Tag: minnesota

Pentagon orders more active-duty soldiers to ready for possible Minneapolis deployment

The Pentagon has ordered active-duty military police soldiers based in North Carolina to prepare for possible deployment to Minneapolis, three people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

A prepare-to-deploy order was issued Tuesday for a battalion with the Army’s 16th Military Police Brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, two of the people told MS NOW. At least 500 soldiers are being prepared for the possible mobilization to Minneapolis, two of the people said. All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deployments.

Asked for comment, a Pentagon official said, “We have nothing to announce at this time, and any tip about this is pre-decisional.”

The possible infusion of military police is in addition to the Pentagon orders last Friday that two battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division prepare to deploy. The 11th Airborne is stationed in Alaska and specializes in winter weather conditions. Each infantry battalion has at least 500 soldiers.

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ICE Tells Legal Observer, ‘We Have a Nice Little Database, and Now You’re Considered a Domestic Terrorist’

Video taken this morning in Maine shows an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer taking pictures of a legal observer’s car. When she asks why he’s doing that, he says, “Because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

The video is the latest example of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) labeling anyone who engages in First Amendment–protected activity opposing the Trump administration’s mass deportation program as a “domestic terrorist” and suggesting they’ll be subject to federal investigations.

The DHS did not immediately respond to request for comment on the scope of the database mentioned by the officer or whether it considers protected First Amendment activity to be conduct that warrants inclusion on the database.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported today that an unnamed federal law enforcement official told him that DHS “has ordered immigration officers to gather identifying information about anyone filming them.”

In September, President Donald Trump issued a memo ordering federal law enforcement to focus on ideologies that are allegedly fueling “domestic terrorism.” These include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender,” as well as opposition to “foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control).”

As Reason‘s Joe Lancaster wrote at the time, the memo was “an assault on the First Amendment” that listed protected free speech “as evidence of criminality that requires federal intervention.”

And since the Trump administration’s deportation campaign began last year, DHS officials have repeatedly insisted that following and recording federal immigration agents in public is a violation of a federal statute that makes it a crime to assault or impede law enforcement officers.

There have been dozens of recorded instances of ICE and Border Patrol officers harassing, assaulting, and detaining people for filming and following them, even though there is a well-established First Amendment right to record and observe the police.

For example, today Slate published the first-person account of Brandon Sigüenza, a Minneapolis man who was volunteering with a local group that monitors and records ICE activity. Federal immigration officers surrounded his car, smashed out his windows, roughly arrested him, and detained him for hours.

Sigüenza also submitted a sworn declaration describing his experiences in a civil rights lawsuit challenging the DHS’ actions in Minneapolis.

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Legislation Proposed To Make It Easier To Denaturalize Somali Fraudsters

In the wake of the massive Somali-fraud scandal out of Minnesota and other states, President Donald Trump wants to denaturalize American immigrants convicted of crimes and deport them, but the current legal framework and federal bureaucracy make such sweeping denaturalization efforts difficult to achieve quickly. 

“I would do it in a heartbeat if they were dishonest,” Trump told the New York Times earlier this month. “I think that many of the people that came in from Somalia, they hate our country.”

Existing federal law provides limited pathways for revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act the government can denaturalize individuals who obtained citizenship through fraud, misrepresentation, or the concealment of material facts during the naturalization process. The law does not allow automatic revocation based solely on crimes committed after naturalization. Current denaturalization proceedings require civil lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice in federal court or criminal prosecutions for naturalization fraud, both demanding individualized evidence, extensive litigation, and meeting high burdens of proof. Civil cases require “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence,” while criminal prosecutions demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has proposed a solution to this problem. He’s introduced the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act in the Senate to expand federal denaturalization authority. The legislation creates a 10-year window after naturalization during which citizens who commit specified crimes could face citizenship revocation and deportation. Among those offenses are welfare fraud exceeding $10,000, aggravated felonies, espionage, and joining terrorist organizations, a category the bill explicitly extends to gangs and drug cartels. The measure also lowers the threshold for federal authorities to begin denaturalization proceedings by broadening the legal grounds beyond fraud committed during the citizenship application process.

