Queer trans ICE protester recounts pepper-spraying, jailing by agents

A queer transgender woman says she and her girlfriend were pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, and jailed simply for showing up to protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Alice Valentine and her girlfriend, Sofia Martin, learned through a Signal group chat that ICE agents were swooping down Monday on St. Cloud’s Star City Mall, which is home to many Somali-owned businesses, The Handbasket reports. They are fairly new to protests but wanted to help their neighbors. Both are queer and trans and are U.S. citizens.

“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,” according to the site.

That happened after they confronted ICE agents who got out of a car and brandished guns. “I'm not a gun person, but the guns were really big. They weren't just like standard police pistols,” Valentine said. “And so I started recording.”

When the couple asked why the agents were armed, one agent pushed Martin. “I say, ‘Don't shove my fucking girlfriend,’ and he shoves me,” Valentine told the site, “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.”

Then the women were thrown into a van, along with three others. Two of them were likely Somali, Valentine said. They were taken to ICE headquarters at the Whipple Building in Minneapolis, where each received one bottle of water but no treatment for their pepper spray wounds.

ICE agents questioned them separately, and an agent asked Martin about her genitalia and if she’d had gender-confirmation surgery. She answered truthfully to avoid being groped. It occurred to them that LGBTQ+ people were being singled out for mistreatment. In the van, they discussed ICE’s killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week. Valentine told Martin, “You know, I just realized that they probably knew Renee was a lesbian before they shot her.”

Related: Who was Renee Nicole Good? Remembering the Minneapolis poet and mother killed by ICE

Related: 911 calls reveal chaos after ICE agent shot Renee Good up to 4 times

Also, while in her cell, Valentine heard another woman asking to call her girlfriend. What crossed Valentine’s mind was “Why are so many lesbians being fucked up by ICE right now?” she said.

Valentine and Martin were released after several hours. No one told them why they were released or what to expect next. The agents returned their belongings except for their cell phones.

Valentine sprained an ankle when being roughed up by ICE, and she has been unable to work because of that. She and Martin own a salon that provides massages and electrolysis, with a focus on queer and trans clients. But while being treated at urgent care, Valentine met a neighbor who’s also interested in countering ICE, so she remains committed to the effort.

“In retrospect, I would have done it again,” she told The Handbasket. “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.”