Special Report: Surveillance and snatch squads in Trump's new America

This is a global player, original podcast. A quick note before we start. We were staggered by the response to our reporting from Minneapolis and St Paul, the Twin Cities. But we came home with far more material and we could fit into any main show. So here is a snapshot. One day in a place where 24 hours now feels like a political lifetime. 24 hours in Minneapolis and St Paul inside Donald Trump's surveillance state. This is the reality of life in Minneapolis right now. The most politicized city in America living under a shadow of daily repressive fear from the state. A state that this city has effectively forced or been forced to mobilize against the federal government and it has become part of the rhythm of daily life. This is a special report from Minneapolis. Welcome to the news agents. We are standing outside the belly of the beast. At least that's how these people would sit. We are standing in front of the Bishop Whipple Federal Office Building which is an innocuous name for something that is anything but innocuous politically in this city in Minneapolis, in this state, Minnesota right now. People are scared. People are terrified. They're not leaving their homes. People are having to deliver groceries to their neighbors. People are not going to school. Kids are not going to school because they're terrified. I've been here protesting. I'm actually an immigrant from Guatemala but nothing can stop us. I don't care. I have my face out here. I'm disabled. It's just like the white people aren't going to do it for us. The other upper class isn't going to do it for us. So I'm here for my own people and I'm here for everyone else because this is terrorism that is happening in this country and I refuse to let it go on. I don't appreciate ice here. I don't appreciate what they're doing and I want them out of my city and frankly out of my country. I don't know who would take them but we are sick of them terrorizing us. This is Minneapolis, y'all. You come out here. You show them. We're not afraid. You push them every second you got. They clear the street. You come right back. They shoot peppermoles at you. You bring your friends tomorrow. That is what we're doing here. You got second amendment here. We make them scared. You come to my house with a bullshit one. I'll fucking tell you. You hear that ice? What strikes you in the Twin Cities is how quickly the fear becomes ordinary. It doesn't matter who you talk to within minutes they'll tell you a story including our Uber driver, Liban. So how long have you lived in Minneapolis? 26 years. 26 years. 26 years. And have you, while you've been driving it so recently, have you encountered ice? Yeah, I saw a couple of areas. One day I saw the, he was, do the checkpoint. And when I see it, I turn around because I don't have my passport. So I go back home to get the passport because I was scared to get arrested. Even though you're an American citizen, right? Yes. So you're a citizen, but it is on your mind that if you don't have your papers, just when you're doing your job, you're driving around picking people up that they'll come for you. Yes. You have to have your passport right now. If you don't have your passport, you're going to get arrested. That's scary. Yeah, so it's very scary. If you don't, if you're a citizen or non-citizen, everybody's scary. And this feels new. I mean, this isn't something that you've had, you know, years ago. Yeah, we've never seen before, like, the scenes I live here. Well, I never heard, like, this situation happened in America before. This is the first time everybody's scary. Leban isn't alone, as I say, everyone here feels like they have a story about ICE. The five-year-old boy reportedly obtained by officers on the way to school, the old man frog marched out of his house into the bitter cold, not even wearing a shirt on his back. The baby whose parents were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ingested tear gas. School officials in Minneapolis say ICE agents targeted and detained a five-year-old boy on his way home. His name is Liam Ramos. He's five years old, wearing a blue bunny hat he attends a preschool in Minnesota. His teacher say he was rounded up by ICE agents. According to lawyers, he's now in detention with his father in Texas. Within moments, William Verme was in handcuffs after he says that he was observing an ice arrest on a Minneapolis sidewalk. He's an Army veteran serving in the Iraq war. He was awarded a purple heart and was wounded overseas. "Do not talk to them!" "You fucking assholes!" Now, Khan on video, a mother, arrested by ICE, several officers, some of them wearing face coverings, forcefully removed her from her car. In the video, you can hear the woman say, quote, "They do not have a warrant. They forcefully open the door." "Good morning to you, Rachel. While we're entering week three of the unrest here in Minnesota and the clashes between protesters and law enforcement are showing no signs of slowing down." That isn't surprising, although it is shocking, because for over 60 days Donald Trump has sent wave after wave of ICE agents a body created 25 years ago to keep people out to do something for which they were never designed to enforce law within. It's been reported that they're working on commission. The backlash, as you can hear, is ferocious and is of course led to the most tragic of consequences. Following breaking news in Minneapolis, where city officials confirm a shooting occurred, reportedly involving a federal ICE agent and a civilian this morning. One of the weird things about journalism sometimes is that you go to places which end up being really important for politics and nationally and internationally. And yet they are so innocuous and they seem so ordinary and pedestrian. The East's 34th Street in Minneapolis is one of those places because it is the place where really good to smell a week or so ago was shot dead by ICE agents. It has been another event in this city involving a law enforcement officer not so long ago, which is ricocheted around this country, ricocheted around its politics and even around the world. And where I am standing now, in the sort of street which when you summon your image and your mind's eye of what a typical America and reasonably prosperous suburban street looks like, it is East 34th Street, big, tree line street, big, massive, American