Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino seen lobbing smoke canister as agents use chemicals in Minneapolis

Federal agents deployed smoke and chemicals on Jan. 21 as they clashed with protesters and observers at two spots in south Minneapolis.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino lobbed a smoke canister at Mueller Park in the Whittier neighborhood.

“I’m gonna gas. Get back. Gas is coming. Gas is coming, second warning. Second warning,” Bovino can be heard saying in a video captured by Ben Luhmann.

“Gas on film! Gas on film!” Luhmann shouts in response.

“Third warning. Gas, gas, gas,” Bovino says, before tossing the canister and pushing people away from the street.

Plumes of green and gray smoke burst over the crowd as protesters and observers run from the scene. Some were hit in the face with orange spray. The smoke left behind green stains in the snow.

Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.

The encounters came soon after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed a lower court’s order that had sought to prevent immigration agents from detaining and pepper-spraying protesters and observers.

Yusuf Mohamed, 19, said he was walking near the intersection of Blaisdell Avenue and West 28th Street when he saw a large number of federal agents boxing in a vehicle and questioning a young Latino man or teenage boy who was inside.

“They said, ‘If you don’t open the window in three seconds or open the door, we will break the window,’ ” Mohamed said. The agents then pulled both the male and a girl, who was also Latino, out of the vehicle.

“He literally said, ‘I came out of school. I came out of school,’ ” Mohamed said. “And he told us his age was 16 years old.”

Soon after the incident, observers and protesters hit by a chemical spray were getting medical attention on the sidewalks as people poured water into their eyes.

At least a couple of protesters were tackled to the ground and arrested before agents drove away from the crowd of at least 30 protesters and observers, some of whom were coughing or vomiting from the smoke, according to witnesses.

Observers took images of a loaded rifle magazine that an agent dropped in the snow and left behind. The magazine was reported and later recovered by the Minneapolis Police Department, a department spokesperson confirmed.

Luhmann took video of one of the empty smoke canisters, which is labeled as “pocket tactical green smoke,” made by the company Defense Technology. The back states that it should be used only by “trained law enforcement, correctional or military personnel.”