Adam Levy, a Twin Cities singer-songwriter, educator who has taught high school history and government, and longtime local activist, describes the federal immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis as a siege. He reports roughly 3,000 officers operating in the area, detentions in a makeshift holding area in the basement of the Whipple building that serves as ICE headquarters, and an incident in which a tear gas canister fired under a family's car left an infant unable to breathe. Levy says most people arrested are long-settled residents who work legally, pay taxes and are pursuing naturalization. He describes his own daily vehicle patrols tracking and slowing ICE units, and the wider infrastructure that has formed around them: whistle-based rapid response, mutual aid for families afraid to leave home, business canvassing, and trained legal accompaniment into immigration court.
Guest: Adam Levy
In brief
- Levy says the Minneapolis deployment involves roughly 3,000 federal officers and functions less like law enforcement than like a paramilitary occupation.
- Levy says the great majority of those being arrested are long-term residents working legally and pursuing citizenship, not people with serious criminal records.
- Levy describes recruitment terms — a signing bonus attached to a short training course, repayable if the officer quits — that lock new hires into the job.
- Levy compares the visible use of officers of color in the operation to historical precedents such as slave catchers and kapos in the camps.
- Levy says residents have built a layered civilian response combining car patrols, whistle networks, mutual aid deliveries, business canvassing and legal accompaniment.
- Levy argues the relationships and networks built during the crackdown can outlast it and become durable community infrastructure.
Full text
a story of a family that were just kind of coming back into their neighborhood to get to their house and a uh ICE officer fired a tear gas canister under their car. And so it wasn't like they were being anywhere they weren't supposed to be. They were in their neighborhood and and that baby basically uh almost died. that baby had stopped breathing and they had to get to emergency services because of, you know, that uh what happened to that baby's lungs because of that tear gas. Things that I know have happened. A number of people have been arrested and taken to Whipple, which is the headquarters of ICE right now.
There's the courts that are at ICE, but there's also a detention center in the basement of the building. It's somewhat makeshift. I don't think that they planned long term for this to be some kind of prison, but there have been people, observers, who were taken there, arrested, taken there, and the what they saw and what they heard was absolutely horrific. So, Adam, you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and what what's been happening there? Yeah. So, uh, for those of you that don't know me, uh, my name is Adam Levy. I'm a singer songwriter. Been in a variety of bands and musical projects out of the Twin Cities for years and toured and released lots of records.
I'm also an educator, so I've taught uh, high school US world history and government and economics. Uh, I am an activist. I lost a child uh, to suicide in 2012. So been really active in mental health issues, suicide and addiction. I'm an activist in the Twin Cities and uh many consider me a public historian just because I'm really interested in the history of movements of liberation uh fascism, genocide, those kinds of things. And so when I start conversations uh in social media, I tend to lead with that foot. And right now we are in the midst of what I would call a siege. Um it's an invasion of federal officers who are behaving in an extremely lawless fashion.
It's like a private paramilitary group of brown shirts who have, you know, very little training, very little intelligence. the screening process is is minimal and these guys every day are ramping up their level of terror and violence against the community. Meanwhile, uh for the last month and a half, people have been developing a really sophisticated network of communication which involves mutual aid, helping families that are stuck at their house because people don't want to leave their house to go to get groceries. children are not going to school. Um, let's be really clear like the arrests that are happening by and large are not people who are the worst of the worst.
These are people who for the most part have been here for years working legally, paying taxes, um, just going through the process of trying to become naturalized citizens. They still get arrested. There are people being stopped and picked up on these Kavanaaugh stops just based on racial profiling. A lot of the people who are doing the work are people of color. And so when you're having conversations with people on the right about what's going on, they often say, "Well, it's, you know, I've seen Latino officers and and Asian officers and and people of color." Well, these jobs pay really well. They are though kind of a Ponzi scheme.
Like you get a $10,000 check when you do this 47day training and propo, you know, you're going to be getting this $50,000 over a period of time. But you are committed to this, you know, to this job and if you leave you have to pay all that money back. Oh wow. They're really trying to lock people in. They are. They are trying to lock people in. And what's a big employer? You know what the the annual salary is? I don't I don't know what the annual salary is. I've applied for about eight jobs. And I would say the ones I applied for were probably like for investigators $65,000 a year.
