The anger among residents in the Twin Cities is palpable, as the detention of children by immigration authorities continues to increase.
Minneapolis city council member Jason Chavez reported that a two-year-old girl and her father were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Thursday while they were returning from a grocery store trip.
Photographs taken by MinnPost reporter Ellen Schmidt, who was present at the scene where Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE agent, captured masked officers surrounding the man’s car as he clutched his daughter.
As ICE agents detained the father and his young daughter, some of the numerous protesters that have gathered in Minneapolis-St Paul surrounded the car, expressing their anger by blowing whistles and shouting at the immigration officers.
The father and daughter’s identities, as revealed by a GoFundMe campaign organized by family members to help ‘keep this family together’, are Chloe Renata Tipan Villacis and her father, Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria, originally from Ecuador.
The GoFundMe initiative, which surpassed its $75,000 target by an additional $18,000, states: “With the permission of the mother, we are reaching out to community to help us raise funds for lawyer fee’s, food, bond requests, rent, livability, and resources to keep this family together.
“She would appreciate the help from community in reuniting their family.”
Amid increasing criticism over the detention of children by ICE agents, a Department for Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson labeled Echeverria as an ‘illegal immigrant from Ecuador who committed felony reentry and broke the laws of this nation’.
They told the Daily Beast that the father had been ‘driving erratically with a child in the vehicle’. Regarding the child’s whereabouts, they stated that agents ‘attempted to give the child to the mother who was in the area, but she refused.’
They reiterated: “DHS law enforcement took care of the child who the mother would not take. Child and father are now reunited at a federal facility.”
However, local politicians offer a different perspective.
Councilman Chavez, who highlighted the family’s situation, described the arrest differently, stating: “A suspicious vehicle followed her father’s vehicle home, broke his window and kidnapped them.
He further noted: “No judicial warrant was provided.”
With Villacis and Echeverria still in custody, the family is eager to be reunited.
Their GoFundMe campaign states: “We hope that community can come together to bring Chloe and Elvis back home. No family should ever go through this.”
You can donate here.