White House officials say at least 4,000 arrests have been made in Minnesota since Dec. 1 of last year, as protests over federal immigration enforcement continue to spread beyond the Upper Midwest.<\/p>\n
In Hillsborough County on Saturday, demonstrators gathered at the intersection of N. 56th Street and E. Fowler Avenue aligning themselves with hundreds who marched through Minneapolis on Friday. Protesters in both cities demanded an end to \u201cOperation Metro Surge\u201d and called for all federal immigration enforcement agents to leave Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Described by the Department of Homeland Security as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, “Operation Metro Surge” focuses on the Minneapolis\u2013Saint Paul metropolitan area and has expanded across the state, with thousands of federal agents deployed.<\/p>\n
Alvaro Montealegre, one of the leaders with Tampa Immigrants Rights Committee, described the scale of the protests in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cHundreds of thousands of people can say, \u2018Hey, this doesn\u2019t belong to me. I\u2019m not being hurt. I\u2019m not touched by this directly so maybe I should watch football or do something else.’ But they come out in terribly freezing weather, subzero temperatures and yet you have hundreds of thousands of people coming out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The protests follow a series of fatal encounters involving immigration officers. It has been one month since Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minnesota on Jan. 7.<\/p>\n
For the dozens who were in attendance in Temple Terrace on Saturday, they say it\u2019s been an emotional few weeks that also have seemingly flown by.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s horrific just waking up to see the news and another person killed almost on a weekly at this point. I mean, there was just a video of an ICE officer kicking a puppy last night that I saw. There is just so much unnecessary violence happening,” Valentina Beron, a co-founder of the Tampa Immigrants Rights Committee, said.<\/p>\n
An attorney for Alex Pretti\u2019s family, the ICU nurse fatally shot on Jan. 24, has asked the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to obtain the names of the two Border Patrol agents who shot him. Officials say the FBI and the Department of Justice are continuing their investigation into Pretti\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Beron said demonstrators fear similar incidents could occur in Florida.<\/p>\n
“I think we just want to make sure that doesn\u2019t come to our streets here in Tampa. We don\u2019t see another innocent nurse or mother or poet killed in our streets,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump criticized what he described as continued unrest tied to immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe in Minnesota that they want to have murderers walking all over the streets. I just don\u2019t believe it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could make our lives so much easier. All they have to do is hand over their criminals. Hand over people that came into our country illegally, that are murderers, that came out of jails, came out of mental institutions, that are drug dealers,\u201d he said to the press in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
Next weekend, the Tampa Immigrants Rights Committee plans to join a statewide movement supporting \u201cThe Visible Act,\u201d a proposal that would make it illegal for immigration officers to cover their faces while performing their duties.<\/p>\n
Another demonstration is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday outside Tampa City Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White House officials say at least 4,000 arrests have been made in Minnesota since Dec. 1 of last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6204,12831,71427,10014,135,137,56666,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-147714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-department-of-homeland-security","9":"tag-immigration-enforcement","10":"tag-immigration-officers","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-tampa","13":"tag-tampa-headlines","14":"tag-tampa-immigrants-rights-committee","15":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}