Is ICE Running a Black Site in Minnesota?
- Thomas Neuburger
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
“Stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.” —ICE agent to Patricia O’Keefe, referring to Renée Good
A state-of-the-world report from Minnesota. ICE appears to be running a black site for illegally detained known U.S. citizens. These people are held separately from the “immigrant” detainees. From a report published on the Substack “Dissent in Bloom”:
On a Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis, Patty O’Keefe and Brandon Siguenza, both U.S. citizens who live there, were taking part in an ICE watch. This is a legal activity where people observe and record law enforcement actions in public. It is an activity long protected by the First Amendment. That afternoon ended with them in cuffs after agents moved on them without warning. The agents who moved on them didn’t knock or even shout orders. The first agent to reach Patty’s side jams a canister nozzle against the air intake vents near the windshield wipers. Inside the car, the air instantly turns caustic. A high-dose stream of pepper spray flooded directly into the sealed cabin, weaponizing the car’s own ventilation system. This is a tactic that mirrors the times that DHS agents have used pepper spray on the air intake valves of inflatable costumes worn during protests. The chemical cloud clawed at their lungs, their skin, their ability to think. If either of them had asthma, COPD, or even mild respiratory illness, this wouldn’t just be assault… it could’ve been a death sentence. They would’ve been the third and fourth victims of DHS — who already executed Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota and Keith Porter in LA — in the last 2 weeks.
There’s much more at the link.
Later we read:
Patty and Brandon were then abducted by ICE agents and taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building. They state they were put in adjacent cells reserved for U.S. citizens, one for men and the other for women. This is the facility ICE is using to hold all of the people they’ve rounded up in Minneapolis. It was only a few days ago that they turned away three sitting members of Congress from conducting an oversight visit here. So, it is clear that this is not a detention center, it is a black site. This black-site nonsense is a tactic ICE has been utilizing for years going back to the first Trump administration in 2016.
The Substack “Dissent in Bloom” is new to me. Substack says it has 17,000 followers, so it’s not small.
This reporting is well grounded. Patty O’Keefe’s story was also told in part on CBS Mornings (Instagram video here). The Sahan Journal, a Minnesota publication dedicated to reporting for immigrants and people of color, carried her story as well.
The comment about O’Keefe and Siguenza being kept in “small separate holding cells for male and female U.S citizens” comes from the Sahan Journal report. It also carries this comment from O’Keefe:
The agents began taunting her as soon as the pair was arrested and placed in separate unmarked SUVs, O’Keefe said. One of the federal agents took her photo without permission, calling her ugly and laughing. The same ICE agent who sprayed her vehicle told her, “stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian bitch is dead,” referring to Good.
And from a Houston Chronicle report of the same incident comes this ugly detail:
On their way to the cells, [O’Keefe and Siguenza] saw other detainees who were screaming and wailing for help … In one instance, they observed a woman who was trying to use a toilet while three male agents watched.
A Black Site?
What to make of all this? The Sahan Journal reports that O’Keefe saw through a window “many people tightly packed into a large holding cell, mostly Hispanic men, standing around.”
Clearly ICE agents distinguish, not between citizens and immigrants, but between citizens they will abuse and release, and citizens and immigrants (both) whom they will detain indefinitely. Thus my comment above about ICE detaining “known U.S. citizens” as well as those, so they say, of unknown citizenship. Illegal detention of acknowledged citizens is, frankly, abduction. Abroad, that’s the CIA’s job. If this site were abroad, what would you call it?
Add to that, ICE’s refusal to give access to the site by the detainees’ lawyers, and by members of Congress in violation of a judge’s orders? Sounds like a black site to me.
Later I’ll look at what this seems to add up to. For now, this is enough.