houses. It's currently a place of pilgrimage, a place of pilgrimage for ordinary people from Minneapolis and beyond who come here in this site where really good was killed to pay their respects. And it is on that exact spot surrounded by flowers, teddies, placards, toys, all of the rest of it, to honour her death. I live in Minneapolis and just as Minnesotans, our neighbour was killed, just paying our respects. My mum is well and this isn't what Minnesotans for. Do you think people here have been able to make sense of it? I don't think so. I think people are trying to do our best to hold everyone together, but it's just hard. What's it like living in Minneapolis right now? I mean this is on one level should be a pretty normal American city and it fails anything but normal for people here. Minneapolis is normally a very vibrant city that everybody is happy and excited to be in. It's a really fun city to live in and recently it's just been very somber. Somber? Yeah. Everybody's scared. Everybody's sad and nobody knows who to trust anymore. What they scared of? The government. It's scared to be your own government. Yeah. Why have you come here today? Because this is a tragic incident that should not have happened and I really kind of wanted to see what had happened. I just lost my mom. I know what it's like to lose someone and it gets your heart and there was no need for it and I just kind of just have my rem, remember it's this. What do you think it says about where America is right now? This is taking place. Well, since you're from the UK I don't want you to collapse Trump's America with the real people of America. We are not him. We have compassion. We have respect for the rule of law for our democracy. It saddens me to read the news from other countries that are just we're not coming to America. You guys are sick here. We're not sick. Most of us are just like other people who want to live a good life. Treat people with respect. We have our tax dollars used for things we want them used for like roads, education, health care. This is just sad. It's so sad and that as a mother I can't imagine leaving a six year old without a mom. And the blatant lies that the media is saying, the right wing media is saying about what happened here. I mean, it's 1984. Use your eyes, your ears. This is sick. I mean, there's America sick right now. We're really sick. We're worse than COVID and worse than any flu. It's I don't know. I don't know how this is going to turn out. It's just so sad. So we're just walking away from the site where ready was killed. I ran a good was killed. And we didn't want to show it. And obviously we couldn't on the podcast version. Anyway, but even for the film we didn't want to show. There are a number of people there who are just turning up and they're in floods of tears, in floods of tears. And you can understand why because it is so unspeakably tragic and so unspeakably senseless. And the worst thing is, of course, it is not an isolated incident. It is not an isolated incident because that happened because in this city for months now, another city is like it, but for reasons we'll discuss many appletism in the center of it. For months and months and months, ICE agents, immigration, custom enforcement agents. Have been acting with apparent impunity. Using tactics and violence against American citizens and non-citizens alike that would make authoritarian regimes blush. If you're wondering what Rene Good was doing, why she was on that street, the answer lies in where we went next. To meet a woman in a modest home, a few streets away called Erin, a home brewer of home and a maid, married to a musician who, like a legion of her neighbours, has left her ordinary life to become part of a citizen army. So it's been going off? Well, I've been sat here. Yes. Mostly right now it's talking about who wants to go with, who I don't know any of these people. I think I know some of them, but they don't, you know, it's anonymous. So there's a big group. Big group connected to other big groups. I don't think that any of this is a secret. It feels a little weird to just be like, oh, here's what's happening, here's what's happening. But I don't believe that it's, I mean, people know, the fact is, no, that people are talking to each other. So I don't know what kind of shit I'm getting myself into, but even talking to you in the first place. I'm sure before. I'm sure before. There's pros and cons to doing this. But the idea is, is that you basically, you've got this big network, which is sort of constantly beeping and constantly going off, which is saying, ice has been spotted here or the police have been spotted there. We need to, some people in this place or that place to go and observe and check what they're doing. That's the idea. Precisely. So usually if that kind of comes in and the ones that I've seen literally like right here on this block, there's 35th Street and 36th Street on either side of us are the sort of arteries to the highway to 35W. So it's just constant. We don't even like fry. You know, like we really don't. So. When you've heard about Rene Good's murder, do you know what flash through your mind? What went through your mind? I, well, in that day, that was the day that when I woke up to the whistles and horns out on the street and then two hours later, wait, somebody got killed. I was putting my shoes on to go do something. I don't know. You know, I was so angry that I'm a very peaceful person, but like it was just, that could have been me in a second. That could have been any one of my friends in a second, right? She's, you know, a little bit younger than me. Like a mom dropping off her kids, you know, coming from picking up her kids and thinking she can sort of talk to these agents like normal because why wouldn't you be able to do that? You know, like it's so surreal. Like how would you even, it's so beyond your reality that immigration agents could be running around shooting people. Like it's so beyond what anybody could consider as normal here in America. How can you react properly? How would you even know how to react? One guy saying, "Get out of the car." One guy saying, "Get out of here." How would you know? Right? And so, any of us is going to be confused in that situation. You know, we saw the other woman the other day, got pulled out of her car, just basically a block away from where good was murdered. How is she supposed to know? And so that could