{"id":159050,"date":"2026-02-01T11:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T11:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159050\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T11:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T11:20:08","slug":"a-california-lawyer-returns-home-to-minneapolis-to-fight-for-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159050\/","title":{"rendered":"A California lawyer returns home to Minneapolis to fight for civil rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do you find the missing<\/a>? <\/p>\n

If you do find them, how can you help?<\/p>\n

Oakland civil rights attorney James Cook has been on the ground in Minnesota for months figuring out answers to these question as he goes.<\/p>\n

A fast-talking Minneapolis native who still lives in the Twin Cities part time, Cook is one of a handful of attorneys who have dropped everything to aid (for free) those caught up in the federal crackdown \u2014 protesters, immigrants and detained citizens \u2014 too many of whom have found themselves facing deportation, arrest or even been disappeared, at least for a time. <\/p>\n

\"Civil <\/p>\n

Civil rights attorney James Cook in the rear view mirror as he makes phone calls in his car in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

(Caroline Yang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are leaders that are on the ground really helping people through this process,\u201d Minnesota school board member Chauntyll Allen<\/a> told me. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s one of the protesters arrested inside a local church, charged with conspiracy to deprive others of their constitutional rights by Pam Bondi\u2019s politicized Department of Justice,<\/a> which also Friday arrested journalist Don Lemon for the same incident. Cook is one of the lawyers now representing Allen. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows us that the judicial arm, or some of the judicial arm of our democracy, is willing to step up and ensure that our democracy stands strong,\u201d Allen said of Cook and others like him. <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s the images of clashes in the streets that captivate media and audiences, it\u2019s lawyers like Cook who are fighting an existential battle in the background to preserve the rule of law in a place where it is increasing opaque, to put it gently.<\/p>\n

The legal work behind detentions has largely been an overlooked battlefield that will likely rage on years after ICE departs the streets, leaving in its wake hundreds if not thousands of long-and-winding court cases.<\/p>\n

Beyond the personal fates they will determine, the outcome of the civil litigation Cook and others are spearheading will likely force whatever transparency and accountability can be pulled from these chaotic and troubling times. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s time-consuming and complicated work vital not just to people, but history. <\/p>\n

Or, as Cook puts it, \u201cI\u2019ll be 10 years older when all this s\u2014 resolves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Federal <\/p>\n

Federal agents stand guard against a growing wall of protesters on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis, just hours after Alex Pretti was shot by federal agents.<\/p>\n

(Caroline Yang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

Cook told me this while on his way to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building<\/a> where some detainees are being held, maybe. It\u2019s hard to find out. A few years ago, when immigration enforcement in Minnesota ramped up under the first Trump term, activists tried to get the name of the building changed, arguing Whipple, the first Protestant Episcopal bishop in the state, had been an advocate of the marginalized and wouldn\u2019t want his name associated with what the feds were up to. <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work, but the movement\u2019s slogan, \u201cWhat would Whipple do?<\/a>\u201d still has resonance in this town, where two American citizens, Alex Pretti<\/a> and Renee Good<\/a>, have been fatally shot while protesting \u2014 incidents ugly enough that Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about them<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Cook is well aware that the guns carried by the federal agents are not for show, even without the Boss\u2019 new ballad. Just a few days ago, one of the first times he drove his beat-up truck up to the gate, the federal guards at Whipple pointed their guns at him. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m going to take my keys out of the ignition, drop them on the ground. So please don\u2019t shoot,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

They lowered the guns, but Cook was scared, a feeling that doesn\u2019t come easy. <\/p>\n

Long before his law degree, when he was a punk-rock loving teen in the 1980s, fresh out of Southwest High, the public school not too far from Whipple, a former coach convinced him to give up college dreams and instead pursue a shot at making the first Muay Thai kickboxing team at the Olympics.<\/p>\n

The martial art ended up not making it as an official Olympic sport, but the experience launched Cook into a professional boxing and kickboxing career that took him to competitions around the world, and taught him fear is not a reason to back down. <\/p>\n

But, \u201cFather Time is undefeated,\u201d Cook said. \u201cI got older and I started losing fights, and I was like, all right, time to get back to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

That eventually led him to obtaining a law degree in San Francisco, where after an intern stint as a public defender, he decided he wanted to be a trial attorney, fighting in court.<\/p>\n

