Raucous Mankato meeting briefly halted by ICE protesters

MANKATO – More than 300 people gathered for a City Council meeting in Mankato wanting to talk about one thing: federal immigration enforcement in their city.

By the end of the night on Monday, Jan. 12, the council briefly walked out, protesters took over and residents complained about chemical irritants sprayed at a resident earlier that day by uniformed agents.

The raucous meeting laid bare anxieties about ICE and federal operations in Minnesota’s cities, with a lone, anonymous voice supporting the federal action.

Agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been working in Mankato since late December, when police noted proof of the agents’ credentials.

Observers and immigrant leaders said federal agents attempted to detain workers in at least two incidents in Mankato over the weekend. An ICE contingent was spotted along busy Madison Avenue, near Walmart. Another group of ICE agents was spotted at a house near Mankato East High School, according to activists.

“ICE agents have been terrorizing the community all weekend,” Ava Corey-Gruenes said at the meeting. She said she was hit by pepper spray from uniformed men in an incident that afternoon in Old Town Mankato. Corey-Gruenes’ allotted three-minute statement drew loud support.

Mankato’s mayor, Najwa Massad, said at the beginning of the meeting that as an immigrant from Lebanon, she believed there were real feelings of “fear, anger, confusion and pain” surrounding the presence of ICE in the city. But she asked for decorum.

“Part of the thing that makes this community safe is when we have local, state, and federal agencies that are working in coordination,” the man said.

He was shouted down before he could finish.

At one point, a voice from the back of the crowded room rang out: “America was never good, except for white men!”

Around an hour into the night, the council attempted to pivot to the scheduled agenda item for the night: a feasibility report on a parkway project.

But as the volume rose, the council paused the meeting and left the room. Protesters then spoke and played music.

Clifton said his officers would check if people purporting to be ICE had the correct credentials.