Queer trans ICE protester in small Minn. city recounts agents' violence and humiliation

If you want to support The Handbasket’s 100% independent journalism, subscribe for free now. You can also become a premium subscriber or leave a tip.

When Alice Valentine heard ICE agents were swarming a shopping center filled with Somali-owned businesses on Monday, she woke up her girlfriend Sofia, grabbed a backpack with respirators and whistles that they put together based on an protest preparedness article they read last week, and immediately drove over to help. The St. Cloud, Minnesota couple who are both American citizens are not seasoned protesters; they’re new to this type of action, which they learned about from a ICE watch Signal group chat formed in the wake of Renee Good’s recent murder. And within a few moments of arriving at the parking lot, they were shoved to the ground by agents, pepper sprayed, thrown in a van and hauled away.

I was fortunate to speak to Alice via phone on Wednesday, two days after her and Sofia’s violent and shocking ordeal. The 25-year-old and her girlfriend, who are both queer and trans, co-own a salon in the small city about an hour from Minneapolis that offers massage and electrolysis services catering to the queer and trans clients. While Alice has spent the past year or so devoted to creating solidarity in the local queer community, coming face-to-face with law enforcement to protect her immigrant neighbors was something brand new. While Minneapolis is rightly in the spotlight for ICE brutality, she wants people to understand that the agency is lashing out well beyond city boundaries, and smaller towns are being caught under the administration’s violent and punishing boot.

“A lot of people think that St. Cloud is sort of a Republican town, but the reality is that the surrounding small towns are very red.” Alice told me, “St. Cloud itself is fairly left-leaning.”  That’s why when—hours after the ICE murder or Renee Good—she heard 200 agents were coming directly to their town, she started chatting with other locals to organize and protect their neighbors. By Saturday, the first ICE agents were spotted in town. And when more than 50 ICE agents descended to round up local immigrants and their defenders on Monday, Alice and Sofia were ready.

Within 10 seconds of arriving at the Star City Mall, Alice said a silver Dodge pulled up and armed ICE agents got out. “I'm not a gun person, but the guns were really big. They weren't just like standard police pistols,” Alice said. “And so I started recording.” 

Alice and Sofia walked up to the agents and asked what the guns were for, and an agent immediately pushed Sofia. “I say, ‘Don't shove my fucking girlfriend,’ and he shoves me,” Alice recalled, “and then then it evolves really fast from there. Like I have pepper spray in my eyes. It's all over my body. And they're putting handcuffs on both of us.” A state senator was also reportedly pepper sprayed, among many others in the crowd.

At that point, the agents had Sofia on the ground as Alice tried to get the attention of other protesters to help them. “And I'm screaming for help. I'm saying that I'm a US citizen, that I was just there to record. But they [ICE] ignore me, and then they throw us in the van.”

In the video captured by a bystander and shared directly with The Handbasket, you can see them in the back row of an unmarked van, struggling to keep their eyes open as tear gas burns while yelling for help. Shortly after, they were en route to the Whipple Building in Minneapolis—ICE HQ in Minnesota—with three other detainees, at least two of whom Alice believes were Somali. 

“It was an emotional car ride,” Alice said. “Like at one point, my girlfriend and I were crying, and the man in the middle, he was a Somali guy. His face was really beat up. And he turned back to us, and he says, ‘God is with us. If God is with you, have nothing to fear.’” While it provided some comfort to Sofia, Alice said that as a person who’s not religious, it didn’t feel like there was anyone there to protect them.

Once they reached the Whipple Building, Alice and Sophia were given one water bottle which they immediately drank. It left them with nothing to treat their tear gas wounds, and when Alice called to ask for more water and additional treatment, she said they were instead met with more casual cruelty.

“I pressed the call button, and I was like, ‘We were pepper sprayed. We need medical attention as soon as possible.’ And there was just a pause, and we heard laughter in the background. And then a lady was like, ‘It's gonna be a while. We don't have medical on-site.’”

The two were questioned separately by ICE officers, and Sofia was subjected to particularly invasive and humiliating questions. They asked her if she had had a sex change and if she had a penis. Alice said back in the cell Sofia told her she answered truthfully to both questions to avoid the officers from groping her for answers. 

I asked Alice if she felt like, as visibly queer people, they were particular targets at the protest of agents working for an administration known to be virulently anti-LGBTQ+, and especially after they shot Renee Good four times—including once in the head—and killed her in a car with her wife Becca. Alice said it didn’t occur to her until she had time to reflect in the van. She said to Sofia “You know, I just realized that they probably knew Renee was a lesbian before they shot her.”

That realization continued to fester while Alice was locked up in Minneapolis. “When I was in the cell, I overheard a woman asking to call her girlfriend, and I started crying because I just thought of Renee, and I thought of my girlfriend and this girl. And I was like, ‘Why are so many lesbians being fucked up by ICE right now?’”

This week, journalist Katelyn Burns wrote about this dynamic. “The message is clear: looking wrong to a conservative, speaking wrong to a conservative man, not bowing and scraping to conservatives, or even just loving the ‘wrong’ gender, means you are an enemy. An enemy that should be put down.”

After several hours in a cell with untreated wounds, Alice and Sofia were released from ICE custody. They were given no reason for their release, nor were they told what comes next. All of their personal belongings were returned to them except their cell phones, which remain with ICE.

Even in the wake of ICE descending upon his city without warning, brutalizing residents and whisking them away, St. Cloud Mayor Jake Anderson has kept his response passive and tepid: “There’s a lot of folks that are telling me that I should pull a [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob] Frey and tell them to get the F out. I don’t think that helps,” Anderson told a local news outlet earlier in the week. And on Thursday he told St. Cloud Live, “We’re limited in our role and I don’t want to attempt to step into lanes we can’t do anything about, because I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful.”

But the bonds of community that have been so quickly built in the face of state-sponsored violence cannot be undone. Alice said she sustained a sprained ankle during the ICE attack—which has left her temporarily unable to perform her job—and while at urgent care after her release she happened to meet a neighbor in the waiting room and they exchanged numbers. The Signal chat lives on, and while ICE has been relatively quiet in St. Cloud since Monday, people in the community are primed to defend their immigrant neighbors. 

“In retrospect, I would have done it again,” Alice told me. “Like, it was the most miserable day of my whole life. But I would do it again because I think that people need to know how evil ICE is and that this is happening, and that this isn't about putting murderers and rapists away. It's about racism, it's about Nazism, it's about fascism, and we need to do anything we can to stop it.”