What life is like in Minneapolis now | Hacker News Reader

What life is like in Minneapolis now

donmoynihan.substack.com

192 points_tk_61 comments

I fully expect this article to drop off the front page due to flagging in 3…2…1… like every other US politics story that gets posted on this site.

It’s for sure one of the biggest blind spots of this community, which should come as no surprise but is still a shame as it would be nice to have the high level of discourse we can expect from other topics applied to this period that could easily be, for many of us, the most significant geopolitical event of our lifetimes.

I’m curious if that’s a topic the mods have any thoughts on.

It used to be that tech workers were utopian, but now a good half of them, including on this site, are plain fascists. This site is not a utopian dream.

ICE is an extremely unprofessional agency and has no business existing at all in its current form. Abductions of citizens by ICE is real, is well documented across many incidents on many news sites, and it crosses a line.

It’s bit ironic that big tech invests so much in politics and engineers act like it’s beneath them. All technological progress tends to be political with its policy winds

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

The silence from tech companies says a million. There's a ton of huge companies and tech leaders with offices and businesses in Minneapolis and not one of them has had the spine to say anything about the occupation of their city or the people that have been unable to show up for work.

I think increasingly tech workers are starting to understand the size of the issue. You can see the sentiment shifting in previous threads here and even when stories like this are flagged, they still float to the top of /active. That said, it's also obvious that there's a certain group of folks that immediately flag these stories the moment they pop up.

The only diversity most big tech companies hire are women, Asians and Indians. So no wonder they can care less.

The Flavor Aid drinkers and elite establishment liberals are both aligned in despise of open debate and discussion, even when what's going on is far more important than running Doom in Visual Basic on a microwave. That's the disconnect between reality; that politics is "unclean", "uncivilized", far removed, and doesn't matter; that people can't have respectful exchanges of ideas and need to be controlled like children, or that discussion needs to have somewhere else more "appropriate": which is all code for "STFU and take it because the status quo benefits us". Avoiding the 800 lbs. gorilla that's hurting you, the ones you love, and brainwashing others into doing their work for them is tone deaf and on the wrong side of history that paints all of tech as sinister and morally bankrupt.

Heh.

* HN has a high level of discourse,

* This is ascribed partly to the guidelines,

* The guidelines recommend we avoid the topics that usually result in squabbling,

* But if only we could keep our act together, we have a rare opportunity for high level discourse on inflammatory topics!

I kind of agree with you, but I'm terribly naive and I do a lot of wishful thinking.

If you use an alternative front end (I use hckrnews.com for example), that really isn't a risk.

(I also have show dead enabled).

My prediction is that the federal policing will ramp up considerably in blue states, which in turn will cause more clashes. Sooner or later POTUS will invoke insurrection act.

In any case, either he'll try to cancel midterm elections altogether, or he'll have ICE and National Guard roaming and harassing voters when that time comes around. Strategically in very blue or purple areas.

If that works for the midterms, no doubt we'll see more of the same for the presidential election.

In its entire history, the US has never skipped a national election, not even during any major war. As such, canceling or delaying an election would be the ultimate red flag, answerable only by community-level violence against the oppressors at a national scale. We have known for a while that mere protests don't work at all in this country, and can even be counterproductive.

We've crossed multiple "ultimate red flags". Won't be surprising if it happens.

Unfortunately no one will care because it’s not their city, they are told to wait until midterms, the media is failing to report or cover much of what is going on and half the country thinks it’s ok because their party is behind it

I'm curious what gives you the impression that no one cares. Anyone non-white in the US, regardless of their immigration and citizenship status, can expect to be harassed in the near future, so I'm guessing they care. Maybe they're afraid enough to be silenced, but that doesn't mean they don't care.

Someone looking at HN front page could falsely get the impression that no one cares, but that's only because all ICE-related subjects are actively and relentlessly flagged. We never see them. You can have an idea of how much some of the HN crowd cares by visiting https://news.ycombinator.com/active more often.

> Anyone non-white in the US

This framing is exactly what led to the election of Trump in the first place. You're asking for empathy from people who already have too much shit of their own. You'll be much more successful if you manage to explain why current actions of ICE are bad for everyone, not only Latinos.

This is not what OP said, at all. OP doesn't have to explain anything, or be "successful" explaining to you what the world is watching unfold in horror.