Um I'm not sure what the younger officers are making. I was applying for, you know, older older positions, but they're hiring people. There's no age limit. They're hiring dudes that are 70 years old to do this work. Uh, but I just wanted to be clear about the fact that they are hiring all of these folks of color to do this heavy lifting. And it is very analogous historically to the way in which people of color are used in kind of racist situations, whether it was the slave catchers or the people who were administering torture. It's almost a sort of justification for, you know, hey, we're not racist.
You know, we've got these people that are doing this work, but the work is awful. Or capos in concentration camps who are Jews who are doing this horrible stuff to each other, but also getting some sort of privileges by being capos. Uh, what have been what's been your personal experience like your direct experience of of the situation up until now? So, my personal experience has been basically going on these patrols every day, what we call commuting, where you tail, you try to find vehicles that are probably ICE vehicles. There's like 3,000 in our community swarming the community. 3,000 officers and thousands of vehicles. And so, it's pretty easy to go down the street and spot one of these rental vehicles.
That's a nice vehicle that people have been keeping track of. So, I'll go out and follow these vehicles, chase them around. I've been stopped. I've been surrounded. My car has been surrounded by officers with weapons. Uh I've been threatened with arrest and I've just continued my commute to uh do the work, which is really like the intent of us is to sort of slow these guys down. They are doing abductions every day. But the fact that there's all of these eyes on the ground, that there are people who swarm whenever there's uh an abduction taking place, there all kinds of notification systems so that people will show up in these sort of flash mobs with really loud whistles.
People screaming at these officers, people basically, you know, trying to tell these officers the work they're doing is awful. They're disappearing people. they are, you know, it's like a gestapo. Yeah. So, that that's one of the things I do. I've also got a few groups that we meet on a regular basis to kind of talk about strategy and tactics and uh what we're experiencing. I'm also involved in the direct action meetings with the Twin Cities direct action movement which is made up of people in the unions and some of the more active direct action groups in the Twin Cities. So trying to figure out what kinds of things we can do to slow down or shut down ICE in our cities.
I mean Minneapolis doesn't even have like the biggest minority population or you know as far as I understand. I mean it's not like you know New York or something you know. No, I mean, you know, it really doesn't have anything to do, as you mentioned earlier, with fraud. That was a pretext for coming here. And they are using this as a distraction. It's a punishment. Uh, as we know, the president is all about vengeance and revenge, and he was humiliated by walls during the election. And I think it's very personal the way he's he's sort of sicked all of the social media influencers on the state and on Walls in particular.
Walls ended up basically resigning because of this, you know, insane these allegations that somehow he's responsible for some of this fraud. We've been investigating the fraud in the state for a few years. It's not like it's something we don't know about, but it's not anything compared to the huge amount of corruption and graft that's happening in this administration. So clearly this is like creating distractions, punishing blue states, punishing this governor that he's got a bone to pick with. Uh and basically trying to humiliate a blue state in general and liberal people, right? I mean, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why Minneapolis is is the first target.
Uh, including, you know, the Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd thing. The fact I think the George Floyd issue, it was huge in terms of dialogue in this country. And it's not a coincidence that George Floyd happened in the Twin Cities just with the amount of social activism and that sort of percentage of people who are active to population. It's huge. But the George Floyd movement, I would argue, had a large part of the far-right reaction that got Trump reelected. This fear about race and racial identity and the fear of racial reckoning and uh all of this sort of stuff that they kind of call woke.
It's just u this is payback. They are trying to pay us back. Tell me about uh you know people you know who or you know firsthand or secondhand who've been detained or taken to a you know camp somewhere you know and I mean I know some people are just like disappearing without without a trace basically. I heard yesterday about they grabbed somebody they left a six-month old baby in the car um in you know in Minnesota where it's freezing. Um this is just insane. That was a story of a family that were just kind of coming back into their neighborhood to get to their house and a uh ICE officer fired a tear gas canister under their car.
And so it wasn't like they were being anywhere they weren't supposed to be. They were in their neighborhood and and that baby basically uh almost died. that baby had stopped breathing and they had to get to emergency services because of, you know, that uh what happened to that baby's lungs because of that tear gas. Things that I know have happened. A number of people have been arrested and taken to Whipple, which is the headquarters of ICE right now. There's the courts that are at ICE, but there's also a detention center in the basement of the building. It's somewhat makeshift. I don't think that they planned long term for this to be some kind of prison, but there have been people observers who were taken there, arrested, taken there, and the what they saw and what they heard was absolutely horrific.
