Immigration Agents Teargas Minneapolis Family’s Car With 6 Kids Inside
A Minneapolis couple and their six children were reportedly attacked by federal immigration agents, who deployed flash-bang grenades and tear gas canisters on their car as the family was driving home from one of their children’s basketball practices.
Shawn and Destiny Jackson, whose children range in age from 6 months to 11 years old, were on their way home from the practice on Wednesday when they got caught between demonstrations near their neighborhood and agents whom they believed to be part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The federal agents repeatedly ordered the Jacksons to move out of the way, but they could not, the couple said.
“They stopped at my car, and they proceeded to yell in and said, ‘Get out of here.’ Well, they used profanity. And my husband screamed and said, ‘We’re trying,'” Destiny Jackson said in an interview with a local CBS News affiliate station.
The agents became more aggressive, she said.
“They said it again, and we said, ‘We’re trying, if you guys will move.’ And of course, everybody saying what happened with Renee [Nicole Good], you know, we weren’t going to pull off while they were right there. That’s what we were trying to avoid,” she added.
According to the couple, agents then walked to the back of their vehicle and released devices underneath it.
“Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car,” Shawn Jackson said.
Destiny Jackson said her family felt an explosion from within the car.
“Within seconds, there was a big boom and our car was up in the air and we slammed down, and all of our airbags deployed and all of our doors locked,” she said. “And tear gas just started forming, a ball of gas just started forming around the car.”
The agents were aware that children were in the vehicle, she said. “The windows were down. You could see my kids in the car, the lights were on in the car.”
Within seconds, bystanders helped the family out of the car, moving them into a house where they could recover from their injuries. Their 6-month-old son appeared to be “lifeless” for a few minutes after exposure to the tear gas, Destiny Jackson said, explaining:
It was like foam or bubbles coming out of his mouth. I had to give him mouth-to-mouth and CPR. I couldn’t even breathe myself, and all I remember is between every breath, I was saying, ‘I’m going to give you every breath I have until you get yours back.’
Shawn Jackson, who says he has respect for law enforcement, was aghast at what happened to him and his family.
“It was like they didn’t have a care in the world for us,” he said, referring to the immigration agents.
The parents say that although their children are physically okay, they are traumatized and not sleeping. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help pay for the family’s hospital bills and a new car, as their current one was damaged by the attack.
As the Trump administration ramps up its mass deportation efforts in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, numerous videos have emerged of federal agents terrorizing residents and committing violence unprovoked. The administration has dubiously claimed those agents have “absolute immunity” to carry out their missions.
In yet another example of brutality by immigration agents, a U.S. citizen named Aliya Rahman was harassed and abducted by immigration agents on Tuesday while on her way to a medical appointment in Minneapolis. The officers dragged her out of her car and brought her to a detention center, denying her medical care, which eventually resulted in her losing consciousness while in custody.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has described Rahman as an “agitator” who was obstructing ICE agents. But Rahman has explained that there was nowhere for her to move her car, and she couldn’t exit her car as instructed by the officers because of her health issues.
“I’m disabled trying to go to the doctor up there, that’s why I didn’t move,” she said.
Video of the incident shows Rahman trying to explain her situation to no avail as a masked agent smashes her passenger side window and agents forcefully drag her out of the car. In a later statement, she said that agents “bound me like an animal.”
The incidents come a little more than a week after the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother who was shot four times by an ICE agent in Minneapolis as she attempted to remove herself from the situation by driving away.
In a seeming attempt to blame Good for her own death, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has wrongly described Good’s conduct as being a “domestic act of terrorism.” President Donald Trump has peddled the false narrative that Good struck the ICE agent with her car.
Assessments of video documenting the killing tell a different story.
“The visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over. … It also establishes how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place,” a New York Times analysis said.
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