be me, that could be any of us, you know. Are you afraid to your life? Low level, sure. Yeah. I'm not going to sit in dwell on that because otherwise you'd become non-functional. But if I'm in a place at a time, you know, I have a tendency to, I have a strong sense of justice, you know, sensitivity like, I'm not going to, I know myself and I know that I would react, you know, I would never assault, hurt, throw something at agencies. It's never something that I would do, but I would try to help somebody, you know, if I was really that scared, you know, I would, I'm not the running away person, I will run towards it and that's why I'm laying a little bit more low, you know. And so when I was getting my shoes on, I go out the door after good was murdered. Thank God my sister called me just to check on me from DC. And I was like, I'm, I gotta go do something, I gotta do something, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I gotta just talk to me down. And so I calm down and stayed here for another couple hours and then I was like, okay, I'm gonna take the dog with me to go and pay my respects. If I have a dog with me, I won't want her to get in any danger. So what would you have done? I don't know, I don't know, I was just like, I don't know. But that's how that's the fever pitch you were at. Yeah, like, I'm crash with cart, I wouldn't really, right? But it was like these thoughts are just like, how can I do this? You know? To give a sense of just how pervasive and sophisticated that citizen surveillance network is consider that not 10 minutes after we'd left Erin's house, I received a text from her saying that some of that buzzing on her phone had been about our car parked up outside with our security guys. Within 20 minutes our plates have been logged, photos taken and someone dispatched to keep watch. This is the panopticum twin cities. Twin, no, dual surveillance states. And Erin is in good company. We're not just talking the regular suspects that we saw protesting outside the Whipple building. One of them is Ashley, with whom we spoke at a coffee shop on a strip mall in the outskirts of the city. These are her allegations and she is far from alone in making them. My name is Ashley Lopez and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota and I work in education. Higher education is a specific. And Ashley, your life has changed quite recently. I would say the last week, maybe eight days, I went from being upset about what was happening to being deeply involved in trying to help people. And now I, when I'm not working or trying to live my regular life, just trying to make sure my neighbors are good and be a part of what's happening. And when you say that, what does that mean, practically speaking like, how is your life change, what you're doing? Yeah, so mainly the way I started out was I was just picking up groceries for close friends who aren't able to leave their homes, taking people to work, who were scared to drive. And now what that means is that I am trying to make sure people know their rights and help contribute to groups of us who are working as constitutional observers to make sure that we know who I says and where they are so that we can record the atrocities that they're committing and make sure that people in the neighborhood know where they are so that they can be safe at all times. And that also means even small things like making sure that people are getting their trash picked up from their homes if they can't even leave to throw it there. Their garbage, people have talked about ice brutality and the brutality of ice tactics. He just sort of explained, put some flesh on the bone of kind of impractice what that means, like what have you seen, what have your colleagues seen? What is it that they're doing that is so egregious? Because of course some people will say, some Americans will say, some even British people listening to this might say, well look, you know there isn't a legal immigration problem, they're dealing with it. But how are they dealing with it? It's so appalling. What is it they're doing? I can tell you things that I've seen and things that have happened to me as well. I've been chased out of parking lots by ice who saw that I was just trying to observe their actions. Ice vehicles have run me off the road or tried to crash into my car or provoke me to crash into them. I've also seen ice agents breaking windows and trying to detain people for just observing which is their constitutional right. We know their pepper spraying entire vehicles so that they can hurt the drivers inside the vehicles. They're all people, it's regular community members that are getting hurt. Pepper spraying ordinary people. Yeah and not just pepper spraying people but like pepper spraying their cars so that we have our heaters on, it's menaceau to the middle of winter. Pepper spray someone's car and it's all pepper spray in the cars they're trying to drive. They're violently detaining people with disabilities, they're violently detaining young people so like people who are under age, they're going to elementary and middle schools and they're also detaining high schoolers getting dropped off the bus. Taking primary school, elementary school kids away when they go to school. They sure are and also daycares. They're staging at childcare centers, daycares, preschools. They've taken folks from a local early childhood learning center and they also, this is also something I've seen with my own eyes. Ice vehicles chasing school buses full of children that are like no more than 10 years old. So to the extent that they can't stop me off the bus. It's actually just just to reiterate that because in a way you're saying it so casually but it's so, no no and I understand it because you're used to it but it's like they're chasing school buses for the kids. Yeah. And you've seen that. I have. Yeah I was part of a group of folks who were trying to stay behind the school buses but to make sure that we were alerting neighborhood groups, we were learning the school and parents. Why would they do that? Why? It's all it's terror. I think what they're really trying to do is to create enough fear to where people will either self-deport or leave the area. I think a lot of it is like wanting to normalize this level of state violence so that we get used to it and we just accept whatever comes next. Do you feel fuel life? Honestly. No. Not yet. But I do see a future