They there were people in cells who were crying. There were children crying. People were begging to go to the bathroom. They were crammed into spaces that didn't allow for the number of people that were in those spaces. And one thing that was really striking to uh one of the couples that were arrested was the sort of benality of the conversation of the guards just kind of having fun and everything while people are whimpering and crying and just the sort of dehumanization that these people are willing to uh do to the people that are getting arrested and detained. I mean, as a historian who studied like fascist movements and genocide, you know, what what do you think is going on in America right now?
Why do you think it's come to this point? Uh, you know, at this point in time, I mean, yeah, on the one hand, it feels kind of like, you know, kind of like just weird luck, you know, that this Trump was this major public figure. But, you know, a lot of countries have had Trump-like figures. I mean, I have one friend uh who writes a lot about Melik Kylin who writes for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. he covered like Georgia and he's from Turkey and so on. So it's like this whole you know the sort of the sort of charismatic strongman uh you know leader seems to be something that people really are seeking right now.
Um and and you know yeah it seems like particularly conditions in America have reached a point where we're having this kind of civil collapse in a way. Yeah. I mean on the on the right there is a coalition of people. Uh you've got the Christian nationalists, you've got people who are sort of intellectual far-right uh anti-democratic people. You've got billionaires. You've got a lot of people who are kind of on the ground level who are middle class or working class who are feeling really disaffected. It's like this perfect storm of people who are uh on the one hand again a lot of these people are disaffected.
They're feeling like the last 70 years of social change has left them in the dark, left them with less employment opportunities. An economy since the 1970s that because of de-industrialization and the movement of industry abroad has created economic conditions where people are not making what their parents made or making much less. And so there's just a fear that we are on a downslide to a lot of these folks. And so a voice like Donald Trump which is promising a golden age and returning to a golden age, it sort of has elements of classic fascist movements through history where somebody is promising some kind of greatness as long as people follow behind them. And also that element of scapegoating, you know, immigrants, we've had different phases of our history where nivism has been a thing where some group of people are blamed for all our problems.
Whether it's in the 1830s and it's the Irish or the Chinese in the 1880s or Jews in the early 20th century, you know, we've always picked a group of people who we can blame our economic and social malaise for. And that's what's happening right now. And obviously the target are people of color uh and mostly immigrants right now that these people are somehow taking everything from us. They're using our resources. They're frauds. All this kind of stuff. And people are just willing to, you know, dehumanize these folks and treat them like they're less than. And it's sort of like every day something more happens. And you watch on social media people defending fact that a a young woman who is basically going to try to slow ICE down gets shot in the face and somehow that's acceptable and the brutalization of people.
You know, it's like we're watching in real time the kinds of things that you would have seen in Nazi Germany at the outset of the of the Third Reich. what kind of uh impact I mean I've been hearing some you know optimistic reports that the uh you know really sustained resistance that people in Minneapolis are putting up to this putting up against this is having a you know a big impact on ICE like their their their morale is low they they feel uh upset they they're you know they don't want to do their their job anymore I mean do you think some of that is true do you feel that they're they're cracking a little bit under the Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's clear when you watch a large group of people able to stop them from doing their job, it's disheartening for them. Clearly, like they can't do what they're what they think they're supposed to be doing.
They realize they're outnumbered. They realize that they're loathed. The people do not like what they're doing and people are really, really angry and upset. And it has all of the sort of symbolism of, you know, the red coats, right? You know, we're the patriots, they're the red coats, and they are invading our community. And I think that they sort of, a lot of them have to realize they are not wanted here. And so there are people who are leaving ICE. There are they had a lot of trouble getting the the set. like there was 2,000 that came really quickly in December and then an additional 3,000 and this 3,000 was it was really difficult apparently according to you know leaked documents.
Uh people were realizing like this is going to be a lot more difficult than they thought it was going to be. They thought they could kind of just come in here and scare everybody and that they would be able to do these abductions and get these numbers going and and they still are driven by this metric sort of uh policy like they they need to get so many bodies before they consider this a victory. And right now, according to people on the ground, it looks like there's probably been about 1,700 real detentions and disappearances and arrests, whereas DHS, uh, ISIS said there's at least 3,000 that have taken place. Um, yeah, I mean, um, I had a question for you now. No, no, I've lost it for a second.
