Minneapolis mayor warns others to ‘speak up’ against Trump or ‘your city is next’

Jacob Frey, the embattled mayor of Minneapolis, has warned fellow mayors that their city will be next in line to be targeted by federal immigration agents unless they speak out against Donald Trump’s aggressive deployments.

Addressing the US conference of mayors in Washington DC, Frey won loud applause as he accused the Trump administration of staging an “invasion” of his city and pursuing a “might makes right” philosophy, which he said was championed by Stephen Miller, Trump’s most powerful aide.

Speaking five days after last Saturday’s fatal shooting in Minneapolis of a protester, Alex Pretti, by two immigration agents, Frey called the the deployment of between 3,000 and 4,000 federal agents into the city “an invasion on our democracy, [and] on our republic”.

“I didn’t take this job to get into the business of defending democracy. I did it because being a mayor has always been my dream job.

“[But] we are on the front lines of a very important battle, and it’s important that we aren’t silenced. This is not a time to bend our heads in despair or out of fear that we may be next, because if we do not speak up, if we do not step out, it will be your city that is next.”

Frey has been outspoken for weeks against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] deployment. Shortly after the killing of another local resident, Renee Nicole Good, by an agent on 7 January he told the agency to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis”.

He said the city had hitherto been safe and and a scene of falling crime figures, but it had become less safe as “chaos reigns supreme” because of the Trump administration’s deployment, tagged “Operation Metro Surge”.

“It is less safe when families do not feel comfortable going to school or buying food at the grocery store because they’re worried that their very family might get ripped apart,” he said. “It is less safe when we have roving bands of agents marching down the street just looking for somebody who might be concerned. I got to tell you, everybody is concerned when you have that kind of occupation.”

Apart from the deaths of Pretti and Good, the ICE operations have resulted in the detention of several school children, including a five-year-old boy, Liam Ramos, who was sent to a facility in Texas along with his father. There have been several high profile clashes with residents who are US citizens, including one episode when a woman was violently pulled from her car after a verbal altercation, when she told agents she was trying to reach a doctor’s appointment.

Frey accused agents of targeting individuals on the basis that they might be of Somalian, Latino or Asian origin and said the goal was less about immigration than silencing opinions and narratives that differed from the administration’s.

He was applauded when he accused the White House of a following a “might is right” philosophy, singling out Miller, Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff, who is seen as the aggressive architect of the anti-immigration crusade.

“Stephen Miller has pushed for this concept, calling it the iron law of the world that might makes right,” said Frey. “Stephen Miller is wrong. Time and again, America has rejected this notion that might makes right.”

In a rallying call directed at fellow mayors, he said: “We do not back down to bullies. We stand up for democracy.”