoing, or they could ask for conditions of release. Those are conditions that are enforced by a pretrial probation officer-like person, who might come visit your house, or who you have to call when you have cop interactions, or who facilitates drug testing, depending on what your conditions are.
Isavela: Lucy said it best: you’re questioning your instincts. You’re questioning what you can do. I’ve tried my best to be as creative as I can with it, but it’s so hard. I’m finding myself having to mobilize and show up in community in a different way, so I’ve pivoted to art: screen printing, and showing up in community to show face, to be face, to be real, be with community.
It’s been hard because you never really know what you can and cannot say. The other day I had a really good friend who had made a graphic for me explaining my case and things like that—I can’t post too much about my case—and people started tagging me on it. I tried re-sharing it. I only re-shared one of the tags, and then I tried re-sharing another tag that explained what to do to help with my case, and Instagram didn’t let me post it.
This is minor shit—this isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s also like, yeah, they want to make sure you’re not seen or heard. I’m pretty fortunate to have a good job where they’re paying me to do community work and have known me. I feel really lucky. At the same time it’s also been really hard because some people are more reluctant to have me in the room when it comes to organizing or doing certain things, because of where my case stands. Some people have walked away from being my friend, because they were also there that day on June 3 and afraid of what would happen to them.
On the other side of that, there have also been friends who are like, I’m going to be here, I’m down, don’t you worry. Which has been great.
Lucy: Don’t ditch your friends. I had my roommate being like, I’ve got to leave, I’m going to dip. And people being weird to you—it’s like, I don’t know, maybe you should be better about your security in general. Sooner or later we’re all going to have charges. I don’t know, maybe it’s not going to be that bad, but we’re all domestic terrorists in Minnesota now—ICE is making a list.
They can’t kill everybody.
Isavela: It’s been hard navigating the sense of morality that comes with it. For me (and Lucy can relate to this), you act on things you believe in, you act on things you know are worth participating in. And now this administration is imposing a lie of what is right and what is wrong, and seeing everybody being gaslit, and having the news have a certain narrative of what is right and what is wrong, what has been said and not been said, what really happened and what didn’t happen—and also they’re arresting independent journalists.
It just goes to show how much the Constitution has not been constituted. The human rights that we believed and thought we have are no more. It’s just what goes and what doesn’t go.
For me, the only real hope I have is community and creativity. People have shown up for me because I’ve been showing up since 2020. How can we inspire a sense of hope and spirit to keep going? How can we have people know that there is hope at the end, that there can be another side of it? Right now what we’re seeing is another world unfolding, and the only way we can really understand that new world is when we understand the truth that we’ve been walking on.
My friends have been so good to me—they’ve made graphics and really cool shirts with my face on it [laughs] as a way to welcome me home and things like that, and creating different images of what this new world can be. One thing I did with some of the NDN Collective was make a really dope graphic that says “Motherland” on it, and it’s all of the Americas. Having roots from the Global South, and being Zapotec has been key for me to know that I have every right to be here, and a lot of the legitimacy that is “constituted” is not my truth of why I move and why I believe to do what is right.
To me, I do what is right because of the history that I come from, because of who my dad is and the people I know that I come from. I’m not native to the northern plains, but I do have friends who are and I respect and love them so much—I want to see their traditions fully thrive, and I know that my power and my liberty is tied with theirs. And I know that we have every right to be here, and the people from the Global South as well, because we haven’t been able to fully thrive in the Motherland, in all of the Americas.
A lot of people don’t want to emigrate, they don’t want to migrate, they don’t want to leave their Motherland. But we have built homes here, we have built communities here, and for me that’s the other side of it: that we can thrive and we can be in this place together, and that we have every right to.
Like the Bad Bunny said in his concert last night—together we are America, Abya Yala.
Olive: I also want to ask what support asks you have for listeners, either for your defense campaigns or for anti-ICE organizing more broadly.
Isavela: We’re having people call in to [US Attorney for the district of Minnesota] Daniel Rosen to drop the charges, and to send in letters. That’s our community ask, and also to donate to the GoFundMe. I’m finding myself needing more support when it comes to getting people on my side and getting people sustained through the movement as well. So donate to my GoFundMe, and if you can send a letter or call in, do that.
Lucy: I’ll just say, talk to everyone you can. Talk to your neighbors, talk to your relatives. It should be impossible to convict anything in Minnesota because no jury is sympathetic with these people. The only way that happens is if there’s a broad understanding of the violence that is being perpetuated in our communities, and a broad support of those resisting it.
Olive: You’ve both shared the importance of creative work for you. Isavela, do you have a poem you’d like to read, or anything you want to share?
Isavela: Yeah, I can read a poem real quick. Since I can’t really speak much about what happened that day, I wrote this:
When I walked outside
I saw ICE staring back at me
Cold presence stirring an earthquake in by body
Do I freeze or do I run?
I ask myself
Did my parents have the time to ask themselves this
When they left the Motherland?
If I run, I might slip into its brute arms
And be caught by its cages
If I freeze, will it drown out all the warmth
My family lit inside of me?
Will the cuffing freeze the southern sun in my blood veins,
Just to be as numb as them?
The cold thrives on control
The order of ignorance can thrive
In an unconscious, vulnerable pride
I never thought their hands could be as brown as mine,
As young as mine, as desperate for safety
That unfolds into another version of insanity
The wrong ice is melting
The warmth of Brown and Black bodies are freezing
Can I walk back into the pattern of survival
My lineage taught me to flourish
Instead of freezing in the numbing of society?
* * *
Olive: We recorded this episode in the first half of February 2026. It’s March now, so here’s a couple updates.
Since recording, eight of the federal defendants have had their charges dismissed, and many have been offered misdemeanor deals. We also now know that there are over one hundred protesters facing state-level charges, mostly misdemeanors. The aftermath of repression in the form of criminal cases from this time will likely continue for years if not decades to come.
Another update: thousands of agents have left the Twin Cities. I get to see my neighbors out of their houses a little more often now, but daily life is still colored by ongoing abductions, disappeared family members, and shockwaves of state violence that have hit our migrant neighbors.
I know I said it in the beginning, but just to say it to close: as much as there is devastating violence and terror happening here, there is incredibly magnificent resistance and community connection happening. Every single day, neighbors are showing up and stopping abductions. They’re watching people get killed in the street for doing it, and they’re showing up the next day to continue.
There’s a kind of fearlessness and love that is in this community that I’ve never seen anywhere else. So as much as things are horrible, things are also beautiful. I want you to know that.
The theme music you heard in this episode was the song “Star” by Tufawon, a Dakota and Boricua artist based out of Minneapolis. Check out their other music.
Support links:
