A Minnesota police chief says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents confronted an off-duty female officer during a traffic stop, knocked her phone out of her hands when she tried to record the encounter, and drew their weapons before leaving abruptly once she identified herself.
Mark Ruley, police chief of Brooklyn Park, described the alleged incident during a press conference, saying the officer told him she was driving when ICE agents boxed in her vehicle and demanded immigration documentation. According to Ruley, the officer is a U.S. citizen and did not have “immigration paperwork” to provide.
Ruley said the officer felt threatened by the agents’ language and conduct and attempted to document the stop on her phone. The officer reported that agents knocked the phone away, preventing her from filming.
“The officer had their guns drawn during this interaction,” Ruley said. He added that the officer then identified herself as a Brooklyn Park police officer “in hopes of slowing the incident and de-escalating the incident down.”
Ruley said the agents left immediately after learning she was an officer, offering no explanation or apology. He told reporters he does not believe the encounter was isolated, claiming other police chiefs present had heard similar accounts involving off-duty officers in the area.
At the press conference, Ruley emphasized that local leaders were not calling to eliminate immigration enforcement, but to scrutinize how it is carried out.
“What you won’t hear from any of us today is rhetoric of abolish ICE or that there shouldn’t be immigration enforcement,” he said, adding that enforcement “is necessary for our national security and for local security,” but that “how it’s done is extremely important.”
Ruley also claimed that, over the past two weeks, law enforcement agencies have received widespread complaints alleging civil-rights violations involving U.S. citizens.
“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers,” he said. “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. It has to stop.”