The bill even includes a fallback provision that automatically reduces the revocation window from ten years to five years if courts strike down the longer period as unconstitutional.

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WHAT A COINCIDENCE: While Serving in Congress, Keith Ellison Sponsored Legislation That Made it Easier to Transfer Funds to Somalia

Before becoming the attorney general of Minnesota, Keith Ellison served in the House of Representatives, for the state’s 5th District, which includes the city of Minneapolis.

During his time in congress, Ellison only sponsored one bill, the Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014. This bill made it easier to transfer funds to places overseas, like Somalia. Isn’t that fascinating?

You could not make this up.

Couple this with the fact that Ellison was caught on tape basically promising favors to fraudsters, and things are not looking good for him.

Hot Air has more on this:

It turns out that this bill was the Money Remittances Improvement Act, which created the conditions through which those hundreds of millions or likely billions of dollars were fraudulently acquired and sent off to fund the Somali civil war and to enrich members of Somali clans associated with those who settled here in Minnesota.

Any financial bill is complicated, but the most relevant portion of the bill in this case is to transfer the authority to monitor money transfers to foreign countries to the states, which are in turn supposed to ensure that federal regulations are strictly adhered to…

It’s almost as if the system were intentionally designed not to aid in the small remittances of people working in menial jobs as refugees to send money to their families back home, but rather to enable the shipment of hundreds of millions or billions of ill-gotten gains abroad.

Naah. Couldn’t be.

Such corruption is impossible in America, right? A no man with the patriotism and integrity that would vault him to the exalted heights of Congressman, Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and then Attorney General would ever participate in a scheme to defraud the state and federal governments, right?

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Secretary Noem: Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey Have Released 490 Murderers, Rapists, and Drug Traffickers onto their Streets Rather than Turn Them Over to ICE

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined Greta Van Susteren on Newsmax for an interview on Monday.

During their discussion Secretary Noem announced that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Tim Walz RELEASED 490 murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers onto the streets.

The Democrat leaders did this INSTEAD of handing them over to ICE. Who in their right mind would support this?

Secretary Kristi Noem: “We have a National Targeting Center that identifies those who’ve committed crimes. So they’ve done something in this country or in their home country that has been criminal charges against them, or they’ve been convicted. Many times, these individuals are in jails or prisons in some of our states already that we just want those local law enforcement officers to turn over to us.

“For example, one of the things we’ve asked Governor Walz for, and Mayor Frey, is to give us the criminals you have in jail. They’ve released 490 murderers, and rapists, and drug traffickers onto their streets, rather than just give them to us—and that’s what I don’t understand.”

That is TREASON! There is no other way to put it.

Angry Democrats support this!

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Aimee Bock, “mastermind” of Minnesota’s biggest fraud scheme, says “I wish I could go back and do things differently”

The Trump administration has justified its ongoing immigration crackdown in Minnesota by citing a need to curb fraud and pointing to a widening scandal involving members of the Somali American community. Yet prosecutors say the mastermind of the state’s biggest fraud scheme to date was not Somali but a White woman — 45-year-old Aimee Bock. 

In an exclusive interview from her jail cell, Bock defended her conduct, admitted regrets and argued that state officials who she worked with should bear some of the blame. It was the first time Bock spoke publicly since she was arrested for her role in what prosecutors say was a $250 million COVID-era effort to defraud a federal program to feed hungry children. 

“I wish I could go back and do things differently, stop things, catch things,” said Bock, who was the head of Feeding Our Future, the now-infamous nonprofit that signed up restaurants and caterers to receive taxpayer money for providing meals to kids. “I believed we were doing everything in our power to protect the program.”

