Three Minneapolis mayoral challengers back a stronger separation ordinance. Frey says they go too far.

Minneapolis mayoral candidates Omar Fateh, DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton have pledged to strengthen a city ordinance by barring local police and city officials from cooperating with federal agents, including assisting with crowd control during immigration enforcement.

The pledge the candidates signed onto also calls for Minneapolis police to confront federal agents to a degree that Mayor Jacob Frey, who is running for reelection, said was dangerous.

The three candidates appeared at a news conference Thursday organized by the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, which is circulating a petition signed by more than 600 people calling for changes to the separation ordinance.

The petition calls for an ordinance that would require police to refuse federal requests to assist with crowd control or taping off an area; prohibit any law enforcement officer in the city from using face coverings; and require police to remove federal agents from a protest area and stop them from “abusing or detaining protesters.”

Among the petition’s listed demands: Officers would “shelter and protect” anyone fleeing federal agents during a raid or protest, and police would “immediately arrest” any federal law enforcement officer hiding their identity from any Minneapolis resident.

The Minneapolis ordinance now bars city employees from asking about one’s citizenship or immigration status, requesting documents to prove immigration status and using knowledge of that status to enforce immigration laws.

Concerns arose over a June raid in which heavily armed federal agents, including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, descended on a restaurant on Lake Street as part of a drug investigation.

Fateh, whose parents are Somalian immigrants, said he was deeply concerned about President Donald Trump’s administration “and its deployment of masked secret police into our communities, abducting and disappearing our families, friends and neighbors. Crowd control or not, [police] should never collaborate or assist with ICE.”

Davis compared protests against immigration enforcement to those of the Civil Rights Movement.

“We need to make sure we do not have an out-of-control illegal law enforcement coming and destroying our democracy in the Twin Cities,” Davis said.

Hampton argued the separation ordinance must force a true separation between police and ICE, or a “gray area” would persist.

“Let’s be unequivocal about it,” he said.

“How do they suppose we do that?” Frey said in an interview. “Giving directives like these has life and death consequences in the very communities they’re trying to protect.”

Frey has refused to commit to barring police from crowd control during federal law enforcement operations, saying police generally need to protect people and property.