There’s a rot blooming in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It began a couple of weeks ago in the industrial zone of Bro-Tex, where fourteen workers were snatched from their lives, like prey bagged by poachers of the Republic. And just when we thought the beast had eaten its fill, they were here again lurking in our quiet neighborhood of Payne/Phalen.
Around 9:40am on Tuesday, November 25th, 2025, MONARCA sent out a text alert to the Upstander community:
“Monarca Alert! Federal activity at [redacted] Rose Ave E in Saint Paul, MN 55117 Upstander Legal Observers needed”
Activated neighbors filtered out into their neighborhood. Ordinary people became extraordinary. The Upstanders arrived. Neighbors, immigrants, elders, workers, an improvised group of conscience. They assessed the situation, MIRAC representatives asked questions of ICE, ERO & HSI officials: Do you have a warrant? What’s your name and badge number? Who authorized this? They reminded the terrified residents inside the house that they still have rights, what little remains of that tattered scroll we once called the Constitution, helping them seek legal council as the armed state stood outside. Regular everyday citizens filmed and bore witness to the process. Upstanders formed a peaceful resistance, not a mob, but a spine. Witnesses in every direction. Cameras rolling. Truth captured. A human chain formed to protect those who were not on the warrant from being picked up. Legal observers witnessed as the Saint Paul Police Department came in ready for a fight, gas masks on, guns up, dressed like the opening act for a civil war none of us consented to. At least 14 SPPD officers were counted, and as soon as they arrived things changed for the worse.
Witnesses say that while legal observers and neighbors mobilized, ICE called the SPPD to claim they were a violent mob (they were not). They thundered in on ICE’s word alone, a bull set loose in the cathedral of human dignity. People on the ground, including city councilwoman HwaJeong Kim and multiple media outlets say this was a lie manufactured by the state. In this moment the Saint Paul Police Department took ICE at their word with no evidence and barreled in like a bull in a china shop. SPPD showed up fully geared out, itching for a fight. SPPD heard ICE lie through its teeth, claiming the peaceful Upstanders were a violent mob, and swallowed that fiction whole like obedient soldiers who forgot their oath was to the people, not the Alphabet Army of ICE–ERO–HSI.
In the meantime the person ICE was looking for surrendered peacefully, no struggle, no fight, yet the police behaved as if Ragnarök itself was unfolding on Rose Avenue.
Neighbors continued to stand with neighbors waiting for all police and ICE to leave the scene. The people don’t trust these government organizations for good reason. The state has shown themselves time and time again that they will lie and brutalize us, despite their false promises and words to the otherwise. Neighbors on that day were unfortunately proven right. One woman captured on video asked officers loitering in her yard on her private property for their warrant. When they told her they didn’t have one, she asked them to please stop trespassing on her property and get out of her yard. The officers refused to move, trampling on her constitutional rights.
Soon after, Police gave neighbors a brief “You have X amount of time to move back” before they would use force. But the police didn’t even wait a few seconds. Around 12:30 the crackdown began. SPPD maced peaceful protesters including a person with a cane who was pepper sprayed point blank by an officer as they peacefully and non-violently protested by blocking a vehicle. Chemical agents were hurled into the air like poisoned scripture. They grabbed a skateboarder by the shoulders and used him as a human shield as they pushed their way through the crowd spraying mace directly into his eyes and in many cases point blank at the non-violent protesters. The state used mace, pepper balls, teargas and rubber bullets. People trying to leave were trampled anyway. The police didn’t give a damn who you were, citizen, disabled, elected official, if you were there, you were a target. Rubber bullets hit city council woman HwaJeong Kim. Kerem Yücel, an MPR photojournalist whose camera documented the truth too well, suddenly hit, collapsed. Eyes burning, lungs seizing. Neighbors turned into medics, washing poison from his face as sirens screamed and the state’s machines fled the scene like the cowards they are. Neighbors picked up neighbor from off the ground as the police state brutally pushed them down to the floor again and again.
Then came the horror that froze every witness. At it’s scariest most intense moment, an unidentified masked man masquerading as an ICE agent pointed a loaded lethal gun into the crowd of unarmed civilians. No threat. No provocation. Just the raw psychosis of unchecked power. This caused so much alarm that other alphabet agents came over and grabbed him, pointed his giant black gun to the ground and pulled him away before he made the worst mistake of his life.
We were THISCLOSE to the worst of state sanctioned violence being carried out by blood thirsty, trigger happy, gestapo ICE officers. For a breathless stretch of time, long enough for the world to tilt, we were one trembling finger away from a massacre. The crowd of neighbors were non-violent and yet, he pulled his gun into a firing position ready to shoot into the crowd. This is unacceptable of anyone and especially our government officials. If they had shot, there’s no determining what violence and bloodshed would have continued to follow. As they dragged the man away, the message was already carved into the bones of Rose Avenue:
They are ready to kill us.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.
Literally.
No matter how PEACEFUL OR NON-VIOLENT we the people were, as evidenced through multiple videos and images by Upstanders on the scene (look it up, plenty of evidence supporting the Upstanders on TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, FB, etc.), THEY WERE ATTACKED by Saint Paul Police, ICE & the rest of the Alphabet Squad. People on crutches, the elderly, the quiet, the ones moving away after the command, the citizens witnessing, brutalized by our over militarized police force on a power trip. They purposefully attacked our freedom of speech, aiming their guns at the press, shooting them with rubber bullets, even hitting our councilwoman and the press. These are not accidents. These are not mistakes. This is State sanctioned violence.
And yet, the people didn’t break.
The street smelled of teargas and fear and fierce defiance, lights and sirens blaring. There was a group of about 50-100 Upstanders who stood vigil as armored vans rolled away, doors open, guns visible, like colonizers proud of the damage they’d done. Medics were tending Yücel on the ground. One Upstander guarded hot teargas canisters keeping others from accidently touching them and burning themselves. We keep US safe. Neighbors shouted, wept, and filmed. One shopkeeper condemned them like a prophet at the city gates, “Don’t you DARE come into my store!” they shouted to SPPD/ICE as they passed. “Get out of OUR neighborhood!” The State escalated violence. The People escalated solidarity.
Every amendment the Founders chiseled into parchment was used as toilet paper on Tuesday. Countless rights violated by the State. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from quartering, the right to due process, the right to no search and seizure without a legal signed Judicial warrant. I’m sure there were more because honestly, what rights have they NOT violated throughout this whole thing? The ACLU has been contacted, and I bet dollars to doughnuts there’s going to be countless lawsuits.
Let’s be brutally honest here about the sequence of events. ICE lied. SPPD believed the lie. The press was targeted. Our neighbors were assaulted. Elected officials were shot. A gun was aimed at the public.
Tell me again who the “violent mob” was. Tell me again who the threat is. These aren’t peace officers, they’re a domestic occupying force playing soldier with our neighborhoods as their battlefield.
But here’s what matters more than anything. Something shifted last week. The mask slipped. The machine showed its teeth. And the people saw very clearly, finally, that the real danger isn’t the neighbor across the street.
It’s the boot on their neck.
THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE IS GREATER THAN THE PEOPLE IN POWER.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.