Front-line workers at St. Paul’s libraries and recreation centers are trained to get their supervisor if federal immigration officers show up, but with the surge of ICE in Minnesota, a city council member questioned Wednesday if they’d have time.

“At this point, truthfully, federal agents just don’t care,” said St. Paul City Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim. “I think they’re going to waltz in our rec centers and our libraries, they’re going to identify and racially profile people.”

St. Paul City Council members on Wednesday discussed strengthening the city’s separation ordinance that says city employees are not authorized to enforce federal immigration policies. The ordinance has been in place since 2004.

Council members have been working on a draft ordinance, which is now under review by the city attorney’s office, said Council President Rebecca Noecker at the council’s organizational committee meeting.

“I think every single person around this table shares that sense of urgency,” Noecker said. “… We are going to bring this (ordinance) forward as soon as we possibly can.”

The cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, with the state of Minnesota, filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to suspend the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state. A federal judge did not make an immediate decision during a Wednesday hearing.

An ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis last week, which has drawn continuing protests.

Council Member Anika Bowie said she also wants the council to look at budgetary actions they can take to respond to increased ICE arrests because “people are in total crisis right now” with business owners “so fearful that they have to close their doors.”

Actions council could take up

John Boehler, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, spoke at the Wednesday meeting. He suggested policies that St. Paul and other local governments can bring forth include:

Masks, IDs: Banning all law enforcement use of masks or face coverings within the city limits and/or require agency identification, name and badge number to be displayed at all times. The policy is in place in Los Angeles County and California, with exceptions for undercover officers, though the Trump administration has sued California over it.

Community spaces: Protect “vulnerable community spaces” by requiring a warrant for law enforcement entry into school district, city-funded or city-run facilities, including medical facilities, schools, day cares, libraries, courthouses, parks and community centers, for immigration matters.

Human rights hotline: Establish a phone hotline or online portal through the city’s human rights departments where residents “can document constitutional abuses by the federal government.”

Data collection: Restricting data collected by automatic license plate readers to city of St. Paul or St. Paul police department servers. “We have begun investigating how these are used in the state of Minnesota,” Boehler said. “… We know that in other states … law enforcement agencies were helping ICE use these license plate readers to track immigrants, protesters … and anybody that they want to track and trail.”

The St. Paul Police Department has license plate readers on squad cars, but the data is not uploaded into a server that outside agencies can access on their own, according to a department spokesman. There is also an auditing process to track who accesses the data in the department.

Role of St. Paul police

City Council Member Molly Coleman said she’s been increasingly hearing from community members “that there is a real desire to have our St. Paul police officers protecting our residents from … dangerous behavior of ICE. … There’s been accidents resulting from the way ICE vehicles have been driving through our city.”

St. Paul police spokesperson Nikki Muehlhausen said “suspicious, dangerous, or unlawful activity should be reported to us immediately so that we can respond.”

Also at the city council meeting, Member Nelsie Yang brought up a Tuesday meeting when a business owner talked of seeing a vehicle without a license plate parked by the business for an hour. The business owner asked an officer nearby to check it out, but the officer said, “They’re busy” and had to go somewhere else, Yang said of what the owner related.

Police Chief Axel Henry was at Tuesday’s meeting and “had the opportunity to directly address the concerns of the business owner,” Muehlhausen said.

He told people in the audience that anytime there is suspicious activity — whether a suspicious vehicle or concerns about the legitimacy of someone claiming to be law enforcement — he urges them to call 911 or the non-emergency number at 651-291-1111.

Training for city employees

St. Paul’s separation ordinance is grounded in the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, said Assistant City Attorney Edmundo Lijo, of the Immigrant and Refugee Program in the St. Paul City Attorney’s Office.

The ordinance says St. Paul police can not “undertake law enforcement action for the sole purpose of detecting the presence of undocumented persons,” Lijo said.

“A big piece of why we have the separation ordinance is about trust and public safety,” he added. “People think it’s about immigration enforcement. It’s not.”

If victims and witnesses of crime are afraid to come forward, “it makes it a lot harder for our police to solve crimes,” Lijo said.

City employees have been receiving training in the separation ordinance since the spring. They’ve looked at the scenario of a federal agent showing up at a library or rec center and asking questions, Lijo said.

“We did not want that frontline employee to be responsible or feel like they’re the person on the spot and have to make those decisions about how to interact with that agent,” he said. They supposed to tell the agent, “Wait until my supervisor arrives.”

That’s a strong first step “because we want to create a very clear separation … for our staff and their safety,” council member Kim said, but there are workers who “feel compelled to protect the children that are coming to our rec centers, and the children and families that are coming to the libraries.”