It is factually and correctly stated that any non-white, non-100%-perfectly-English-speaking person is a suspect in ICE views, detainable with no recourse. They said it themselves, the administration said that themselves, and there's ample evidence online of them enjoying doing it.

It is why people like me, who have legal status and business to conduct in USA are not gonna risk detention and deportation while ICE/DHS is operating. I'm Italian, my name is of Spanish origin, and I lived most of my life in Brazil so my accent is Brazilian. I have zero odds of convincing and ICE agent my passport isn't fake.

So, I'm out of going to Vegas, or doing talks, or anything else I have enjoyed doing in the USA in the past.

> It is factually and correctly stated

Being factually correct isn't always winning. Envoking correct emotions often is.

There's some inception levels of irony in this (op) being posted on a platform that has a history of supporting white supremacist groups, which kinda suggests that even those who do care, can't actually be bothered to not be part of the problem.

First I’ve heard of that. I’m going to call bullshit.

If only there was some kind of website where you could type in something like "white supremacists substack" and find out whether it was bullshit or not.

Pretty sure people care. A lot. My friend texted me. He’s white privileged, not often sympathetic or inclusive.

He’s absolutely irate about what’s happening in Minnesota.

"Abolish ICE" must be the moderate compromise position

Straight to jail

Yes, I agree. Everyone in ICE or supporting them.

As a non-American, I wonder how effective these measures are. Way too often I hear that "ICE abducted ... an American citizen". Are these individual cases amplified by the media to attack federal government's reputation or are these a significant percentage of all arrests? In which case, why is ICE doing it, they have absolutely no way of turning such arrests into a positive for themselves? How easy is it for an American or a legal alien to produce documentation proving their legal status - can it be that the fact(?) that many legal residents don't possess the necessary documentation at all times leads to the majority of such arrests/detentions/"abductions".

I know that many here will question ICE's mandate to act even against immigrants who don't have their paperwork in order, but this is another question.

It's rebounding on them, support for ICE is now negative They're going after the weak and easy targets and dont care about citizenship as Miller has set them daily targets

This is just the standard precision/ recall tradeoff with recall being prioritised at the extreme (which is usually the wrong way to go for legal field).

A standard situation of 1% positive rate and even if your diagnosis method having 90% accuracy (for both sensitivity and specificity), more than 90% of the positive detection would be false positive.

Why would any of this be effective? They drastically reduced the duration of training ICE agents and drastically increased numbers. You should assume they are all incompetent.

Net migration to the US is negative for the first time in 50 years [1] so seems way more effective than whatever was done before. As for arresting citizens - federal agents arrest ~100K people per year[2], if the often cited in these threads research to be believed then most of them are citizens as illegal migrants don't do nearly as much crime. Being a citizen does not make one immune to the federal law enforcement, even the Department of Education has armed agents, which arrest citizens, even if they don't go to school [3].

1. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-1st-time-50-years-experienced-n...

2. https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/fjs23.pdf

3. https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/beware...

Thoughtful observers recognize that the real issue is the lack of accountability transparent to the American public. When regular people mess up at their job, there’s a proportionate response to that mistake. When ICE / CBP murders, rapes, disappears, tortures, silences, intimidates, etc. etc. there are no consequences. There is no accountability. In fact, there is encouragement! “You’re doing a public service!” they’re told.

This is by design. You’re asking the wrong questions out of some imagined “higher tier of thinking” and it’s only beneficial to those in power.

I know this might be hard for some people to hear, but I want to share my thoughts to promote, in a small way, a common understanding of different perspectives.

My genuine trouble with this kind of post is that I don’t know if it is true.

How do I know the guy isn’t trying to get donations for local groups? Is that an odd question to ask after the dominant lens through which we analyze action is “cui bono?”

How do I know that this didn’t come from some Russian intel group? Is that an odd question to ask after Russian interference is all over the media during our elections?

It’s the problem of our society today: we don’t share a common view of reality.

You can donate to churches that are organizing to help bring food and supplies to people too afraid to leave their homes. It doesn’t have to be a political group.

You can watch the hundreds of videos. You can judge the shared reporting about the number of federal agents deployed to MN coming from government and activist sources. You can listen to the administration's words about insurrection. You can read the front page reporting on the NYT, Fox News (both currently running front page stories). You can read the updates from the area's public schools.

There are no disagreements on the core facts: thousands of ICE agents are deployed to the Twin Cities and are aggressively arresting activists and immigrants, using chemical crowd deterrents, and presenting themselves in masks and military dress.