in which just by being out here and speaking about this and being involved and trying to protect my neighbors and my community, I could see myself being on a list now. I mean presumably Trump would call you a domestic terrorist because you're just doing what Rene Good was doing. Yeah. Literally the same sort of thing. So in the eyes of the federal government in a sense, you're a domestic terrorist. I would say, I probably am. I am now. Now I'm talking to you. Yeah. And that's the scary thing is that we are literally just regular people like I'm not an activist. I'm not a protestor. I'm just a person who tries to go to work and like to care my loved ones and live. You ain't involved in like protest or radical left as they would call it or anything like that before. No, honestly, no. What you're watching in Minneapolis is political authority breaking down. The states claim to legitimacy eroding. Here ordinary citizens are chasing federal officers through the streets and the officers are running. We saw it and we'll bring it to you after this. News You Can Trust and the conversations that matter. With award-winning journalist at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marx, my American week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff. Discover how today's story affects your life. Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app. LBC leading Britain's conversation. The News Agents. Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws and I believe that they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous. That's why over the past six years deportations of criminals are up 80%. And that's why we're going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Violence, not families, criminals, not children, gang members. Not a mom who's working hard to provide for her kids. Deportation is nothing new. President Obama deported three million illegal migrants. Heavy-handed police tactics in America is nothing new. What is new is the federal government employing what many people believe is an extra legal militia to take people outside of the legal system. And they don't use warrants. They just take it from the streets. And the proof of that in a way is what we saw when we joined MIRR, a Mexican-American citizen in a truck for a whole day. MIRRR isn't law enforcement. She's a citizen. And right now, she spends her days trying to find ICE before ICE finds her neighbors. They came into my house for a day before today. Well, I stood. Yeah. Really? Yeah. They read my plates and they came to my house. I was doing some rides around and then when I came back to my house, because it was on our alert close to my house. And I went to see, and it was like eight trucks. So we just go around to them and be vegan and used them to wassle. And why did they come to your house, MIRRR? Why? They say because I was following them. I just saw them and I started using my wassle and I report like, "Oh, there's two cars of ICE here." And then I was driving to my house and my son called me and they're outside the house and my mom is in front. And then I came and I parked in front and I went down to ask them what they need, right? And they started talking. Like the guy, this guy started telling me like, "I was a bitch and like really bad words." And then I just like, "You know what?" And then he get out and start screaming, "Now you're scared, right? Now you're scared. Just get off." I'm like, "No, I'm not scared." You were a citizen? Yes, I am. When did you start carrying your passport? The last week of November? When you're out on patrol, how often do you see ICE agents, ICE raids and so on? I like, like often, like maybe when I go to a street where they tell me they are, I found them and then we'd last them and then after 15 minutes they send another emergency alert and it's close to my area and then I go and they're out there. So maybe like 15 to 20 minutes, they're moving but they're more fast to be honest. The real ice SUV is just at least three, maybe more five, four, four or five, all now. And we have a convoy which we're trying to follow. And so now we're following this convoy of ICE vehicles, unmarked ICE vehicles which activated their sirens and now they're speeding off through suburban Minneapolis, presumably to the next target, however those targets are defined and chosen, which is not clear. Can they be not blue so you can go ahead? That's fine. No, there's no way back this time. We're looking like they have a warrant. So they're just giving us the V sign. If they knocked on the door but no one answered because of the whistles, probably. They're paying us, we're driving away. Pulling up to a car in the middle of a car park outside of a school which is deserted because it's Sunday. Black tower windows. They're a very full-boating way just watching, just watching the road. Just sat there. You think there's one right in front of us, guys? Ordinary people watching the police officers to stop them from doing harm. It is an inversion of the proper political order. Again, it is not supposed to happen in democracies but then the list of things that are not supposed to happen in democracies happening in America right now is long. So we're in a cab on our way. I actually speak with some local politicians and we just noticed and again it just adds to the sense that this is such a kinetics, such a moving story where the intensity is just ramping up and up and up. Just notice the Minnesota Star Tribune which is the State Paper tweeting out that the Minnesota National Guard is being mobilised and will be staging to support local law enforcement and emergency management services and the personnel of the National Guard being called up for at least 72 hours as of last night. And that is just representative of how this battle which is seemingly about icy immigration is actually about so much more. What you're seeing is the State Government led by the Democratic Government in World's and the Federal Government led by obviously Donald Trump being set up for a huge clash which is manifesting itself politically, it's manifesting itself militarily, it's manifesting itself legally and you are quite literally seeing the State Government in effect calling up its own people in opposition to the Federal Government's own police, military force, whatever you want to call them. You know there's a word for that and it's usually complete democratic breakdown. That's what it feels