Word of the Week: Being a ‘commuter’ in Minneapolis means tailing ICE

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Every morning since Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent, Will Stancil has gotten into his car, dialed into a local dispatch call and started driving. As he patrols the streets of his Minneapolis neighborhood, he looks for out-of-state license plates, tinted windows and other telltale signs of federal immigration agents. If he spots one, he follows them.

Stancil is maybe the Twin Cities’ best-known “commuter” — a word that, among the networks of volunteers who are tracking the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, refers to people trailing ICE and Border Patrol agents in their cars.

In Minneapolis, a “commuter” is a type of “observer,” another term that describes the everyday Minnesotans blowing whistles to alert others when ICE is present in immigrant neighborhoods, in addition to filming arrests, raids and killings by federal agents on their phones.

Used since the mid-19th century as a term for someone who routinely travels to and from work, being a “commuter” in Minneapolis these days is another kind of often-tedious obligation. “This has become, functionally, my part-time job for the last few weeks,” Stancil, a local lawyer, activist and niche-famously combative online poster, says. Beyond drawing attention to federal agents on the ground, he has used his commuting to draw international media attention to the ubiquity of the agents’ activity, day after day.

Patty O’Keefe, a Minneapolis resident and fellow regular “commuter,” thinks the term captures a more specific action than “observer” does. “I think it’s trying to encapsulate that we’re observing but we’re also moving. We’re also covering a lot of ground,” she adds.

It’s unclear who coined the term or when it first came into use — O’Keefe first heard “commute” in this context about two weeks ago in her neighborhood group chats, while Stancil says it was already part of the lingo when he joined rapid response efforts. Stancil suspects it originated in Chicago, like other organizing tactics being deployed against ICE in Minneapolis. (One rapid response group in Pilsen, a Chicago neighborhood, told CNN they weren’t familiar with the term, though they couldn’t speak for other groups in the city.)

“Commuters” alert neighbors to ICE activity, take down the names of anyone they see being taken into federal custody and document the aggressive behavior of agents, Stancil explains.

“Everyone’s seen Alex Pretti get murdered, and they’ve seen Renee Good, but every day there are dozens of incidents of people getting beaten up, tear gassed, windows smashed, all of it,” he adds. “The only reason the world knows about this stuff, to a large extent, is they can’t get out of their car without a bunch of observers descending on them and filming everything.”

“Commuting” isn’t entirely unlike going to work. Some “commutes” can be exceedingly uneventful, with hours passing by without a single confirmed ICE or Border Patrol sighting. And just as you don’t really know the other drivers on the road who are stuck in traffic with you, Stancil mostly doesn’t know the identities of other “commuters.”

“You’re in this organization of people that is really dedicated to this mission,” he says. “There’s some people that I would almost literally trust with my life, and I also don’t have any idea who they are, what their background is or even their real name.”

Other “commutes” are much more stressful. Stancil says he’s witnessed four people being taken into custody. On another occasion, a convoy of ICE vehicles followed him back to his house, as if to signal that they know where he lives.

On January 11, Patty O’Keefe was “commuting” with a friend when they heard reports of ICE agents near her home. When the pair arrived on the scene, she says they saw the agents get back into their cars and pull off into a side street. She and her friend had followed them for about 30 seconds, blowing their whistles and honking their horns, when the agents stepped out of their cars and yelled at them to stop. O’Keefe said an agent then peppersprayed the vent at her front windshield, smashed her windows and arrested them. She was detained for eight hours — an encounter that has also been detailed in other media outlets.

“I am more afraid now because of that experience, but I also know that the point of that experience was to intimidate us,” she says. Still, the experience hasn’t deterred O’Keefe — she had just come off of a “commute” when she spoke to CNN.

Just as most of us drag ourselves to work whether we like it or not, “commuters” seem to operate under a similar sense of obligation. On the day that Alex Pretti was killed in his neighborhood, Stancil says he went to the scene on foot to film. Other “commuters” in his network went about their usual route, continuing to circle the neighborhood and log the ICE vehicles coming in and out.

“I keep comparing them to first responders,” he says. “A lot of these people just have that level of dedication and resoluteness where they just keep their watch regardless of what’s going on.”

For Stancil, there’s something especially satisfying about the term “commuter.” Its banality allows the “commuter” to forget — if just for a moment — the danger they’re willingly putting themselves in.

“Sometimes in the morning, you think about, ‘Is this the day where they detain me, where they break my window, where they pepper spray me?’” he says. Calling himself a “commuter” makes the risks a little more bearable: “It’s a little bit of a wink and nod to the other people who all know what you’re doing.”

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