It was a dramatic scene in the land of Paul Bunyan. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune,
Roofers jump from homes in Bemidji to escape ICE agents
The raid occurred two weeks ago, back on June 11 in Bemidji (MN). The Star Tribune reports,
Ryan Lamusga assembled a crew of 30 men to repair roofs from last summer’s derecho that destroyed millions of trees and damaged homes.
So far, so good.
On Thursday, federal agents swarmed their job site in a subdivision of 127 townhouses, sending some workers scrambling into nearby woods and reducing Lamusga’s crew to just seven.
Lamusga said his workers jumped off roofs and ran, but federal agents had the Villas at Vista North neighborhood surrounded.
A total of 20 were detained from the crew of 30. Helicopters were said to be deployed.
Federal agents detained some legal immigrants at the scene, Lamusga said. He received an updated list from a federal agent that showed 11 men from Mexico were transferred to the Crow Wing County jail and 11 to Kandiyohi County jail.
The feds picked up a few stragglers the next morning. The Star Tribune reports,
The city also confirmed that ICE conducted a traffic stop early Friday where “an unknown number of individuals were detained.”
The Star Tribune adds,
A small anti-ICE protest formed Friday afternoon in front of the Paul Bunyan and Babe statues near Lake Bemidji.
Here’s a photo I took of the site during my last visit two years ago.
The story of the roofers on the lam tugged at the heart strings of Star Tribune columnist Karen Tolkkinen, who wrote a few days later,
We had our Bemidji house reroofed in 2023. I hope our money went to undocumented workers.
They make life-threatening journeys for the privilege of a job. Their money creates stability around the globe.
Notwithstanding the hazards of the journey or the benefits to foreign lands, illegal immigration is a criminal act, punishable by prison time prior to deportation. Hiring illegal alien workers is also a crime.
The fallout from the Bemidji raid continues in the form of habeas corpus petitions filed to free the detainees from ICE custody. I count at least 11 petitions filed, with 8 Mexicans and 3 Ecuadorans included in the petitions filed with the federal district court of Minnesota.
Of the 8 Mexicans, three share the surname Perez Rivera and three share the surname Juarez Moya. The cases have been scattered among six federal judges. Since the cases are all almost identical regarding the underlying facts, this will prove to be an interesting case study of differing interpretations of the law.
One has already been released. On Monday, June 22, District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ordered the release of Vladimir Eduardo Guaman Verdugo of Ecuador. Why? It’s not clear.
We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows. Cops pull a car over (as was the case with Guaman’s arrest), run the names through a computer, discover one or more active warrants, and arrest the man on the spot.
Judge Bryan is among those on the bench who have invented a brand-new constitutional procedure that applies only to illegal aliens. Before the handcuffs can go on at the scene, the alien must be shown a paper copy (perhaps even the signed original) of the warrant, presumably in the alien’s preferred language. Failure to produce the paper version at the arrest scene invalidates the arrest.
This all seems to be fixable. Release the alien from custody, meet him in the parking lot, show the paper copy (again), and take him back inside.
As far as I can tell, none of the 11 habeas petitions allege that the alien is actually authorized to be in America. In fact, at least one of the 11 has been deported previously. I’m not sure why we are going through all of this due process when the conclusion is inevitable.
The other ten cases are at various stages of the process.
Stay tuned.
[Note: an earlier version of this post appeared at AmericanExperiment.Org.]
