Durba Mitra

Every time I talk to someone outside of Minnesota, we always spend time on *really* basic things they have don’t understand about what is happening here.

So let’s do a Q&A. What are your most basic questions about what’s going on in Minnesota?

And for most of us from Latin America, to be clear, fear was a byproduct of US empire in our countries. So the immigrants targeted by this regime have already been targeted by this regime. This is some really fucked up déjà vu

100%

😂

imagine if we redirected all of the billions from ICE and DHS to make the Pretti national nursing service

is time to claim the right to imagination

no notes

EMERGENCY RENT FUND: Support Workers in Minnesota Rent is due FEBRUARY 1st. Support our Emergency Rent Fund for Minnesotan workers and families facing eviction due to ICE Raids. We are calling for a rent moratorium, but regardless of if that happens ...

Trusted friends in Minneapolis tell me that this fund is supporting many people but does not have enough money. If you can give, please do: chuffed.org/project/1671...

Spaces of Anticolonialism Spaces of Anticolonialism is the first book-length account of anticolonialism in Delhi, as the capital of Britain’s empire in India. It pioneers a spatial ...

@stephenlegg11.bsky.social, Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities - University of Georgia Press, March 2025
www.ugapress.org/978082036785...
@newbooksnetwork.bsky.social discussion with Saumya Dadoo
newbooksnetwork.com/spaces-of-an...

Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days.

His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.

beautiful

My family immigrated to Minneapolis from Burma in 1981. Throughout all this bullshit, I've caught myself thinking several times I'm glad my grandmother's dead cause although she was naturalized, her English wasn't good enough to what to do/who to call if she were stopped or gods forbid detained.

😭😘💕

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congratulations Sam!

I'm very excited about this issue of GLQ. I'm teaching a seminar on queer/trans studies in the abyss this semester and this is right on theme, with articles by multiple friends and colleagues and dear ones.

Yuen: My parents thought we had made it. Now we carry papers. Living under ICE’s crackdown has changed how some Minnesotans of color, including U.S. citizens, move through the world.

"A document that once made me proud of all the places I’ve traveled is now a badge to prove I belong," writes columnist Laura Yuen. "It speaks volumes that a person like me is scared — somebody with so many privileges, including my perfect American English."

"Aren’t you scared, too?"

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember:

- Organized a city wide general strike
- Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence
- Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE
- Flipped public opinion against ICE

Donated in the name of a murdered poet and a healer.

Please look at this list with me. Since early January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement expanded its operation in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., its officers have: killed Renee Good, a white middle-class mother; menaced a pregnant immigration lawyer in her firm's parking lot; detained numerous U.S. citizens, including one who was dragged out of his house in his underwear; smashed in the windows of cars and detained their occupants, including a U.S. citizen who was on her way to a medical appointment at a traumatic brain injury center; set off crowd-control grenades and a tear gas container next to a car that contained six children, including a 6-month-old; swept an airport, demanding to see people's papers and arresting more than a dozen people who were working there; detained a 5-year-old. And now they have killed another U.S. citizen, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an I.C.U. nurse with no criminal record. It seems he was white. The agents had him down on the ground, subdued, before they apparently fired at least 10 shots at point-blank range.

Confronted with a list like this - a deluge like this - we look for details that might explain why these people were subjected to this treatment, details that might reassure us that we, by contrast, are not in danger. Good was married to a woman, and her wife, who is butch, spoke impertinently to an ICE officer, so there, Good wasn't your average white mother after all. ChongLy Thao, the man who was dragged out of his house in his underwear, is an immigrant from Laos; he is not white, and presumably he speaks with an accent. The woman on her way to the medical appointment and the family with six kids drove through areas where anti-ICE protests were taking place. The 5-year-old child's family doesn't have permanent status. Little is known about Pretti at this writing, but his father said he did participate in protests and he might have been carrying a gun (legally). We don't focus on these details in order to justify the ICE agents' actions, which are plainly brutal and unjustifiable; we do it to force the world to make sense, and to calm our

Some straightforward and useful accounting here from M Gessen:

Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti “We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti.

"Please get the truth out about our son."

If they are doing this to white people in broad daylight imagine what they are doing to non-white people in detention facilities.

Live: Minnesota reels after latest fatal shooting by federal agents Protesters gathered at a park near where a man was shot and killed by federal agents Saturday. Federal officials say the man was armed.

The family of Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis man shot and killed by federal immigration agents Saturday morning, released a statement to several media outlets. It begins: "We are heartbroken but also very angry."

“Tear Down That Fort!”: Nick Estes on Minnesota’s Resistance - and Responsibility — Weave News For the author of Our History Is the Future , the struggle against ICE is incomplete without a true anticolonial reckoning.

www.weavenews.org/stories/2026...

Hundreds have packed a Minneapolis intersection near where federal agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Alex Jeffrey Pretti earlier on Saturday.

📸: Louis Krauss

This is where we take the kids climbing, then get donuts or a banh mi afterwards. Where my 11 year old found the perfect vintage corduroy jacket at b.resale recently. Around the corner from the Minneapolis Institute of Art which is a good place to run toddlers on a cold day

As tens of thousands across America protest the violence that ICE sows with impunity, federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis today.

ICE terrorizes our cities. ICE puts us all in danger. Abolish ICE.

Yall outside of MN need to know that observers are STILL out protecting their neighbors. Right now. They know the news and they’re still out there.

Aren 💔

ICE murdered someone this morning in front of my kid’s favorite donut shop. Can’t watch the video. It was just a matter of time before it happened again. How are we going to stop them? We are quite literally all we have, no-one is coming to save us. Especially not the state.