\"Civil <\/p>\n

Civil rights attorney James Cook has been doing pro bono immigration work since the crackdown began in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

(Caroline Yang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

He started cold-calling John Burris, another Bay Area lawyer who is an icon of civil rights and police misconduct cases. Burris, who has been called the \u201cGodfather of Police Litigation,\u201d was involved in the \u201cOakland Riders\u201d case in 2000, when officers were discovered to have planted evidence. He also represented Rodney King, the family of Oscar Grant, and the family of Joseph Mann<\/a> among many others. <\/p>\n

But Burris, a boxing fan, didn\u2019t respond to Cook\u2019s calls until the young lawyer offered him free tickets to one of his fights, which he was still doing on the side. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then immediately I got a call back,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n

Burris said Cook\u2019s history as a fighter intrigued him, but \u201cI did say to James, you can\u2019t be a fighter and lawyer. You can\u2019t get punched in your head all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cook did not take this advice. <\/p>\n

Still, Burris said, \u201cIt was his persistence that I admired, because the type of work we\u2019re involved in, you need people who are dedicated, who have some real commitment to the work, and he showed that kind of consistency and dedication.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cook\u2019s been working with Burris more than 20 years now, but until recently, the labyrinth of the immigration system wasn\u2019t his area of expertise. It\u2019s been a crash course for him, he said, on the often arcane laws that govern who gets to stay in America and who doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also been a crash course on what a civil rights emergency looks like. Along with his work looking for locked-up immigrants, Cook spends a lot of time on the streets at protests, helping people understand their rights \u2014 and limitations \u2014 and seeing first hand what is happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ever wondered what you would have done in Germany, now is the time,\u201d he said. \u201cNow is the time to do something. People are being interned.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the hours after Pretti was shot, Cook was at the location of the shooting, in the middle of the tear gas, offering legal help to anyone who needed it and bearing witness to conduct that will almost certainly face scrutiny one day, even if government leaders condone it now. <\/p>\n

\"Law <\/p>\n

Law enforcement officers launch tear gas canisters as they work to push the crowd back and expand their perimeter in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.<\/p>\n

(Caroline Yang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the officers chase people down, protesters who were really just protesting lawfully and were beaten and pepper sprayed and gassed \u2014 all those are civil rights violations,\u201d Burris said. \u201cAnd so the law is the guardrails. So there has to be lawyers who are prepared to protect those guardrails and to stand as centurions, as I refer to us.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cook has tried to calm protesters, he told me, and prevent clashes. But people are mad, and resolute. His greatest fear is summer \u2014 when warm weather could bring even larger crowds if enforcement is still ongoing. He\u2019s worried that the actions of the federal agents will spill over into anger at local cops enforcing local laws, leading to even more chaos. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always supported cops as long as they do their job correctly,\u201d Cook said. <\/p>\n

For now, he\u2019s taking it one day at a time, one case at a time, one name at a time. <\/p>\n

\"Protesters <\/p>\n

Protesters raise an inverted American flag as law enforcement officers launch tear gas canisters in Minneapolis after Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents. <\/p>\n

(Caroline Yang\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

Tuesday, Cook passed through the armed checkpoint at Whipple carrying a list of about seven people, folks who have been picked up by federal agents for one reason or another, or reasons unknown, and now cannot be located. They are not in the public online system that is meant to track detainees, and family and friends have not heard from them. <\/p>\n

If he\u2019s lucky, Cook will get information on one or two, that they are indeed inside, or maybe at a detention center in Texas, where many have been sent. But there will be more whose location remains unknown. He\u2019ll make calls, fill out forms and come back tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what we do,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m always in it for the long run. I mean, you know, shoot, yeah, that\u2019s kind of the way it works.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How do you find the missing? If you do find them, how can you help? Oakland civil rights…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,77458,8,2329,77460,49096,22698,1431,55473,1554,1594,592,11276,1291,315,77459,72],"class_list":["post-159050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-lawyer","tag-california-news","tag-civil-right","tag-complicated-work","tag-cook","tag-court-case","tag-family","tag-john-burris","tag-name","tag-other","tag-people","tag-protester","tag-street","tag-time","tag-whipple","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}