SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There are as many as 3,000 federal immigration agents in and around Minneapolis, more than four times the number of sworn officers with the city's police department. NPR's Meg Anderson took a ride with the Minneapolis police chief to hear how the surge has affected their work.
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MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Police Chief Brian O'Hara is taking me through the neighborhoods in Minneapolis most affected by the immigration surge. The buildings here are peppered with graffiti telling ICE to get out. O'Hara says ever since an ICE officer killed Renee Macklin Good more than three weeks ago, 911 calls in the city have shot up.
BRIAN O'HARA: People making calls saying, I saw someone taken from their car by people who had masks on that we think are federal agents, and the car is left behind.
ANDERSON: Calls about pets being left behind too, about federal agents using tear gas.
O'HARA: Calls that come in just because everyone's heightened. There's a car parked outside. It's been there too long. I'm afraid it might be ICE watching my house.
ANDERSON: O'Hara says his officers are exhausted. According to the department, the police force has already spent more on overtime this month than they had budgeted for the entire year. We drive past a Taco Bell, where O'Hara and another officer pulled a car over last week for speeding through a red light. It was a Latino couple with a small child in the back.
O'HARA: And the woman looked like she didn't eat for days. I mean, she was bones. And they had stopped and picked up food real fast, and they said they were just trying to get back home because they were so scared something was going to happen.
ANDERSON: Many immigrants are afraid to leave their homes. Reports of federal officers stopping people seemingly at random off the street have become common. In the squad car, we head to an intersection near a shopping center catering to the Somali community.
O'HARA: That's where the woman was face down in the snow for, like, 10 minutes, and then she was dragged by her wrist across the blacktop. You don't see any signs that anyone's trying to de-escalate things.
ANDERSON: DHS did not respond to a request for comment on that incident. Minneapolis policy says MPD officers have a duty to intervene to stop other officers from unnecessarily harming people. But O'Hara says officers often are not present in the exact moment where harm happens. That's what happened when Alex Pretti died at the hands of Border Patrol agents. Still, the police department has received criticisms from residents who say they're not doing enough to protect people.
O'HARA: Many people have said they want us to physically intervene when they're arresting people that are undocumented, and that is literally a criminal offense. Nobody can do that.
ANDERSON: After Renee Macklin Good was killed, city and county police officers guarded the site of the killing, treating it as a crime scene. Some protesters yelled at them, accusing the officers of collaborating with ICE.
O'HARA: It's our job to get in between and try and slow things down and try and de-escalate. And oftentimes, what happens is people will perceive that as picking sides.
ANDERSON: He understands the mistrust some residents feel toward the police. After all, this is the city where an officer killed George Floyd in 2020. But the public knew who killed Floyd. The officer went to prison. The state mandated police reforms in the city. Still, 2020 left a scar, one that feels open again.
O'HARA: It's tough because I know for a lot of people, it feels like the whole world is upside down. And it sure seems like that.
ANDERSON: In recent days, federal officials have signaled a willingness to reduce the number of immigration agents in the city. They say that will depend on the cooperation of state leaders. As we head back to the station, O'Hara says it has been relatively quiet in the last few days. He says he hopes it stays that way.
Meg Anderson, NPR News, Minneapolis. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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