like. It feels like you are seeing the breakdown of a constitutional order and it's very, very hard to see how that resolves because it feels as if one side has got to win over the other. I'm Zayn Ahmed the State Senator in South Minneapolis, the district right across and this is Dorn Clark. I'm Dorn Clark the proud Senator of right here, Cedar Riverside in Minneapolis. Do you have any sense, do you know as elected local leaders, do you know is there any transparency at all about how ice select their targets, about how they choose who they're going to raid, where they're going to raid, the manner in which they're going to do it, is there any transparency about their rationality methodology? They have not told us what they're doing but we know what we're seeing. We know that we're seeing people just get pulled off from a bus stop because they are a black or brown. We know that they are stopping in front of the Super Mercado Latino, grabbing two people, running around the corner, checking their ID and dumping them out. And is it targeted? Yes, it's targeted based on, well, whatever is in the eye of this is what I think a citizen should look like. But they've no, they've no, how did any transparency about how they come to those decisions? Well, in a normal government, the federal government, let's say local government know hey, we're coming to enforce immigration laws. Here's the duration of the time we're going to be here and sometimes they'll even tell them who they're targeting. That's ice has been operating in this state for decades and nobody said anything because they're going to do what they need to do and follow the rule of law. That's not what's happening here. It is odd that the local government does not know what's happening, what they're trying to do here. Me as a state senator, I don't know what to communicate to my constituents because I don't know what I'm not aware of what the federal government is doing. I don't know what ice is doing here besides targeting anybody and so there's a lack of communication, there's a lack of cooperation when it comes to working with the local government here. I mean, we heard just yesterday while we're here that he's using Department of Justice to go after Tim Worlds and going after the mayor of Minneapolis for, wasn't entirely clear what they've done, but I mean, you know, he's basically saying that they're impeding ice's work and so on. I mean, this is a war against this state, isn't it? It really is a war against the state. It's the full strength of the federal government finding every which way to go. All right, we don't know if there's anything here, but we're going to show up. We just saw that a toy store in St. Paul yesterday that has filed suit against the federal government has been served with a, from the Department of Homeland Security. They got to show all their HR files. It's clear retaliation and the government, Trump's government is doing this to the whole state of Minnesota. They're picking on the little guy, the little toy store on Grand Avenue. That's just part of what Trump does. He punches down because I don't know what he's scared of, but he's scared. The Trump administration, of course, has a very different diagnosis for why they've targeted Minneapolis. Because of a few very far left agitators, a lot of these guys are unable to do their jobs without being harassed, without being docksed and sometimes without being assaulted. That's totally unacceptable. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you. Somebody who said, "Oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country." I could say that about other countries too. If you understand this in context, this is the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided that they're not going to cooperate with immigration enforcement at all. In fact, they're going to aggressively not co-op. But I would ask that the governor stops inciting the harassment and illegal obstruction of law enforcement in his state. All ICE and federal law enforcement are trying to do are removed people like this off of the streets of Governor Walce's city in Minneapolis and of his state in Minnesota. If you look at some of the individuals in this photo, these are all illegal alien criminals who came into our country under the previous administration. This is some of the most disturbing crimes you will ever read about. And there's only a few reporters in this room who will actually talk about these individuals. This is all ICE is trying to do. We can go one way or the other and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking an engorbed into our country. That last point is just a flat out lie. What's happening with ICE in the Twin Cities isn't really about immigration at all. It's about how far the American state can go. I've become a live fire test of federal authority. How many agents you can flood into a liberal city, how aggressively you can operate, how much force you can use and how little local consent you need to do it. For Trump and Magga, this is a proving ground. If Washington can impose itself here in a democratic stronghold with hostile local leaders and skeptical courts, we can do it anywhere. So this isn't border control. It's better to think about it as a rehearsal for a much more centralized coercive presidency, one that treats internal dissent the way it wants treated illegal crossings. That feeling of a new authoritarianism is certainly something ordinary Americans are grappling with back to that conversation with Ashley. In my opinion, and I think this is a pretty generally shared opinion, I do think that it's an attempt to see how far the militarization of our police force can go. I think they are trying to normalize this level of state violence because if they can get us to just accept that this is our new reality, then we start looking the other way when they start pushing authoritarianism further and further. I also think they want to measure what community pushback would be against these tactics, but ultimately it's all part of a strategy that's not really about immigration. It's genuinely I think about authoritarianism. Do you think this is about the midterms? Some people think it's about the midterms and about, you know, that you could use ice at some point to just disrupt that process. Do you think that's likely? I do believe so. I think if you had asked me a couple months ago if I thought that they would use ice to