So far, prosecutors have charged 78 defendants connected to Feeding Our Future, with more than 60 pleading guilty or convicted at trial. Nearly all are East African or of Somali descent, except for Aimee Bock.

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Minnesota leaders subpoenaed in US criminal probe over opposition to immigration crackdown

The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Jan 20 subpoenaed the offices of Minnesota’s governor and attorney-general, and mayors of Minneapolis and St Paul, as it weighed whether their public opposition to US President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities amounts to a crime.

One of the jury subpoenas, shared with the media by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, orders his office’s custodian of records to produce documents since the beginning of 2025 related to “cooperation or lack of cooperation with federal immigration authorities”.

The federal grand jury subpoenas were served on six offices of state and local Democrats, according to a Justice Department official, including those of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney-General Keith Ellison.

“Whether it is a public official, whether it is a law enforcement officer, no one is above the law in this state or in this country, and people will be held accountable,” US Attorney-General Pam Bondi said in a Fox News interview after arriving in Minnesota on Jan 16.

“Our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe, and that is what we’re going to do in Minnesota,” Ms Bondi added, without explicitly addressing the newly issued subpoenas.

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Minnesota teacher insults student’s intelligence during ugly classroom clash over Renee Good’s death

A veteran Minnesota high school teacher bizarrely raged over the details surrounding anti-ICE protester Renee Good’s death during a heated argument with a student — which ended when she insulted the boy’s intelligence, according to video of the disturbing scene. 

Becker High School social studies teacher Dr. Heather Abrahamson grew increasingly agitated as she insisted that ICE agent Jonathan Ross used unnecessary deadly force against Good, 37, according to Libs of TikTok, which posted the clip and identified Abrahamson in a Tuesday X post.

“His move should have been to go like this if he was really afraid. Your job as a police officer is to de-escalate,” the instructor can be heard saying while the camera is pointed at other students sitting at their desks in the Becker classroom. 

The video then pans to show Abrahamson, who is standing within inches of the unidentified student’s face, as she repeatedly interrupts his claim that Ross “had a split second” to decide whether to kill the mother of three.

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Nick Sortor: Legacy Media is Covering Up Riots in MN, But It Is Even Worse Than That

Independent journalist Nick Sortor described what he characterized as ongoing riots in Minneapolis and accused legacy media of minimizing the severity of the unrest during an exchange with commentator Charlie Hurt, detailing how he was attacked, robbed, and later told by police to leave the area while reporting.

Sortor said the situation in Minneapolis has been volatile from the outset and that media coverage has failed to reflect what he says is happening on the ground.

“It’s been a riot since day one. Charlie,” Sortor said.

“I mean, out here, they’ve been trying to cover it up. The legacy media in particular, they don’t want to show what’s actually going on out here.”

He explained that safety concerns forced him to report from a distance, even with police present nearby.

“I have to do this live shot from several blocks away,” Sortor said.

“You can see the police lights in the distance, but I can’t go over there anymore because I will be attacked even with police fights over there, that is not a protest.”

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Minnesota AG Ellison says anti-ICE protesters who stormed church didn’t violate FACE Act

Minnesota Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison rejects remarks from the Department of Justice that the protesters who stormed a church over the weekend are in violation of the FACE Act.

Over the weekend, a group of anti-ICE protesters stormed St. Paul’s Cities Church during a morning service.

The protesters accused the church’s pastor, David Eastwood, of being the acting ICE field office director in Minnesota.

As a result of the protest, officials at the DOJ said that the protesters may have violated the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.

Former CNN host Don Lemon was also at the church storming and he was put “on notice” by the Trump administration.

Ellison went on Lemon’s YouTube show and said the FACE Act is only for reproductive rights.

“And the FACE Act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking reproductive rights… so that people for a religious reason cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers,” Ellison said, according to Fox News.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, Harmeet Dhillon said on X that a house of worship is not a forum for protest.

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