Um, all right. Well, I guess the mayor was saying that um he was asked why he didn't just arrest these ICE agents where they're doing illegal things and he said, "Look, we only have 700 policemen and there's 2,000 of these guys. They much heavier weapons." Mhm. So, that was kind of a bracing uh a thought in a way. And I I guess now I just heard this morning that Tim Walls is considering calling the u the state the state national guard to uh get involved at that point. Yeah, we you know we are kind of approaching like civil war territory, right? Because then you know you have like um you know two different sovereign powers facing off against each other in in the same you know territory.
Yeah. I mean it certainly looks like a lot of the the scenarios that some writers have been talking about for the last I don't know seven or so years. Steven Marier's book you know he does the sort of like what might a civil war scenario look like? And that face off was definitely one of them between the federal and the state government. Um I think Walls is going to What is that? What's that book by the way? What was that book? The Steen March. Stephen Mar coming apart I think is the name of the book. Okay. Um also there's Barbara Walters's book on how civil wars I think it's called How Civil Wars Start.
That's exceptional. And I think it uh if you want to look in her book at at where we're at in terms of civil wars compared to say Serbia, Syria or some of these other places in the 20th and 21st century. We've ticked off all of the major boxes. You know, there's a huge profusion of guns in this country, and people on the right have most of the guns, but a lot of liberals, a lot of left-wing folks are buying guns and long guns and getting trained and shooting and talking about forming militias. It's happening. So, you know, I think for people in the Twin Cities, it feels like the municipal and the state governments are sort of impotent.
And I know Walls is doing everything possible not to create a big conflration because he knows what's at stake and everything that you've mentioned that this could be a flash point for some larger national thing. So, he's being really calculated. I think the mayor of Minneapolis also feels, as you said, outgunned, uh, overwhelmed, and so he is just basically kind of just saying, I we don't want you here, and supporting peaceful non-resistance. Um, most of the people I'm talking to in the Twin Cities believe we are still at a point where u peaceful resistance is effective. It's doing what it should be doing. It's slowing things down.
It's showing the rest of the country that we're not afraid. There's a a lot more white folks this time around compared to the death of George Floyd that are willing to put their bodies in the way of this machine. And people realize the stakes like we're talking about big big change in this country. Not just getting rid of ICE, getting rid of this president, but real racial reconciliation. that this to me speaks to the notion that white folks are finally starting to say, "Okay, we've been watching for 400 years, black folks, indigenous folks, people of color have been struggling to make democracy real. It's it's our turn.
It's our turn under these circumstances with a fascist government to pony up." Yeah. I mean, you know, I also look at the thing I know we just met, so you haven't like had probably had a chance to look at my newsletter and my articles. I'm a little I feel like I almost don't even know what to say at this point. That's why I thought having just some conversations would would be a good thing. But I mean um um you know it feels like you know on the metal level there's stuff happening you know where for instance you know the people behind Trump you know may actually want uh the country to break down and and go bankrupt because then you know all the public assets become distressed assets that oligarchs from around the world can come in and buy up and um yeah they just they just look at it as like an opportunity to to you know to turn the US into spare parts kind of like what they did with the USSR back in back in the 80s.
Um so and then and then the other thing is you know artificial intelligence and the idea that that's going to lay off like a lot of the middle class and you know the kind of intelligencia are not needed anymore and you don't need like um you know white collar people anymore. So, you know, there I think their their their mindset is that, you know, most people are now kind of disposable and uh that's a very scary um circumstance, you know. Yeah. I mean, this administration, these guys are are totally looking out for themselves. They don't care about the country as a whole. clearly uh the notion of a functioning republic with different regions and different economies and different political belief systems doesn't matter.
And so that kind of nihilism um the the devaluing of human life, the sort of language that we're seeing to me is just really an indication of a willingness to kind of let the whole American experiment go away. And that's why I sort of feel like a lot of my my peoples and folks that I that I'm with I I feel like we're the ones that still want to try to keep that experiment going and that it's still worth something. I that being said, I think people are also kind of in the back of their minds starting to think about, well, what what would a broken republic, a new sort of configuration of the United States look like? How would that physically look? How would we line ourselves up?