As an Austrian citizen I unfortunately have to tell you that the existence of masked agents in unmarked vehicles is very bad news. The last time we had this they were called Geheime Staatspolizei and we now have a memorial at the location of their head quarters in Vienna. I am not usually someone trying to manifest Godwins law but this is straight out of the facist playbook. Another super worrying fact for me as a European is that the late Dick Cheney was so worried about American democracy and he always looked like Darth Vader to me from across the pond. Suddenly we are on one side, didn’t have that on my bingo card.

Hi. I am the person who wrote the piece. I am not a bot, not Russian intel. YES I want money to go to organizations serving terrified, vulnerable people who are being hunted like dogs primarily because they LOOK like immigrants or other "undesirables."

People need help in MPLS, right now. Be skeptical of what you hear online ... definitely. But there is a limit. At some point you must accept that there is a major crisis, that people are in acute need, and that not helping is complicity.

Thanks for writing it, and thanks for stopping by. Perhaps I'm naive, but I wasn't worried at all that the article might be a Russian fake. Instead, my worry is that it felt like propaganda. Genuine heartfelt propaganda, probably from someone on the ground in Minneapolis, but throughout the piece I felt that you were likely leaving out information so as to create a more compelling call to action.

I don't know for sure that this is true, but I feel like this is a big hurdle that you'll have to overcome if you want to convince skeptical people like me who actually do care. Saying "I will not provide names, sources, etc." might feel necessary, but it makes it harder to convince people. I'm left feeling that there is definitely more to the story than you are telling.

Starting with your first example, "two teachers parked in front of the school were violently extracted from their cars and abducted by ICE officers". I'm not certain, but I'd probably be willing to bet this isn't the full story. Were they "parked in front" because they were at their jobs teaching, or were they attempting to prevent the ICE officers from doing something? Were they participating in a protest or just passing by?

I don't know--and it doesn't mean that what happened is right or proper--but I don't trust you to tell me if you think it might hurt the case you are trying to make. The result is that I feel like I need to at least partially discount the rest of what you have to say. How do we get beyond this?

I think you're right. I think that what ICE is doing is clearly a problem and speaking about it clearly and plainly is useful here.

Here are two good sources for the incident at the school (Roosevelt High School). [1] [2]

The first is from our local NPR affiliate: MPR. It has interviews with school staff members and describes their account of the day. The second is from our local NBC affiliate: KARE 11. It's a more recent article which describes the account of the day based on statements from Customs and Border Patrol. You can see some of the parallels between the two.

>“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said.

versus

>[CBP Deputy Incident Commander Kyle Harvick] said a crowd began to gather as they were arresting the driver for impeding the operation. As agents investigated the area, the statement says a crowd gathered and some individuals responded with "combative shoves and pushes." Harvick says agents then attempted to arrest one of the individuals when a school staff member allegedly began pushing agents. The staff member was placed under arrest.

When you're weighing who to believe in this situation, it's worth calling out that CBP has lied before [3] and doesn't always operate within the law here [4]. That last link is particularly notable since it's a very straightforward constitutional violation where they broke into the house with a battering ram (on video, if you want to watch) to make the arrest--all without a judicial warrant. The provided an _administrative_ warrant instead, which doesn't allow forced search of private residences. The agents presumably know that and thought they could get away with it anyway.

[1] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/08/after-border-patrol...

[2] https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/ice-in-minnesota/c...

[3] https://apnews.com/article/chicago-immigration-crackdown-wom...

[4] https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-arrest-judge-orders-rel...

> My genuine trouble with this kind of post is that I don’t know if it is true.

Same thought I had. I mean, it sounds pretty bad but it's also making no attempt at all to report an unbiased view. I'd like to hear from officials. What are their goals, and why are they doing it this way? I don't think the majority of Trump voters wanted this kind of harm and chaos.

Then why aren’t they speaking out against it?

That's well established human behaviour. People don't necessarily speak out against something just because they think it's wrong.

Is it? I see a lot of democrats speaking out, but few republicans. What do you think makes the difference?

What is the unbiased view of a federal agency geared up for war kidnapping and terrorizing people in the streets of American city? You have no idea what it's like here right now.

> You have no idea what it's like here right now.

I don't have any idea and I'm not trying to defend or justify.

> What is the unbiased view of a federal agency geared up for war kidnapping and terrorizing people in the streets of American city?

