Neighbors Against Fear
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Thursday night, anti-ICE protesters clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the parking lot outside the agency’s field office in central Phoenix. At least one protester was detained and later released, and other protesters said ICE deployed pepper spray.
At one point, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes — who has been critical of ICE and whose office shares a parking lot with the field office — arrived to try to calm things down.
For months, weekly protests have occurred in front of the ICE field office on Central Avenue. The office is where ICE initially takes detainees before either releasing them or transferring them to larger detention facilities outside of the city. After an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, the protests at the field office have ramped up. Last week, protesters said, ICE agents put up yellow police tape to block them from the parking lot, and protesters attempted to block ICE vans from entering the lot.
Thursday’s protest, which began at about 6 p.m., drew more than 60 activists from Neighbors Against Fear, which has been holding bi-weekly demonstrations there since Good’s killing. Gabrielle Hoffmeister, a 32-year-old Chandler resident and organizer with the group, described the protests as “non-violent but R-rated,” saying demonstrators yell and insult ICE agents, often with a comedic edge.
At the Thursday protest, activists spread out at two different locations at the parking lot entrance. About 30 minutes in, a few activists blocked an ICE van from leaving the lot. But otherwise, organizers said, it was a fairly quiet night.
That changed a few minutes after 8 p.m. Hoffmeister said she was standing on a concrete bollard in front of a gate at the far end of the parking lot with other protesters, yelling insults at the agents, when five or six ICE agents came from another entrance and told the protesters to get back.
“I get down, and I start going back, and he pulls a firearm and points it at me,” Hoffmeister said.
She said the protesters then ran back toward the rest of the group, which was congregated on the side of the parking lot by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. That’s where “the rest of the fracas ensues,” Hoffmesiter said.
Videos shared with New Times show protesters hurling insults at a line of mostly masked agents in body armor, some of whom shine flashlights at the protesters. A few ICE agents began to push some of the protesters back behind the yellow police tape, which had fallen to the ground, and one protester fell to the ground after being shoved.
A scuffle then ensued between a few protesters and a few agents, including one bald agent in a black mask. One protester appeared to take a swing with a Pride flag at the agent, though Hoffmeister claimed it wasn’t intentional. The agent then appeared to tackle a protester to the ground, though the videos of the incident is chaotic and difficult to parse.
“We were sort of backing up, and then they roughly shoved this one girl and knocked her over. And that’s when people started freaking out,” said an organizer who asked to be identified as Ratt for fear of retaliation from ICE. “Everything happened really fast.”
Hoffmeister didn’t think her group’s actions would provoke such a reaction from the agents. “We were standing on the little bollard by the light pole thing so we could see over their fence. We were shining flashlights at them. We were insulting them, and one person was banging on their fence,” Hoffmeister said. “That’s it. That’s the extent.”
Hoffmeister said several protesters, including her, were maced. “At one point, I opened my eyes, and it burned like hell,” Hoffmeister said. She said one protester was taken to the hospital after an allergic reaction to the mace.
One protester was detained by ICE for several hours before being released early Friday morning without charges, organizers said. They added that ICE agents accused the woman of swinging the Pride flag, though organizers say that was a different person.
The Phoenix Police Department said it was aware of the protests and had units in the area, but directed New Times to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for comment. ICE, which is housed under DHS, did not respond to comment requests.
A few hours after the scuffle, Mayes came out to the protest site to “ensure that members of the public were safe,” her spokesperson Richie Taylor wrote in an email to New Times. Her office declined to comment further. Mayes has been critical of ICE agents for failing to identify themselves and wearing masks, and recently drew backlash for suggesting that masked agents could be mistakenly shot due to Arizona’s Stand Your Ground laws.
Phoenix City Councilmember Anna Hernandez, who has attended several vigils in front of the field office, told New Times that she didn’t believe ICE’s depiction to Phoenix police that “an agent was assaulted and that’s why they pepper-sprayed people.”
“I just have a lot of questions around that,” she said. “I’m very cautious of any reporting on whatever stance ICE is taking.”
Hernandez said the scuffle is “the type of escalation that worries me here in Phoenix” and that she “really encourage(s) everyone to be very aware of the rights that they do have.” After the dustup, Ratt said the group plans to encourage protesters to bring gas masks and other safety equipment.
“It’s clear that ICE wants to escalate things,” she said. “We’re definitely going to be trying to figure out a few things to be more prepared for this.”
