
A gay Minneapolis pastor said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent handcuffed him, pointed a gun in his face, and made a disturbing white supremacist comment only a few blocks from where another agent shot and killed queer wife and mother Renee Nicole Good.
The Rev. Kenny Callaghan’s encounter with ICE took place the same morning Good was killed. He told the Advocate he joined a nonviolent demonstration against ICE agents after hearing they were threatening a woman they perceived to be Hispanic.
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The crowd grew as news of the nearby shooting began to spread, but Callaghan – a senior pastor at All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church – said protestors remained nonviolent.
“I saw ICE agents circling a young woman who appeared to be Hispanic,” he recounted. “I said to this ICE agent, ‘Take me, stop harassing her.’”
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The agent responded by pointing a gun in his face and asking, “Are you afraid now?” After saying he was not, he was handcuffed and placed into the back of a black SUV. He said the agent released him after half an hour without charging him with anything and told him, “You’re white anyway. You wouldn’t be any fun.”
“I never, ever saw systemic racism so blatantly in all my life as I heard that day,” Callaghan said. “What I saw was a use of fear and intimidation with people.”
Callaghan said his heart was already breaking for Good, and learning she was queer made his pain even worse.
“Not only is she a neighbor — she is my people, my community,” he said, expressing his determination to keep standing up for his neighbors and pointing out that Jesus, himself, was an immigrant fleeing political violence.
“America was built on the backs of immigrants,” Callaghan said. “We must stand up and support our immigrant siblings.”
The Trump administration has continued to send ICE agents into Democratic-led cities to terrorize the communities. Many are saying a tragedy like Good’s death was inevitable with the way Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has disregarded the law.
Bystander video footage shows an ICE officer firing three shots at Good on Wednesday morning as she tried to drive her car away from agents, who were telling her to “get out of the f**king car” so they could apprehend her.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has claimed that the officer “fired defensive shots” at Good after she was “attempting to run over” him and other agents “in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called the DHS’ claim “bulls**t,” calling the agent’s actions “reckless” and telling ICE to “get the f**k out of Minneapolis.”
In a social media post, Trump claimed that Good was “a professional agitator” who “viciously ran over the ICE officer.” He blamed the shooting on the “Radical Left.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem praised the officer, adding, “This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and law enforcement are under every single day.”
An analysis of four different videos of the incident led the publication 404 Media to conclude that DHS is lying.
“The Honda was already turning to the right away from the officers when the one who allegedly feared for his life fired the shots. There were no other officers up the road where the car did fully level out, meaning no other fellow officers were at risk,” the publication wrote, adding that the DHS has previously published “misleading, wrong, or incendiary” statements that do “not reflect reality” and that have been called “not credible” by at least one federal judge.
“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” Mayor Frey said in a Wednesday press conference. “Having seen the video of myself, I want to tell everybody directly that [the DHS’s claim of self-defense] is bulls**t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
Having experienced ICE behavior on the ground, Callaghan said he has no doubt DHS is lying and “gaslighting” the American people. “They just don’t care,” he said… [the Trump administration] feels like they have the right to do whatever they damn well please, including murdering people.”
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