An off-duty Brooklyn Park police officer was stopped by federal agents who demanded proof of her citizenship, according to the city’s police chief, Mark Bruley.
In a news conference at the Minnesota Capitol on Jan. 20, Bruley and fellow law enforcement personnel spoke against what they said is a spate of racial profiling by federal immigration agents deployed to the state in President Donald Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge.”
The stop occurred after the Brooklyn Park officer drove past federal agents, Bruley said.
“When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork,” Bruley said, “of which she’s a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork.”
The officer tried to record the interaction, Bruley said, but federal agents knocked the phone from her hands. He said it was impossible to know whether the agents represented Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Border Patrol or another federal agency.
Immigration enforcement agents across Minnesota have obscured their faces and forgone name badges typically worn by local police.
In a separate news conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Greg Bovino, Border Patrol commander at large, said federal agents have worked well with local police in cities like Chicago and New Orleans, who “gave us a lot of good information.”
Bruley declined to identify the officer but said she is a person of color. He did not name her ethnicity and noted that officers of varying ethnicities in several law enforcement agencies in the Twin Cities metro area have had the same experience. He said the officer eventually identified herself as a police officer to de-escalate the incident, though doing so is normally a violation of department policy.
