Speaker 1: It is unlike anything I've ever experienced before. You have
Speaker 1: these federal agents and unmarked vehicles, big trucks, SUVs, pickup trucks.
Speaker 1: Their faces are covered, they're wearing camouflage and helmets and
Speaker 1: the whole thing, And it is an omnipresent part of
Speaker 1: daily life in certain parts of the city. Road now
Speaker 1: Democratic leaders of Minnesota slamming the Trump administration of reports
Speaker 1: of planned immigration enforcement targeting Somollians and the Twin Cities.
Speaker 2: Jason de Russia lives and works as a radio host
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the past three weeks, he's watched
Speaker 2: as his city has been transformed into a battleground after
Speaker 2: Trump sent thousands of ice agents onto the streets.
Speaker 1: So they are here, and it's very different from the
Speaker 1: vibe with local police or are marked vehicles. They're not
Speaker 1: wearing masks, and people are using whistles to sort of
Speaker 1: alert the surrounding area that immigration authorities are there. So
Speaker 1: throughout the city you have this kind of cacophony of whistling.
Speaker 1: People are angry, they feel betrayed by the federal government.
Speaker 2: The city's become the epicenter of Trump's hardline immigration crackdown.
Speaker 2: As he ramps up efforts to round up and deport
Speaker 2: ten million people, promising the largest deportation in US history.
Speaker 1: Just people who are here illegally, who are being grabbed up.
Speaker 1: It's if your skin isn't white, you are being questioned
Speaker 1: and sometimes you're being detained.
Speaker 2: I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven am today
Speaker 2: WCCO host Jason to Russia on the revenge driving Trump's
Speaker 2: obsession with Minneapolis. It's Wednesday, January twenty eighth. Jason, Let's
Speaker 2: talk about Alex Preddy. Who was he and tell us
Speaker 2: about what happened to him.
Speaker 1: I think Alex pretty and his shooting will go down
Speaker 1: as the turning point for this. Alex Freddy was a
Speaker 1: thirty seven year old intensive care nurse. He like men people,
Speaker 1: especially younger people, was out there actively sort of observing.
Speaker 3: He was agitating.
Speaker 1: Perhaps we don't know the full encounter, but what we
Speaker 1: know from the videos is he was trying to come
Speaker 1: to the rescue of a woman who was shoved by
Speaker 1: an ICE agent. The ICE agents surrounded him, sprayed him
Speaker 1: with pepper spray, pulled him to the ground. They were
Speaker 1: all over him, and one agent pulled a handgun that
Speaker 1: appeared to be in his waist holster. In Minnesota, you can,
Speaker 1: if you have the right license, legally carry a handgun,
Speaker 1: and he did have the right license. But then ICE
Speaker 1: agents fired shot after shot after shot and killed him
Speaker 1: in the hours afterwards. It's the federal government said that
Speaker 1: he was intending to do maximum damage for PREDI.
Speaker 4: The Department of Homeland Security claimed he approached the US
Speaker 4: Border Patrol officers with a nine millimeter semi automatic handgun,
Speaker 4: violently resisted attempts to be disarmed, and wanted to do
Speaker 4: maximum damage and massacre.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement, you know, portraying him like he was some
Speaker 1: sort of intended assassin of the ICE agents, when the
Speaker 1: video showed just the opposite. And so the combination of
Speaker 1: the shock of his killing and the lies was really
Speaker 1: a tipping point where a lot of Minnesotans who have
Speaker 1: been on the sideline have come forward and said no more.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: We've had all of these different accounts about what actually happened.
Speaker 2: What is it that the local authorities are saying.
Speaker 1: The state here is trying to do their own investigation,
Speaker 1: But when state investigators showed up on the scene, the
Speaker 1: federal in investigators refuse to allow them entry, refused to
Speaker 1: allow them to preserve the crime scene, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a couple hours later, every it is gone. And you think, like,
Speaker 1: I've been a journalist for more than twenty five years
Speaker 1: and I've covered plenty of law enforcement involved shootings, and
Speaker 1: usually it's taped off and blocked off for blocks, investigated
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours on the scene. Here they were
Speaker 1: gone by a couple hours, and the FEDS didn't even
Speaker 1: let the state people in, and instead you have an
Speaker 1: administration that is pronouncing judgment two hours afterwards and telling
Speaker 1: you that the guy who was killed is the bad guy.
Speaker 1: So there's a lack of trust right where if you
Speaker 1: don't trust.
Speaker 3: What do you have?
Speaker 2: Okay, So that lack of trust has been building for weeks.
Speaker 2: This isn't the first violence or even the first death
Speaker 2: we've had in Minneapolis. So how did we get here?
Speaker 1: We saw these videos over and over of random stops.
Speaker 6: A terrified woman flees two men in masks. It's not
Speaker 6: a mugging. She's an American citizen being chased by Ice
Speaker 6: agents who think she's here illegally.
