Capehart: How Can Anyone Look At What’s Happening In Minneapolis And Not Fight Back? “It’s Coming To You Next”
PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump’s remarks in Davos forcing Western leaders to reevaluate their relationship with the U.S. and escalating tensions over the ongoing immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota.
GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Let’s shift our focus stateside with what’s happening in Minneapolis with the ICE enforcement. As we speak, there are thousands of people in the streets of Minneapolis protesting. We learned this week about an internal ICE memo that allows agents to enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. They’re using administrative warrants. At what point does this aggressive enforcement start to undermine constitutional guardrails, Jonathan? JONATHAN CAPEHART, MS NOW: Start to? One could argue that it’s already happening, that you have ICE busting into people’s homes, snatching people off the streets, or, as folks in Minneapolis are saying, people are being kidnapped, cars left in the middle of the road, sometimes still running with the possessions inside because ICE has snatched people off the street. What is happening in Minneapolis and Minnesota, it breaks my heart because we are seeing these constitutional norms that you’re asking about being eroded before our very eyes, being not just challenged but abused. That’s the word I’m looking for, abused. When you look at a 5-year-old who — and his father who are in process, the asylum-seeking process, which means they are not undocumented, being used as bait, and then shipped to Texas with his father, or Mr. Thao, the 57-year-old who earlier in the week was hauled out of his home in boxer shorts and Crocs and a robe in 12-degree temperatures, I mean, what is happening to the people of Minneapolis, to American citizens? There was just a report today of a U.S. Army vet who was taken into custody for eight hours there in Minneapolis. At some point, at some point — well, I was going to say the administration will have to see the error of its ways, but they will not. And this gets to the thing where I say my heart’s broken, but my heart is full, watching the protests in Minneapolis of people taking to the streets to stand up for their own constitutional rights, but to stand up for their communities and for their fellow folks who live in Minneapolis, because they — people should not have to live in fear the way that they’re living there in Minneapolis right now. It’s not — just at a moral level, how can anyone look at what’s happening in Minneapolis and not stand up and not fight back and not push back? Because if it’s happening in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a state that’s 75 percent white, it’s coming to you next. And it’s already happening in Maine.
