A month ago, the police chief of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, held an extraordinary press conference where he accused federal immigration officers of racially profiling and harassing residents of the Twin Cities suburb, including one of his own officers.<\/span><\/p>\n

At a <\/span>January 20 press conference<\/span><\/a>, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley, along with two other local law enforcement leaders, complained that federal immigration agents were stopping residents without cause and demanding they show paperwork proving they were in the country legally. They even stopped an off-duty Brooklyn Park police officer.<\/span><\/p>\n

“When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork,” Bruley said, “of which she’s a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident,” Bruley <\/span>continued<\/span><\/a>. “The phone was knocked out of her hands.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“The officers had their guns drawn during the situation,” Bruley said. “After the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident down.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Bruley said the immigration officers then left “without an apology.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day,” Bruley said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bruley’s comments made national news because they highlighted Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) legally dubious tactics, and although those tactics have been condemned by civil liberties advocates, it was much more rare to hear local law enforcement directly criticize federal partners.<\/p>\n

To try to see how many community members this had happened to, <\/span>Reason<\/span><\/i> filed a public records request with the Brooklyn Park Police Department for incident reports and complaints related to ICE enforcement in January. The Brooklyn Park Police Department produced 11 incident reports in response to the request. From those incident reports, <\/span>Reason <\/span><\/i>interviewed two Brooklyn Park residents who say they were harassed by federal immigration officers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lavyanna McCurty was in her car, pulling into an apartment complex on January 21 to visit her cousin, when she says the vehicle behind her hit her rear bumper. Scared, McCurty says she pulled into a parking spot, only to be boxed in by ICE agents.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ICE officers were apparently looking for someone else at the complex, but McCurty couldn’t move her car. When she began honking her horn, the officers started knocking on her window and asking for her ID.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McCurty says she only had her tribal ID on her. She says she is a member of the Red Lake Nation, a sovereign tribal nation. She says she didn’t want to show the officers her tribal ID because of recent reports of ICE detaining Native Americans, including at the <\/span>Little Earth housing complex<\/span><\/a> in Minneapolis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, McCurty says she got out of her car and started recording on her cellphone. “I’m a sovereign citizen,” she says she told the officers. “I’m Afro-Native American.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“One of the other guys was like, ‘She looks Puerto Rican. Run her fucking name, run that bitch’s name,'” McCurty recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Once I told them I’m a Native American citizen, one of them made a joke\u2014and he was serious too, because I can believe it,” McCurty continues. “He said he was gonna send me back to where I came from, basically talking about my reservation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

McCurty says that when she complained that the agents had no right to hit her car, knock on her window, and ask for her ID, one of the agents responded, “I’ll knock on your window, bitch,” and walked over to her car and rapped on the window.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCurty says she ran to her cousin’s apartment to call 911 and report that she was being harassed. She then returned outside to continue filming the officers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cellphone video taken by McCurty and shared with <\/span>Reason <\/span><\/i>showed the end of the encounter. In the approximately one-and-a-half-minute video, most of it only capturing audio, McCurty is profanely telling the officers that they should be more nonconfrontational and had no right to knock on her window. One officer can be heard trying to respond to her calmly, while in the background, another can be heard yelling back indistinctly. Eventually another officer is heard repeatedly yelling “let’s go” before several unmarked ICE vehicles drive away.<\/span><\/p>\n