try and disrupt the elections, then I might have felt a little conspiratorial to me. Me too. Right. But I mean, after the last week or so, seeing how things have escalated, I would absolutely say that, yeah, it feels like there is an attempt with not just the Trump administration with ice, but also with supporters who are violent far-right folks, want instigate violence. They want Trump to use the Insurrection Act to declare martial law here. And that in itself would give an excuse to cancel elections, which I think is rather the tactic. And I don't think I'm saying anything crazy anymore. I think a lot of us are really starting to see that as a possibility. There is, though, another part to this story. This is a tale about Republican radicalization, but it's a story about democratic radicalization too, or at the very least, Democratic Party failure. Over night, Minneapolis on fire. The first time we are seeing the moments leading up to the arrest of George Floyd, newly released videos from the body cameras worn by two former Minneapolis officers are shutting new light into the death that set off protests around the world. Tonight, a judge ordering that release of two body camera videos from George Floyd's arrest and death. Let me see all their hands. Please, my soft, old hands. Before the rain started, tonight, thousands of people marched in Minneapolis to protest the death of George Floyd. Protesters were also in Minneapolis looking to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye to defund the police department. Special report. Here's Lester Holt. Good day. We're coming on the air to bring you breaking news. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is about to be sentenced for the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. Floyd was arrested on suspicion of past. Mr. Chauvin, as the count one, based on the verdict of the jury, finding you guilty of an intentional second degree murder while committing a felony under Minnesota statute 609.19 sub division two. After two year investigation, the Justice Department concludes the Minneapolis Police Department has systemic problems that led to the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Two things happened in the Biden years that made what Trump is doing now possible. First, the border really did spin out of control and that handed Trump the perfect issue to run on. State failure. Second, in the wake of George Floyd, parts of liberal America drifted into a politics that frankly sometimes sounded like it cared more about theory than order. Talk of defunding the police slogans like "No one is illegal." A language that felt to many voters like the state had lost its nerve and its head. The result was a lethal perception. The government was soft on disorder, but hard on ordinary people. And once that belief takes hold, you just create the political oxygen for exactly the kind of coercive, centralized authority Trump is now unleashing. And even liberalism is most ardent advocates appear to be recognising it. This is Bernie Sanders. You've asked a lot of very important questions, good questions. Let's start off with the basic. So long as we have nation states, right, which we have, you got to have borders, right? Right. You don't have any borders, then you don't have a nation, right? In a sense. So has historically the United States done well on the Democrats and Republicans protecting the border? The answer is no. Trump did a better job. I don't like Trump. But we should have a secure border and it's not hard to do. Biden didn't do it, those before him did not do it. We should have a secure border period. I think most people in the Congress agree with that. But then the radicalisation on the right is galloping without constraints. And there's another ingredient here. Race. And the way the right has turned one community into a symbol of something dark. Their country stinks. And we don't want them in our country. I could say that about other countries too. I could say about other countries too. We don't want them to help. We have to rebuild our country. You know, our country is at a tipping point. We could go bad. We're at a tipping point. I don't know if people mind me saying that, but I'm saying it. We could go one way or the other. And we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking and garbage into our country. Maga is obsessed with a corruption scandal, which was centered in Minneapolis and in the Somali community. And it was bad. Hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more, unaccounted for. Lost a fraud in a kid's food voucher programme in the COVID era. As I say, it was dominated by Somali and Americans with over 90 now heading to prison. But it is being extrapolated in a way in which we are perhaps all too familiar. So this is the Riverside, which is a neighbourhood in South Minneapolis. It is the largest Somali community neighbourhood in the country. Outside of Somalia, there are at least how many people would you say live here? 67,000. 67,000. In the buildings right behind you. So this building right over here is building sea, that's building F. These are big tower blocks. And it's so the area is sort of synonymous with American Somalis. Yeah, would you say that? For now, it's been synonymous with American immigrants for 160 years. This is the part of Minneapolis and Minnesota where immigrants first come, get settled and then go throughout Minnesota. So this has been home for immigrants as long as Minnesota has been around. Why do you think it is that everyone from Trump down in the sort of MAGA ecosystem? Why are they so obsessed in particular with Somalians and Somalian Americans? Because they could pick up on other groups, right? There could be other minorities, whether it's racial or whatever it happens to be. But Trump has described people who live here as garbage. I mean, he's been that explicit. Why is he and they are they so obsessed? Scapegoating is when your policies are failing, you blame somebody else. That's what he's doing. He's trying to blame somebody and punch down. The economy's not doing as well his claims it is. He's big and pompous and not going his way. Gas prices haven't dropped. He did not stop the war in Ukraine on day one, like he said. So let's distract. And part of his policy though isn't just the distract. It's to try to make America look like what he wants it. And it seems to be that he doesn't want any Somali folks