Black Minneapolis Couple Says ICE Attacked Them And Their 6 Children With Tear Gas As They Tried To Drive Away
A Black husband and wife and their six children found themselves caught between protesters and immigration agents during a recent night of chaos in Minneapolis Wednesday night. As usual, the couple says it was agents, not protesters, who put the entire family in danger by deploying tear gas under their vehicle as they were trying to flee, with no regard for the safety of the six children who were inside.
Shawn and Destiny Jackson told KARE 11 they and their children were on their way home from their son’s basketball game, and stopped to get groceries. They said they took their normal route home from the store, but what happened on their way was far from what should be considered normal, but is becoming a regular occurence under the Trump administration’s mass deployment of federal agents in Minnesota.
From KARE 11:
“We started to see lights and stuff,” Shawn Jackson said.
“Even trying to leave, I couldn’t go backwards, forward, it was like I was just stuck.”
They say that as the situation turned chaotic, crowd deterrents were used around them, including tear gas and flashbangs.
“The one that actually exploded up under the car, I watched them throw it, I seen the sparks, and it went, I was looking out the window, and just seen the sparks coming, and it hit the ground and it rolled,” Destiny Jackson said.
“Literally, all we heard was boom, and our car went up and we came down, and every air bag deployed out of the car.”
Destiny says Shawn tried to start the car, but it wouldn’t budge. She says they then tried to escape from the car.
“I was screaming to my other, my oldest son, Shawn, I’m like, ‘get out, get out,’ like, ‘I can’t, mom, and I can’t breathe,'” she said.
Destiny says bystanders took them into a nearby house when she realized their youngest, just six months old, was still in the car.
“I was screaming, I’m like, ‘I have more kids out there, I have more kids out there,'” she said. “And people were screaming and running to my car, trying to grab the rest of my kids.”
“He was the last person to come in, he was just like, lifeless, like, he had like, foam, like, around his mouth, and you can, he had tears coming out of his eyes,” Destiny continued.
“I was giving him mouth-to-mouth, and people were calling EMS, trying to help.”
Destiny says an ambulance eventually came, taking them to the hospital.
“While we were in the ambulance, they were still throwing those bombs,” Destiny said. “And I remember the ambulance people were just telling my kids, like, ‘it’s okay, you’re safe in here.'”
Imagine being told that the inside of an ambulance is the only place you’re safe.
The Jacksons said they and all of their children were taken to the hospital and are unharmed physically, but are currently grappling with the trauma caused by what happened.
There’s no way to listen to a story about a family being attacked by ICE while trying to get their vehicles out of agents’ path and not think about the senseless killing of Renee Nicole Good, just one of the recent incidents that have arguably served as the catalyst for unrest in the Twin Cities area. (It’s almost as if deploying enough immigration cops to outnumber a city’s actual cops was a very obvious recipe for disaster that a competent administration would have seen coming.)
In fact, according to CBS News, Destiny said Good’s case was in her head as the events her family suffered unfolded, beginning when an agent ordered them to leave and they tried their best to comply.
“They said it again, and we said, ‘We’re trying, if you guys will move.’ And of course, everybody saying what happened with Renee, you know, we weren’t going to pull off while they were right there. That’s what we were trying to avoid,” Destiny said.
Good’s story is far from the only immigration cop-involved story that resembles what the Jacksons say they experienced. In November, a family reported and recorded an incident in which an agent deployed pepper-spray into their car as they were leaving an area where Border Patrol activity and a protest they weren’t involved in took place. That incident resulted in the couple’s 1-year-old baby being pepper-sprayed.
Meanwhile, more and more Minnesotans are saying what community members and local leadership in virtually every state and city where the Trump administration has deployed hundreds and thousands of federal agents: it “feels like an invasion,” and these seemingly endless droves of foot soldiers are making people more fearful, not safer.
SEE ALSO:
Why Do ICE Agents Act As Law Enforcement, Judge, And Jury?