How ICE raids are testing police-community relationships

0:00WBUR Podcasts, Boston. If the community starts to mistrust the police, they won't report crime, they won't cooperate, they won't serve as witnesses. That really is, you know, very much established. The actions of federal immigration agents have a lasting impact on local police long after the blitzes end and they leave town.

0:35It's Friday, December 5th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WVUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:44Today on the show, Minnesotans react to President Trump's racist rants about Somali Americans. The words that are coming from our president are really dangerous and have real consequences. Also, some decidedly lighter news to mull over this weekend. Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication, according to a new study. But they're not exactly cats or dogs. Yes, I would not recommend owning a raccoon at the moment, since even if they're in the early stages of domestication, they're still wild animals. Before we get to that story, though, Federal immigration agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have been deployed in cities across the country for the last few months.

1:32This week, they started sweeps in New Orleans. In cities like Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina, ICE agents have used aggressive and violent tactics, shooting tear gas, chasing people through the streets, arresting protesters, and even in places where local police take a hands-off approach to immigration enforcement, local cops inevitably get involved. That can have long-term effects on public trust even after the flashy operations with names like Midway Blitz and Charlotte's Web are over. So says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. Here's his conversation with Scott Tong.

2:15You have said immigration is a main issue that keeps police chiefs up at night, that they feel, quote, caught in the middle of all this. What do you mean? Well, that's exactly right. I mean, the trust of the community is vital to them. At the same time, they share the objective of identifying people who commit violent crimes and getting them off the street. So it's a balancing act between working with the community maintaining trust and also working with the federal government in ways that make sense, and that is focusing on violent crime. But very often today, police departments are up against past patterns and laws and statutes that really stipulate how they can work with federal agencies.

3:02I think that the difficult aspect is the 11 million people who have been in this country for some time and are working. When ICE goes after that part of the population, that creates a lot of challenges. And you mentioned building trust with local communities, a priority of your organization. But in some cases, say in Chicago, are these federal crackdowns eroding trust between neighborhoods and law enforcement? Well, that's a good question because for Chicago or for Los Angeles or Boston or any of these cities, police have worked for years to build public trust. It hasn't always been easy. And the relationship between ICE and local police can sometimes be uneven.

3:47ICE does not always notify police when they are doing an operation. And it doesn't help, honestly, when the ICE agents are masked and it's created concern as to whether or not they identify themselves. And that's become a sticking point in a lot of jurisdictions. Yeah, and if I can ask a little bit more about that, as you know, these federal agencies say that their agents in cities have been doxed when their faces have been in the open, been attacked on social media, etc. On the other hand, the New Orleans police superintendent recently asked ICE agents and Customs and Border Protection officers to remove face covering.

4:30So why is this question important from the standpoint of police officers and local communities? It's interesting. It's a good question because the FBI in November of this year sent out a bulletin alerting police departments that there were criminals who were now wearing masks. And so in Los Angeles or in Minneapolis, you have individuals who are committing crimes with masks. In fact, in Minnesota this past summer, you had that individual who shot senators, and he was masked, and he was purporting to be a law enforcement officer. Last night, I understand, in Minneapolis, you had criminals wearing masks.

5:08So people are calling up the police. They're questioning who it is. And police have been operating for the last 10 years. Everything that they have done in terms of whether it's name identifications, body-worn cameras, all of that is really where they have been going. So the whole mask issue just, I think it's unsettling for everyone. You mentioned it a couple times that police officers feel caught in the middle. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Is there a practical example from these cities we've talked about that kind of goes to police being caught in the middle? Well, I think the example this summer in Minneapolis where the police were called to a scene where federal agents were conducting some kind of an arrest.

6:00And, you know, you had a large crowd gathering and the police were called because there was concern about disruption and the community felt that it was an ICE operation. Well, it turns out it wasn't exactly an ICE operation, but nevertheless, there was a concern that the police were somehow cooperating with ICE. And so the police chief there had to clarify it. So I think this has happened in Los Angeles and Chicago and other cities where ICE will conduct an operation and then the community will be upset and a large crowd will gather and then the police will have to respond and try to do everything they can to deal with crowd controls.

6:43Well, the community can interpret that as the police working with ICE. So that's the challenge, you know, having to both maintain community trust and also understand that sometimes these federal agents will be endangered and they have a responsibility to protect them as well. For people in these local communities, why is it important for them to know the difference, to differentiate between a local police officer and a federal agent? That's a really good question because in all of these communities, the police have come to recognize that they have to police everyone in that community. And the reporting of crime, the cooperation with the police, all of those things depend upon maintaining trust with the community.