Speaker 1: There was a teenager stopped at a gas station just
Speaker 1: because of the color of his skin.
Speaker 4: Doesn't votal.
Speaker 3: But then there was another shooting.
Speaker 7: Renee Good appears calm as she speaks to the officer.
Speaker 7: When another ICE officer orders her out of the car.
Speaker 7: She then turns her steering wheel to the right and
Speaker 7: begins to drive and three shots ring.
Speaker 1: Now, so that really escalated things to another level. But now,
Speaker 1: within you know, three weeks, two people have been killed
Speaker 1: on the streets of Minneapolis. The immigration surge here, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to as an outsider, to say,
Speaker 1: why were they focused on Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: Minneapolis shares a border with Canada.
Speaker 1: When you think about illegal immigration, you don't think Minneapolis
Speaker 1: is the headquarters of this. You have to bear in
Speaker 1: mind that right now in our city there are three
Speaker 1: thousand federal agents, ICE agents, Border patrol agents. The city
Speaker 1: of Minneapolis has six hundred police officers, three thousand federal
Speaker 1: agents who are here who are not here before, compared
Speaker 1: to the normal police force of six hundred.
Speaker 2: Jason, you said before that the focus on Minneapolis suggests
Speaker 2: that this isn't just about cracking down on immigration. So
Speaker 2: what is it really about.
Speaker 3: I think it's about retribution.
Speaker 1: I think it's about power, It's about showing that you
Speaker 1: have the power and the full force of the federal government.
Speaker 1: Is just a way to settle a score. That's what
Speaker 1: it feels like to people here.
Speaker 2: Coming up why Trump wants payback, Jason, can you tell
Speaker 2: me more about why Trump has targeted Minneapolis in particular.
Speaker 1: It all goes back to a longstanding of argument that
Speaker 1: the President of the United States has had with the
Speaker 1: state of Minnesota. So, first of all, he lost his
Speaker 1: campaign for president in the state three times, and he
Speaker 1: believes that that's because of fraud, and he thinks part
Speaker 1: of that fraud was people who were here illegally who
Speaker 1: were voting for his opponent. Our state Governor Tim Walls
Speaker 1: ran for vice president with Kamala Harris against Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and Jade Vancid. I think some of the beef stems
Speaker 1: from that the President publicly posted on truth social that
Speaker 1: Minnesota would see retribution. But then the more immediate aftermath
Speaker 1: was a scandal in Minnesota where there was more than
Speaker 1: a billion dollars of fraud discovered in social services welfare
Speaker 1: type benefits that the state administered federal money. And most
Speaker 1: of the people who had been charged by the US
Speaker 1: Attorney are Somali Americans. But that gave an opening to say, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to send in all these troops and clean
Speaker 1: up the illegal immigrant fraud.
Speaker 8: Minnesota is a train wreck. It is corrupt, and it
Speaker 8: was under the leadership of Governor Walls in this mayor
Speaker 8: that they allowed it to happen, and they let criminals in,
Speaker 8: illegals and people abuse programs and steal the money.
Speaker 1: Part of the controversy of being here in Minneapolis is
Speaker 1: if you were really trying to get a large number
Speaker 1: of undocumented illegal people out of here.
Speaker 3: We're not a huge city.
Speaker 1: We're not even in the top ten of the biggest
Speaker 1: cities in the country that they believe have undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 1: But that is been their mission, go get as many
Speaker 1: as you can and get them out. And there was
Speaker 1: reporting over the weekend that there is an incentive system
Speaker 1: set up where ICE agents are getting bonuses for people
Speaker 1: that they arrest. They're not getting bonuses for successful cases,
Speaker 1: but they're getting bonuses for grabbing people up.
Speaker 2: So what kind of tactics are they using to do that.
Speaker 1: Some of what's happening is that immigration authorities are going
Speaker 1: to workplaces and auditing their paperwork, and frankly, a lot
Speaker 1: of People who are skeptical of mass immigration arrests often
Speaker 1: say like, well, why aren't you going to after the
Speaker 1: people who are hiring people who are here illegally. The
Speaker 1: effort that's gotten more attention is the fact that there
Speaker 1: are video encounters of sort of these random You know,
Speaker 1: if you follow the agents, they'll pull you over. If
Speaker 1: I continually see you following us, interfering with us, honking
Speaker 1: your horns, blocking our cars.
Speaker 5: You have a very high probability of making a really bad.
Speaker 3: Decision and being arrested.
Speaker 1: If you look brown or black, they'll pull you over,
Speaker 1: pull you out of the car.
Speaker 3: Roughy up.
Speaker 1: It's just very like it feels like it's out of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties kind of rough and tough kind of
Speaker 1: cop stuff, so very aggressive and sort of violent interactions.
