EVERETT, JAN. 26: More than a hundred protesters gathered in front of the Social Security office on Broadway Ave. Friday afternoon, as part of a national movement to show solidarity with Minnesota during ongoing tensions with federal immigration enforcement.
Protests were additionally held in Lynnwood and Marysville, organized by Snohomish County Indivisible.
Thousands of protesters gathered in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, Jan. 23, to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations ordered by the Trump administration nearly two months ago. The surge of federal officers in the state is to target immigration fraud and enforcing the removal of undocumented immigrants, White House officials have said.
“The tactics aren’t working because they’re not targeting who they told us they were targeting,” Paula Townsell, deputy director of Snohomish County Indivisible, said.
“We don’t want criminals in our county, but we do not want our communities to be unsafe, and right now, ICE is making every community they’re going into very unsafe,” Townsell said.
Everett resident Jerry Vergeront was there to stand in solidarity with Minnesota after the killing of 37-year-old Minneapolis woman Renee Good earlier this month.
Over the weekend, the shooting of Alex Pretti marked the second time a Minneapolis resident was killed by federal officers.
“We are standing with them [Minnesota] as they stand up and are protesting these unethical, even Gestapo ways of dealing with immigration,” Vergeront said.
Everett resident Ariana Henderson-Hatfield was walking home after work and came upon the protest. She grabbed a sign and stood in the lineup along the sidewalk.
“I have a pretty mixed family, and I grew up on Casino Road, where we are all integrated and so it really pisses me off that they would take people this way,” Henderson-Hatfield said.
Henderson-Hatfield said she is concerned for her friends and the risk of racial profiling by officers. A few of her friends said they have started wearing their passports around their necks.
“We are supposed to be a free country, but it feels like we’re a country of almost salves, under the power of the rich,” Henderson-Hatfield said.
A hearing in a federal courtroom in Minneapolis ended Monday, Jan. 26 with no immediate decision from a judge on whether to order the Trump administration to suspend Operation Metro Surge, according to CNN.