That's exactly what I'd like to know. The report didn't provide one. That's my point. Which is fine, they didn't intent to, they were just telling their truth. But those ICE agents have a perspective, they have motivations, they're people, and while reading the report I was curious about what they might have to say about their actions.

> I'm not trying to defend or justify

Yes you are, when you say things like this:

> those ICE agents have a perspective, they have motivations, they're people

They are racist, fascist thugs, it's that simple. They want to terrorize immigrants and brown people. There is no need to overthink this. They are racially profiling people every day, and arresting citizens because they are minorities. They shot a mother in the head and now they are telling the rest of us "didn't you learn your lesson?", alluding to that murder. They tear-gassed a family of 6 trying to get home the other day, including a 6 month old baby that lost consciousness. The family had nothing to do with anything, they were simply trying to get home in an area ICE was attacking.

What "perspective" could possibly change anything about this shameful behavior?

Here is an agent arresting a US citizen, for the expressed reason of having an accent. What is the perspective and motivation here?

https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3mcnjw...

Stephen Miller has been extremely public about what they are doing. If you are waiting to hear from officials it is because you are closing your ears.

I'm just talking about one report. I'm not waiting to hear from anyone. I just passively consume what happens to come my way, and this is the first report about this situation that I saw on HN and took time to read.

Please educate yourself. The message is not hidden like some cryptic puzzle. Read, read, read. And from more than just one news source. Many. Recognize the bias.

> I don't think the majority of Trump voters wanted this kind of harm and chaos.

Sorry to be vulgar, but it’s about fucking time they find the fucking courage to speak up.

I am angry at the conservative people in my life, first and second connections and beyond, not because they fell for 8 years of increasingly fascist propaganda, but because now they’re too weak and scared and cowardly to stand up and recognize that they were wrong and they’ve ushered in some of the darkest days in American history.

The American right continues to be complicit. I am losing respect daily while I watch my conservative friends not speak out. It’s heartbreaking.

Then your friends are not conservative, just right-wing.

Mass deportations was his signature campaign promise. It's exactly what they voted for.

They knowingly voted for a racist, a rapist, a felon ...

A man who as president sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States and members of Congress, because that VPOTUS, Mike Pence, refused Trump's illegal order to overturn an election both of them had lost.

Trump voters understood.

The underlined words in the post are links to the associated news articles.

My experience is quite a bit different than what the author is citing. I live just outside of Minneapolis, and have a bunch of friends who live in the city. I have never heard anyone express concern about what ICE is doing. The biggest worries are around commute disruptions due to protesters. It might be because this is a self-selected circle of white collar types, but I can say the report in this story is not universal.

Kinda self-obvious, practically nothing at population-sized samples is universal.

As someone who lives in St Paul, I'll say the blog post sounds like my experience here.

As someone with a white collar software job, the description of people fearing for their children at school or not leaving their house is playing out at my workplace.

Cover of today's StarTribune (Greenland article at bottom), from the top down:

  • Our community is in crisis
  • Rumors, anxiety spread beyond the Twin Cities
  • Citizens sue, seek ruling to rein in agents' tactics
  • DHS' Minnesota presence dwarfs largest metro police forces
  • Review: No widespread illegal voting by migrants
  • Trump cheers protesters in Iran, but not Minnesota

"I have never heard anyone express concern about what ICE is doing."

"heard" and "express concern" commonly do a lot of heavy lifting in anecdata:

  • Include or exclude social media comments from friends?
  • Only include people who have spoken to you directly?
  • Speak often or infrequently to others?
  • Include or exclude content that you have seen that you trust?
  • Are part of a large/small circle of family/friends?
  • Concern or only experience causing concern? 
  • General opinion or on specific available information?
  • etc., etc.

Without being more specific, "heard" and "express concern" don't mean much, and with specific qualification, are easily manipulated.

I also live just outside of Minneapolis. I have white-appearance family members whose heritage traces literally back to the Mayflower that have been harrassed while working from home, and literally dozens of others expressing concern due to those in their circle being harassed, and many others expressing concern due to viewing media that they trust.

In thinking just now, it's hard to think of anyone not expressing concern, on "both sides", partly because I am hearing expressions on the topic from a tremendous number of persons.

Do you or any of your friends have kids in school?

Trump is forcing this to be a Game of Thrones "you win or you die" situation: there is no way out of this with a 60:40 solution, the only possible outcome is complete victory for one side, utter defeat for the other.

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