7:30If the community starts to mistrust the police, they won't report crime, they won't cooperate, they won't serve as witnesses. that really is very much established. Going back to Los Angeles in 1979, this is the pattern of many police departments, many communities, is maintaining community trust with all of the people in their community, whether they're here legally or not. Chuck Wexler is executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. Chuck, thanks for the time. Thank you very much.

8:13Well, this week, ICE reportedly began operations in the Twin Cities targeting Somali immigrants. That coincides with a series of racist rants by President Trump against Somali Americans. After the break, we'll hear from the Somali community in Minnesota. Stick around.

8:37Thank you.

9:07your lifestyle, and your budget. And they work for you for free. Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50 % at selectquote.com slash anytime. That's 50 % off at selectquote.com slash anytime. This week, President Trump went on a series of rants against Somali immigrants, denigrating a community of nearly 80 ,000 people living in Minnesota. That beautiful land, that beautiful state, it's a hellhole right now. And the Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. Khalid Omar is with the statewide community organizing group Isaiah.

9:49On Thursday, he spoke to Peter O'Dowd. You're Somali-American. When you hear the president of the United States talk like that, what do you hear? What do your friends and neighbors hear? My friends and myself and my neighbors hear hateful rhetoric coming from our president. And this hateful rhetoric are really dangerous, and many of my community right now are extremely fearful. This is not new to us. During 2016, Trump was campaigning in Minnesota. It was probably his last stop for his 2016 campaign. During that time, Trump attacked the Somali-American community here in Minnesota. Right after 2016, in 2017, we had a white supremacist group that drove up to Minnesota and bombed a local mosque called the Daru Faruk Center.

10:46So the words that are coming from our president are really dangerous and have real consequences. Well, right now, President Trump has also said he plans to end temporary protected status for Somalis living in the United States since the 1990s because there's been an ongoing war there. Are people you know thinking about the prospect of being forced to return? Peter, the number of people who are on the temporary status are less than a thousand people. Many of the Somali Americans here in our country are citizens. And, you know, we believe that this is a sort of a distraction to what the real issue is.

11:30Many of our communities, the Minnesota community, and also our country are struggling. They're struggling with their basic necessities, their living expenses. Groceries are increasing highly. Instead of that, our president chose to attack a small, minute community. And the temporary protection status was a way to welcome refugees and immigrants to this country who are fleeting war, who are fleeting economic difficulties. So to see that being weaponized is really unacceptable. Well, I take your point that a lot of the Somali Americans in your area are U.S. citizens. So what do you make of the administration's decision to send immigration officials into the community?

12:21Yesterday, we had ICE officers and federal officers who came, who were in our communities, in our mosques, near our places of worship. And we have heard of people who are citizens who are being asked and questioned about their status here in this country. And that is just crazy to see law enforcements and ICE agents who are coming and who are literally harassing our communities. People right now are talking about should they be carrying their passport with them at all times so that they can make sure that they're not picked on or they're not detained. So this is what even yesterday my mother was giving me a call and just telling me, hey, make sure you have your passport on.

13:14I never thought that would be the conversation that we would be having as a citizen in this country. This is something that it is really mind boggling to be hearing from our community. But we've been telling our community to stay strong in this moment. Well, as you know, the barrage of insults from the president started most recently because of a fraud scandal in Minnesota, where dozens of people have been charged and convicted with felonies by prosecutors who say they stole more than a billion dollars in federal and state money for social services during the pandemic. President Trump has used this as a justification for his attacks because, as you know, some of the people involved were from Somalia.

13:53Are you concerned about those convictions painting the community in a bad light? Anyone who commits fraud or other crimes should be held accountable, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their race, religion. They should be held accountable. I believe in the rule of law, and Somali Americans believe in the rule of law. And in America, we don't believe, or there's no such a thing as collective punishment. and to see our president scapegoat a whole community based off a few individuals, less than 1%, is unacceptable and it is racist. It is very hateful to be seeing that and hearing it from our president.

14:43Khaled Omar in Minneapolis with the statewide community organizing group Isaiah. Khaled, thank you so much. Thank you, Peter.