Speaker 1: You have certain pockets that have higher concentration of you know,
Speaker 1: Latino immigrants or Somali immigrants or Asian immigrants, and so
Speaker 1: they have been focusing in those areas at times, going
Speaker 1: door to door, pulling people out of cars. You know,
Speaker 1: there are rules of engagement on these things that used
Speaker 1: to be followed, and now it seems that anything is
Speaker 1: up for grabs. The way they've been acting here. It's
Speaker 1: very troubling and it does have a large number of
Speaker 1: people here afraid, afraid to leave their house, afraid they're
Speaker 1: going to be snatched up and detained. The new mayor
Speaker 1: of the city of Saint Paul has to carry her
Speaker 1: passport card around with her because she is a refugee,
Speaker 1: and so she has to have her papers with her.
Speaker 1: So it's this, I don't know what it's like in Australia.
Speaker 1: If if show me your papers is something that people
Speaker 1: would expect, but it's not what we expect.
Speaker 3: It's not how things are done.
Speaker 2: And Jason, we had the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, writing
Speaker 2: to the governor over the weekend urging a change of course.
Speaker 2: Could you tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Her letter was interesting.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of things where she was laying
Speaker 1: out were ingredients that would lead to an end to
Speaker 1: the ice surge in Minneapolis. She was demanding cooperation and
Speaker 1: then she wanted the voter roles from Minnesota. So this
Speaker 1: is something the federal government has been asking for private
Speaker 1: voter information. And the President, in this obsession that the
Speaker 1: election was rigged against him in Minnesota, wants to look
Speaker 1: into the voter roles in this state. Today, the governor
Speaker 1: and the mayor mini Sapolis both talked to the President
Speaker 1: of the United States. This is something that should have
Speaker 1: happened months ago, but finally happened today. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a good sign. But I do think that the
Speaker 1: President of the United States knows that he's losing support,
Speaker 1: and he does not want to lose support, and so
Speaker 1: I do expect there will be some way by the
Speaker 1: end of this week that the Trump administration can say
Speaker 1: mission accomplished, we got five thousand undocumented whatever they want
Speaker 1: to say, but they'll take a win, and the local
Speaker 1: leaders will take a win too, and they'll say we
Speaker 1: got them out of here, so everybody gets a win,
Speaker 1: and then we could move forward. And we've seen quite
Speaker 1: a bit of movement in Minneapolis, in fact, on this day,
Speaker 1: where the outspoken commander of the Border Patrol who's been
Speaker 1: the public face of this whole effort, is being replaced.
Speaker 5: CBS News has learned that Bovino is departing Minneapolis imminently,
Speaker 5: as are many other cvps, and well Vino at least
Speaker 5: has been relieved of his command in Minneapolis. He remains
Speaker 5: in charge of operations across the country of the White House.
Speaker 1: And so is that a step towards some sort of resolution.
Speaker 3: Perhaps.
Speaker 1: I do expect that this will wind down, and so
Speaker 1: we'll see the political tides are turning, for sure.
Speaker 2: And Jason, finally, on a personal level, how does it
Speaker 2: feel to be watching all of this happen in your
Speaker 2: home city?
Speaker 1: You know, it's exhausting, it is heavy. We do not
Speaker 1: like being the center of the world's attention. This has
Speaker 1: been my home for more than twenty years, and it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: But this place always has had an activist bent and
Speaker 1: a social justice bent, and there's an idea here that
Speaker 1: if you raise your voice, that you can affect change.
Speaker 1: And I do have hope that people will see the
Speaker 1: good here and not just focus on some of the
Speaker 1: images that they've seen. The President has seen that these
Speaker 1: tactics generate this sort of activity, so it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to have this sort of full, aggressive, in your face
Speaker 1: tough guys coming to town were enforcing immigration laws without
Speaker 1: the anger, without a shooting. So I am optimistic that
Speaker 1: things got so bad here that it will prevent this
Speaker 1: from happening in other cities.
Speaker 2: Jason, thank you so much for sharing all of this with.
Speaker 3: Us my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Also in the news, allies of Opposition leader Susan Lee
Speaker 2: have declared their support amid growing speculation about her leadership.
Speaker 2: The coalition split last week after Susan Lee accepted the
Speaker 2: resignation of three National shadow ministers who defied official coalition
Speaker 2: policy and voted against new hate laws in the Senate.
Speaker 2: Shadow Attorney General Andrew Wallace and Liberal frontbencher Tim Wilson
Speaker 2: of both denied rumors that anyone within the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: is mounting a leadership challenge, and a thirty one year
Speaker 2: old man has been charged after a home made explosive
Speaker 2: device was thrown into a crowd of people at an
Speaker 2: Invasion Day rally in central Perth. Officers evacuated a crowd
Speaker 2: of around two thousand people from Perth CBD on Monday
Speaker 2: after a device containing explosive liquid, ball bearings and screws
Speaker 2: was found but did not detonate. The device was taken
Speaker 2: for preliminary testing by police forensics teams. I'm Nicole Johnston.
Speaker 2: This is seven a m. Thanks for listening
Speaker 5: And