Evanston Mayor: If Everybody Who’s Outraged ‘Stands up and Fights Back’ Against ICE, ‘They’re Not Going to Be Able to Continue this Nightmare’

WHITFIELD: “So what‘s your understanding about and if it‘s even an issue, you know, citizenship, you know, whether the people who were pulled out of the vehicle and, you know, as you described, subjected to this experience do you know anything about their status or is that a non-issue here?”
BISS: “Yeah. I want to be really clear about this. As I understand it, they‘re all U.S. citizens. There‘s two separate things going on. One thing is where the ICE guys drive around looking for folks who, because of the color of their skin, they‘ve decided, ‘Oh, you might be an immigrant or we‘re going to grab you on some sort of effort at immigration enforcement.’ But now they‘ve opened up a second front in the battle where they don‘t want to be watched, they don‘t want to be witnessed. They don‘t want to be criticized. They don‘t want neighbors to be helping protect their own neighbors. And so now they‘re just going after people who are watching them, who are videotaping them, who are criticizing them. And so these three individuals who they attacked, who they took off the scene in handcuffs, they weren‘t even trying to enforce integration. They were just trying to go after dissent. And here‘s the whole point that‘s so important. If everybody who‘s outraged by these outrageous actions actually stands up and fights back, they‘re not going to be able to continue this nightmare. And so they want those of us who oppose their actions to be too scared to speak out. That‘s what they tried to achieve on Friday in Evanston. And guess what? We‘re going to keep speaking out.”