here. Well guess what? Minnesota does want Somali folks here. They bring up the fraud. And the fraud cases which took place. If it was really about fraud, they would have sent 3,000 auditors. They've sent in over 3,000 troops. Well, think about it. In Minneapolis we've had about 600 cops in St. Paul. They've got about 500 cops. There are more ICE and customs, but we're the patrol folks here. Then we have police officers. Why is that? They are not here for fraud. They're here to scare and terrorize and try and push us over the edge. And it's also important to know when it comes to the issue of fraud, Somali people reject it. They don't accept fraud. They don't find it okay. It's less than 70 people who are Somali people who are convicted and who are all going to be serving time as they should. And the community has praised the government for doing that. It's also important to know that fraud is happening across the country in almost every local government. There was just a fraud case in New York City in June where there was over $10 billion in Medicaid fraud committed by a group of Russian people. We're not telling Russian people to get out of here because it's not indicative of the entire community. It is few bad people. And when somebody commits fraud, we call them criminals. We don't call the entire community fraud streets that's unacceptable. What is also happening is, you know, this community, there's less than 80,000 Somalis in the state of Minnesota less than 200,000 people across the country. We are so small. For action of the population in America, you also have seen what this federal government has been doing when it comes to ICE agents. They just employed over 12,000 new agents. They had also made the requirements to become an ICE agent from our requirements of I think six months to 48 days. And the cost of this relentless othering of American Somalians is therefore to see we spend an hour or two with some young Somalian Americans on the streets of Cedar Riverside. Hi, everyone. My name is Kosar. I'm a part of the Cedar Riverside Protection Alliance, part of the founding members of this group whose really core purpose has been to create some level of normalcy for a community that's been under attack, both nationally and globally. And so we're really in the space of really ensuring that there's emergency response, prevention and mitigation as we really feel the full weight of harm that is being inflicted upon this community. So we are literally now on patrol. That's the phrase you're using on patrol through Cedar Riverside. So just explain to people like, what is the point of being on patrol? Why are you doing it? You're all wearing these high viz jackets. We can see there's loads of more people on the butch every street corner around here. What's the point of it? Yeah, so a few of us folks, most of us folks have actually grown up in the neighborhood our whole lives and I feel like this is a time for us younger folks to really take charge and protect our elderly folks that are more at risk. So we are on patrol protecting all the thousands and thousands of people that live in these colored forebiltings and we're doing it because we've grown up here and lived here our whole lives. Will you say protect and being on patrol? Like what practically are you doing? Honestly, just making sure that no one abducks and kidnaps our community members, no one takes advantage, especially from a media standpoint and making sure that our community's protected as we're observing what is going on. So I mean you said it so casually there but you're on patrol to prevent people in your community being kidnapped or being taken away. Yes, exactly. Practically speaking, what does that mean? So you see ice appear and what happens? What do you do? So as observers we see ice appear and as you can see we are all in these vests as community and we just make sure that one we are protecting our rights in this neighborhood as citizens of America and as people that were born here in America. It's like a deterrent. It's supposed to be a deterrent effect. Exactly, yes. Because they know they're being watched. Yes, exactly. And the more people are outside and the more people that are aware of them, the easier the neighborhood feels safe. It's actually mad to sort of just be here standing here and saying I mean you are literally on every street corner. And you're just waiting for some federal officers to appear out of a car and you're just there to make sure that they're being watched. I mean it feels mad. It's like militarizing or sort of patrolling your own neighborhood. Yeah, I think it is mad that they're putting us in this position to be out here, but it is also we are making sure that they're aware that we're not intimidated at all. And we're here to protect our people. And when I say our people, it's everyone, the Native American community, the Mexican Hispanic community, Somali community, we are all vital to this state. And you here, the President of the United States, say that Somalians are garbage. Yeah. What does that do to you? What do you think? I think it makes me feel sad and it also makes me infuriated because me person, I'm a veteran. I served this country and I'm Somalian American. You're in the army? Yeah, I was in the army. I was in the National Guard for this state. So for someone to tell me that I'm garbage when I serve this country, it's like we know the agenda. It's not about Somalis is about him trying to push this narrative of white supremacy. Because this is not about who's American or not. This is about a certain group of people that are trying to push a narrative towards Somalis when we're all diversified. We have people that are lawyers, we have people that are attorneys, we have people that are nurses. We all are very vital to this community. And for him to just single out and have this hasty generalization towards us shows you a lot about his education and how smart he is. But he's your president. He's your head of state. He's your president. He's your equivalent of our king. He's supposed to represent the country. I mean, that is literally the motto of this country, right? Out of many one. The plural bassoon of. And he's calling you garbage. But we as Americans believe in and understand that we have a constitution. States also have their own state rights. And we still believe in we the people. We the people means everybody is vital to this nation and this nation