MINNEAPOLIS – A man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said Saturday that he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest during the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson's front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in and around the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which federal officials say has resulted in more than 2,500 arrests.
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Protests and counterprotests were expected to take place Saturday, as the immigration enforcement operation grinds on.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his arrest Sunday, a judge ruled federal officials hadn't given Gibson enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her Friday that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered Gibson to be arrested again.
The White House denied the account of the re-arrest and the suggestion that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to Texas immigration detention facility after his arrest but was returned home following the judge's ruling. He said his family had to use a dumbbell to keep their front door closed amid the subfreezing temperatures outside before spending $700 to fix the damage.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
The Department of Homeland Security said an “activist judge” again was trying to stop the government from deporting "criminal illegal aliens."
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in."
The Department of Homeland Security has called its Minnesota crackdown is its largest yet, with more than 2,000 federal officers taking part.
It has stoked daily protests in the deeply liberal Twin Cities, where immigration officers have been pulling people from their homes and cars and using aggressive tactics on demonstrators, and where one fatally shot Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday, a federal judge ruled that immigration officers can’t detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when they’re observing the officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
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Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Boak in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.