I mean, we've sort of been doing it for some time in terms of where we move to different parts of the country, that sort of sorting that we've been doing. So, it's certainly possible. Uh I also think whether it's this year or 10 years from now, we're probably going to be dealing with this conflict between these parties for some time. And I think the violence is either going to be really large or it's going to sort of just kind of continue on until something is figured out. Yeah. I mean, you know, once again, looking at it from the classic kind of like overview, you know, perspective, you know, it feels like these poor schmucks in a way, like these the people who are voting for Trump and and supporting this movement, you know, they're they've just got the wrong targets in their sight.
you know, they're like they're they're feeling oppressed by, you know, immigrants and and and you know, maybe the liberal elites, you know, who maybe do have some culpability when we look at the Democratic party and and and sort of the structures there, but um they're not looking at the, you know, oligarch class who are the ones who are like squeezing them like lemons for every last drop, you know. So I mean and of course the whole media structure is organized to you know now support you know that view of the world where you sort of like don't you know you make the target impossible to to to see for for the people but um uh what what what do you think in those terms? Do you think there's any um prospect for kind of this leading to some kind of like, you know, purple awakening, you know, where where red and blue kind of like break through these divisions and come together rather than being at each other's throats? Yeah. I I mean, I am a bit surprised that a lot of the gun rights libertarian people have been so silent in this period of absolute tyranny from the federal government.
you know, people who were talking about the jack booted thugs. Um, and I I'm hoping that a number of these people are going to wake up and say, "Oh my god, you know, if I do believe in the Constitution, this is the threat that was talked about for so long." And and and by any measure, what I'm witnessing is absolutely unacceptable, unconstitutional, lawless, and I want to be on the right side of history. Yeah. I would hope there's going to be some of those people that wake up. I also am afraid that the the information um spheres that we live in are so vastly different. And if you're just constantly hearing that these protesters in Minneapolis are domestic terrorists, you know, and you don't really worry about the billionaire class, you're just going to kind of continue continue being chumped.
Uh, but I can't I can't help but also think that there's going to be people who say, "God damn it, these oligarchs are controlling everything and it doesn't matter what party they're in, they have all the money. The inequality is so bad. That needs to shift. That needs to change." Um, O, I had another question. A gosh. Um, oh, I wanted to ask you about the kind of uh I know you have to leave in a minute to uh take your kid out and stuff, but I wanted to ask you about the um kind of on the ground activism and and sort of like also I'm kind of curious.
It seems like you know, as you say, it's quite well organized quite quickly. uh you know what what are some ideas or principles or you know what could also go you know you know what could we use you know when New York gets hit by this stuff or you know when other when other communities get hit by this you know I mean I hope that other folks are kind of watching I'm not going to name the uh the app that's being used just but I think a lot of people know the the encrypted app that's being used and that it's pretty easy to kind of set up chats Um, that being said, I think everybody every day are reminding each other this conversation that we're having is likely being surveiled. And that's a strange place to be like thinking that everything that you're doing is somehow possibly under a microscope, you know, like even if it's not that the this government has been so successful at instilling this notion that they have the capability to read our minds practically. It's just it's very Orwellian at this moment. Um I would say one of the really striking things about the movement on the ground is this almost I'm going to quote marks, you know, from each to his ability to each uh of his need that folks are trying to figure out what can I do.
I'm I'm not comfortable going out in the street and harassing ICE or watching and observing ICE. I don't have that kind of risk capability, but I really would love to deliver food to families. um or I don't feel safe, you know, driving food to someone's family, but I can give, I can help out. Um there's people who are who are doing canvasing, which means going to businesses with whistles and pamphlets which explain what their rights are to protect their workers and to uh basically if they don't want ICE to come into their business. So there's the canvasing going on. There's the car patrolling. There's the mutual aid.
There are people who are doing immigrant legal advocacy. So they're going to the folks. They've done the training. My girlfriend is one of these people. She's a therapist, but she went and did this extensive legal training which allows her to accompany people into immigration court to help them navigate that system. I mean, I could go on and on. It's just there's thousands of people that are involved. Not to mention all the direct action stuff, the protests. There are people who are making music every day in places to, you know, bolster people's spirits. It just feels like a mobilization at multiple levels in a way I' I've never seen in my community.
And so that notion of the creation of community and that all of this stuff that we've set up, all of these connections and networks, I think can be used after this whole thing is over in a way that can bring us together in conversations about what kind of country do we want to live in. Beautiful. Well, Adam, maybe I'll leave it there. That seemed like a very nice ending ending point. unless there's something else you really want to share right now, but we can always connect another time and I appreciate you giving me this this time and sharing the the information. Thank you for great questions.
Yeah. Uh have a good one. Hope you and your daughter stay safe and uh yeah, hope that uh the country, you know, gets out of this collective psychosis and go somewhere else. Amen. Yeah. We'll see you. Gotcha.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.