Minneapolis— Dozens of mail carriers and supporters rallied and marched on Dec. 14 in subzero temperatures to demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stop using U.S. post office property to organize raids and arrests during “Operation Metro Surge,” the federal government’s accelerating assault on immigrant workers here.
Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers spoke to the protesters gathering at Lake Street Post Office before their march of a mile to Powderhorn.
“Letter carriers are not law enforcement officers. We deliver the U.S. mail,” Joe Rian, president of NALC Branch 9, told participants. The branch “voted to not voluntarily cooperate with federal agents in the arrest or prosecution or attempted deportation of our members, their families, or any members of the community,” he said. “Nor will we provide immigration status information that may come to us in our position as letter carriers.”
Stefan Seaberg, who works at Powderhorn Post Office, described the impact of the raids on working people. “Folks are locking the doors of their businesses. People are not going to work to provide for their families,” he said. “As workers we have everything in common with immigrants, documented or not. And we have nothing in common with a ruling class that tells us immigrants are our enemy.”
Chris Pennock, vice president of Branch 9, told the Minnesota Star Tribune, ICE “used the Powderhorn Post Office parking lot to arrest somebody right in the middle of where the carriers are returning.”
Pennock told the Militant that a week after the union voted to not cooperate with ICE “they started using post office parking lots as a staging ground. Two of the carriers at the stations where they were operating said, ‘We’ve got to do something’ and we started organizing this protest.”
“They’re using our parking lots to attack and destroy the communities we serve,” said Emmett Bongaarts, who works at Lake Street. “We’re calling on postal management to take action to get ICE out of our workplace. We’re telling the Postal Inspection Service to cut all ties with ICE.”
“I feel concerned because we carry Arrow keys to get into a lot of the buildings,” mail carrier Aleesha Berg told the Militant. “We’re afraid we’re going to be coerced into letting ICE agents into the buildings. We’ve been told that if an ICE agent does approach us, we need to send them back to the station to talk to our managers.”
The Department of Homeland Security boasts that ICE has arrested more than 400 people in Minnesota. They have particularly targeted Somali workers after President Donald Trump said they were all “garbage.”
ICE is randomly stopping and arresting people who appear to be Somali or Latino. A Somali worker was roughed up and arrested by ICE on his lunch break Dec. 9. Videos show him repeatedly telling them he’s a citizen as he is thrown face down onto the snowy sidewalk. He was released after two hours.
ICE agents entered a coffee shop in this city’s Brooklyn Park suburb Dec. 12, pretending to be customers. After a while they claimed they had hit a car in the parking lot. When employees went outside to investigate the agents arrested a worker originally from Ecuador.
At a construction site in the town of Chanhassen Dec. 13 ICE agents laid siege after two workers refused to come off the roof of a house. One worker had to be taken to the hospital because of the frigid temperatures. Onlookers and protesters got blankets and warm drinks to the other worker. He came down after ICE left.
