Federal agencies offer no answers in St. Paul paper company raid, detainments

The rationale behind a federal operation this week that sparked a clash between law enforcement and protesters remained unclear as federal agencies are not saying why they detained workers at a St. Paul paper distributor.

On Wednesday morning, St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her joined a crowd of close to 200 community members and advocates at a vigil outside of the Bro-Tex Inc. warehouse, where federal agents arrested an unspecified number of workers Tuesday morning. The crowd on Wednesday held signs that read “Families belong together” and “ICE sees color, not the constitution.”

In an interview, Her described the clash between the protesters and agents who swarmed the warehouse as both “chaotic” and “heartbreaking.”

The agents involved in the raid included members of the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It did not include St. Paul police or the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office.

“This is no longer about security to our country or national security threats — this is now about targeting communities just by the way that they look, and that is a danger to all of us,” Her said.

Bro-Tex Inc. workers walking in and out of the building on Wednesday declined to comment on what happened.

Erik Godinez Alarcon, whose uncle and cousin were arrested in the raid, said Wednesday he hadn’t received updates as to where his relatives were held or why they were taken. Neither appear to have a Minnesota criminal record and Alarcon said both were undocumented but in the process of obtaining citizenship.

ICE representatives in the Twin Cities did not respond to requests for more details about who was detained during Tuesday’s raid or the nature of the federal investigation. In a previous statement, ICE said the agencies “conducted court authorized law enforcement activity and served a search warrant in furtherance of a federal criminal investigation.”

Ana Pottratz Acosta, a visiting professor with the University of Minnesota Law School, said she isn’t sure if information will be released to the public about the specifics of the operation in St. Paul as the Trump administration has not been forthcoming with details of Homeland Security operations.

Aside from the confusion in the aftermath of the raid, Her bemoaned steps taken by federal agents to reduce transparency, which included wearing nondescript uniforms with “police” wording that makes it difficult to tell if they’re federal agents or local police.

“When people are not transparent about who they are with, it creates fear and confusion, and that does not help our community at all,” Her said.

The confusion echoes that of five months ago during a June 3 raid of a Lake Street Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis, which also sparked widespread protest over speculation that an immigration raid was underway.

Five months later, no other information has been released, nor have charges been announced in connection to the alleged drug trafficking. The details of the investigation were not laid out in any court filing directly related to that case. Instead, they were included in the criminal complaint for obstruction and assault charges against Minneapolis protester Isabel Lopez, who had no connection to the federal investigation into drug trafficking.

Francisco Estrada-Deltaro, the primary owner of the Las Cuatro Milpas restaurant on Lake Street that was one of the subjects of the raid, was arrested at his home outside of the city and later sentenced to 8 months in prison for illegally re-entering the country three times.

But he was never indicted in the “suspected criminal conspiracy” and it remains unclear if he ever will be. Estrada-Deltaro is slated to be deported after he completes his prison sentence.

Federal and local officials have denied that the June 3 raids were immigration enforcement, but Estrada-Deltaro spent weeks in ICE custody before he was indicted for the criminal re-entry charge.

Acosta said she expects what happened Tuesday to bear similarities to the June raid, where most of the information shared to the public online came from witnesses and city of Minneapolis officials, not the Department of Homeland Security.