building. And so if that looks like we have to re-engineer this and effectively ensure that we strengthen this democracy together from the ground up, we're ready to do that. And we're going to continue to do that. So regardless of Somalis being garbage, we're here. We're willing to stay. We're going to continue staying. And we're going to continue building this nation just like everyone else has historically. Those who've been before us. See the police have just pulled up here. That's the chief of police. So three things really struck me. Stud here and see the riverside. It's really diverse. It's a slightly American area of Minneapolis. On this street. It is genuinely number one. It is genuinely surreal and weird. And bizarre. Two-seeing. Basically like the quasi militarization of the local population. I mean, they are talking about being on patrol. They are talking about being out, protecting people. People are becoming part of a sort of civilian police force. Right? Standing on every single street corner. Young people. Old people. Teenagers. Moms. Nans and Grand Needs. You know, just standing outside. And just keeping an eye. Because they're not afraid that the federal government will come along and snatch somebody. It is also true to say. And the thing that you really strike to being here is how weary and exhausted people are by. And who can blame them? A weird thing to live with. A bizarre thing to live with. And yet thirdly, what flows from that as well is there is undoubtedly a complete galvanization of people. And a really weird hopefulness to it all. I mean, that's the weird thing. There is this exhaustion and there is this weirdness. And yet, and maybe this is just really American. There is a genuine sense of togetherness and optimism that it can be defeated. And that is the weird kind of triple truths or duality to all of this thing. Which is that, I suppose, as in politics, as it always is the case, there is an equal and opposite reaction to things. So as dark as it feels and it does feel dark, it doesn't feel pessimistic. The news agents. Look, if you're sat there thinking, this is awful, but this is American. It doesn't have anything to do with me. Well, think again, because remember that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. Breaking tonight, the Tory party is promising a brand new illegal migrant removals force that would mimic the aggressive ice deportation team. We're going to need to hire people. We're going to need to make sure that we staff up such a removal force, but it can be done. Somebody trumpy in this, isn't there? Isn't there a plan that Donald Trump would love? I wouldn't be surprised if he loved it. A new force to remove 150,000 people a year with no right to be here. Trump, whatever you think of President Trump, he has cut illegal border crossings by 97%. They said that it couldn't be done. He has done it. How? Because ice has gone out and made 150,000 arrests and embarked on these deportations. It's just about the political will. Ice type raid? We will use whatever technologies and whatever methods aren't required in order to track people down. Anyone who is in the UK illegally or any foreign criminal, so somebody who's a citizen of another country and then commits a crime. Why invoices? And that is that is a completely reasonable position. Why invoices? Two of our main political parties in the UK are actually committed funnily enough to the creation of ice, a version of ice in the UK to remove illegal immigrants in Britain. Obviously most British people, as you sent me before this and even that, will not be that familiar with ice and what they are, what would your message be to British politicians or British people, British voters, about the creation of a British ice? I would say that this should be something that you never allow into your country, especially if you don't have a strong separation of the court system and the executive branch of government. Also, if you really do care about the people in your community, if you're living in a multicultural area or if not, because ice isn't just about immigration anymore, and you have to think about what's going to happen. If your government arms a large group of people and creates the structure for them to operate out will, when the immigration problem is solved, if you consider it a problem, what's going to happen? They're not going to just want to give up their jobs. They're not going to want to give up the power that they have. So what are they going to use it for next? That's what you have to think about. The possibility that if you create a large military system of people to police your country, what are they going to expand it to do next? That's why I think you really have to think twice before you support what you support having ice in your country. We are one year in to the second Trump term. The first was ice stress test of American political institutions. This time those institutions aren't stressed, they're having a full on nervous breakdown. If there is to be a reprieve, I doubt it will come from those institutions. Congress is supine and kiesens, the Supreme Court compliant. If it does come, it will come from American public opinion. Apparently, united from Republican to Democrat alike, that they don't want to be the sort of country where citizens are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being bundled into cars for not having the right paperwork. Joe Rogan, a bell weather for a certain type of political opinion in this country, seemed to speak for it last week. You don't want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be US citizens that just don't have their papers on them. Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come to? The question is whether President Trump any longer much cares about what anyone else thinks. For the start of that first term, nearly a decade ago now, Trump promised an end to American carnage at home and abroad. I wonder if it has barely begun. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. The coming years might test whether both things remain true. Americans might have to be much braver yet. That is it from us in Minneapolis. This special episode has been produced by our executive producer, Lou Dagen Hart and our editor Tom Hughes, a film version, will be available made by Shane Finley. We will be back on Monday. Have a lovely weekend. This has been a global player, original production.