15:02And we've got one more story for you on today's show. Something a little different. A new study finds raccoons in urban areas are showing early signs of domestication. What does that mean? And how soon can we have raccoons in our homes and curled up by our feet? Peter O'Dowd puts those questions to the study's co-author after the break. But spoiler alert, you're not going to have a pet raccoon anytime soon. We'll be right back.

15:48The internet is in love with raccoons. Kids have been known to bring the black and white trash bandits into the house. What'd you catch? It kept falling. Eden, take that thing outside! TikTok user at Rory the Raccoon feeds the little rascal pup cups at Starbucks, and Rory loves candy. Wanna try some Skittles? Are those tasty? Well, there may be a scientific reason for all this. A new study shows that urban raccoons could be showing early signs of domestication. Rafaela Lesch is at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Rafaela, welcome. Thank you for having me. You know, I do feel that at a certain point in our hive brains here, raccoons went from being a pest that might have rabies to this cute little animal you wouldn't mind snuggling with in bed.

16:46Does that resonate with you at all? Yeah, it's honestly amazing. Like the first experience that I had on campus here in the U.S. was throwing away like a piece of trash into a trash can. It didn't sound quite right. It hit that trash can and it just it sounded too soft. So it peeked in the trash can. It was this huge raccoon sitting there. So, yeah, my perspective on raccoons definitely changed moving to North America. So what are some of the signs, you know, in nature that something might be going on here, that a wild animal like a raccoon might be getting closer to domestication? Yeah, so the thing is, all our domesticated animals share certain traits.

17:26Like, for example, we see commonly that domesticated animals have smaller brains, shorter snouts, curly tails, floppy ears, white patches. So I really wanted to see if the city environment would be able to mimic the environment that maybe our cat and dog ancestors found themselves in. And that's really what inspired this entire study. And then how did you go about collecting evidence that this very well could be happening? So we ended up using iNaturalist, which is a citizen science data platform where like every single person can upload images of animals or plants to this massive database. And we downloaded raccoon images from this database and then looked at whether those raccoons were from rural or urban environments and then proceeded to measure the snouts on those animals and compared basically how the snout length differed in urban and rural environments.

18:22And did you find a difference? We did. So we were excited to find that urban raccoons have shorter snouts than rural raccoons, which potentially could be a sign of the domestication phenotype. Wow. So do you have any theories about why this might be happening with raccoons? From what I've read, it sounds like trash piles produced by humans might be the key to the puzzle here. Yeah. So the human environment in general is an environment that does provide certain benefits to animals. So, for example, wherever us humans go, we produce a lot of trash that almost is kind of like a buffet for some animals.

19:02So living in close proximity to humans comes with kind of easier accessible food, but it also means that you have to be able to deal with that proximity to humans. You have to be bold enough to exist in that space. But of course, you also have to be non-aggressive because if you're aggressive towards humans, that usually is the end of that specific individual's lifespan. Interesting. Interesting. So just by virtue of being around humans, the ones that are tamer would have a better shot potentially at surviving in the cities. Exactly. So over many generations, we really have like a very strong selection pressure for this specific type of friendliness, tameness, whatever you want to call it really.

19:43And that just accelerates or amplifies over generations and thousands of years. My understanding is that evolution is something that happens really slowly. But as I mentioned, people are already keeping raccoons as pets and living with them just like they do with dogs and cats. I'm curious, you know, what you think about that and whether, you know, it's good for the animal or for the people or just a sign of what's happening with these animals. Yes. So I would not recommend owning a raccoon at the moment since even if they're in the early stages of domestication, they're still wild animals. Because as you mentioned, these domestication processes, they take thousands of years.

20:20So we really are still dealing with a wild animal that has started to adjust to a human environment, but they're far away from pets. So they're not like dogs or cats. If you adopted a raccoon today, that still would be very much a wild animal that you put in your living room. And we all know how much damage the average dog and cat can do to our interior design. Well, we know how much damage a raccoon can do to our trash bins. So, Raphael Alesch, a researcher at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thank you so much for your time. Really interesting. Thank you.

20:57Yes, the humble trash panda. If you're cold, they're cold. Bring them inside. No, but really, I think they're doing fine. They've got plenty to eat and rummage around in our trash-filled alleyways. So, better to leave them to their own devices, I say. That's our show for today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Wilder Fleming and Koyani Saxena. Today's editors were Todd Munt, Micaela Rodriguez, Michael Scotto, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Andre Peralta and Marcel Damiano. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley.

21:36Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll be back with you on Monday.