I take alternative routes. To try to cover vulnerable spots. When I drive to the gym, I go down towards George Floyd Square, and rather than take the highway, I drive the streets to hopefully be a bystander that can help thwart some of this.
Yesterday I got out of the gym I go to, and a vehicle pulled up and it just sat there. It had really heavy-tinted windows, and I just stopped and I pulled my whistle out and I just waited. It became clear that they were meeting someone, so another car pulled up, and I could hear them talking and kind of laughing.
I was like, OK. All right. That's cool. It’s just this hyper-vigilance of checking, and just looking out for each other, you know?
We used to never lock our door. And we lock our door all the time now. We don’t know when they’re coming to our neighborhood. It just feels like there are no rules or laws. Everything that you thought you knew before, when you could say, the government is gonna help us. The government is actually working against us right now. So it just, it, it really very much feels like we're on our own.
Ryan Ecklund, 45, realtor who was detained after filming federal agents
I didn't go looking for ICE. On Monday morning, the 12th, I dropped my son off at school at 9:30 am and drove back home. I realized on the way home that I needed to stop at the grocery store for yogurt and pears. There’s one less than a mile from my home, and as I entered the parking lot I saw what was clearly an ICE vehicle—blacked out windows, an out-of-state plate, and a driver wearing tactical gear and a face covering—rolling up and down the lane.
In that moment, something in my mind said, it's your responsibility as a member of this community to hold them accountable for their actions, not to catch them doing something wrong or make a viral video, but simply let them know that we know they’re here. So I picked up my phone and just hit Record and I started following this vehicle. It was a silver Ford Explorer. They parked sideways and I parked a few spaces away. That silver Explorer then backed up directly behind my vehicle so that I couldn't leave that spot.
“I realized that they either took the photograph and ran it through facial recognition software or ran my license plate so that they could figure out where I lived.”
One of the ICE agents in the passenger seat got out and approached my driver-side window. I was still recording and I rolled the window down and said, “Good morning, what can I do for you?” He grabbed a cell phone and took a photo of me. He didn't say anything in response to me. He simply took my photo and then went back to his vehicle, and they slowly drove away.
I continued to follow. He turned out of the shopping center and onto a main road here and proceeded to turn into my neighborhood, and then onto the street that leads to my house, and then into the cul-de-sac that I live in. I realized that they either took the photograph and ran it through facial recognition software or ran my license plate so that they could figure out where I lived. Then, they led me right to my front door in a clear effort to show me that they know who I am, and they know where I live. It was a fear tactic, pure and simple. They're not here to do a service. They're not here to be focused on finding violent illegal immigrants. They're just here to scare people, and that's what they're doing to me right now. They couldn't have been clearer.