JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
About a half hour away in the suburb of Minnetonka, people in heavy winter coats file into a church. They pick up bright-yellow vests and signs with messages like, stand with immigrant families, and ICE off my property, get a warrant.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) With thy neighbors...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) Our God...
SUMMERS: It's been a few days since 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed by federal immigration agents and less than a month since 37-year-old Renee Macklin Good was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, deaths that followed a surge of immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis.
EDWIN TORRES DESANTIAGO: People have said enough is enough. What you're seeing in the streets is not due process. It's not safety. It's not following the law. It's not getting the worst of the worst. And I'm just so thankful that all of you are here tonight to get trained.
SUMMERS: Edwin Torres DeSantiago is with the Immigrant Defense Network. His organization is holding trainings like this one across Minnesota.
TORRES DESANTIAGO: So I'm assuming - raise your hand if this is your first training. This has been the norm all over the state.
SUMMERS: This is a constitutional observer training. Torres DeSantiago is teaching people how to best witness and document immigration enforcement activity like how to identify vehicles, uniforms and weapons. Their aim is government accountability with a strong emphasis on safety.
TORRES DESANTIAGO: You are our eyes and ears on the ground so we can fight things in courtrooms.
SUMMERS: More than a hundred people are gathered in this church - mostly older, overwhelmingly white. One day earlier in Moorhead, near the North Dakota border...
TORRES DESANTIAGO: You want to guess how many people show up in Moorhead? Five hundred.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Whoo.
SUMMERS: When immigration enforcement actions increased in Minnesota in December, Torres DeSantiago says they were training about a hundred people a week.
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Now we're averaging north of 2,000 people every single week. Every single event, every single day, is multiple hundreds of people getting trained. The surge has been immense because people are actively choosing bravery and unity and love for their neighbor than fear and staying home and letting what is happening continue to happen.
SUMMERS: I wonder, what made you so passionate about wanting to do this type of work, to help train people to become observers, to know what to do if they see an ICE action or enforcement in their community?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: It's my upbringing. It's my life. I was born in El Salvador. My parents made the hard decision to leave us behind in the hopes for a better life. And what was supposed to be a five-, six-months separation ended up being eight years. It was really hard. So I'm a product of this failed immigration system. I'm a product of the failed foreign policy in Latin America, product of family separation.
SUMMERS: I know you've been doing these trainings for a while. And obviously, here in Minnesota, we've just seen the killing of Renee Macklin Good, the killing of Alex Pretti. Have those two instances, those two killings here in the state - have they changed at all the guidance and the advice you give to those who want to go out into the streets and who want to be observers?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Of course. What hasn't changed is the content of our presentations. Our presentation was developed with a lot of legal minds and attorneys. Nothing has changed from the trainings we started doing in February of 2025 to today. But what has changed is the level of urgency and safety. We knew that they didn't care about immigrants. We didn't know that they were also so willing to hurt U.S. citizens. And that's what we saw even with Renee and even with Alex. But I wonder what would have happened if no observers were there witnessing. We were able to look at what actually happened, and people universally can come to the same conclusion that Alex was there observing, documenting, trying to help a neighbor - maybe he knew them, maybe he didn't - and then got executed. I just don't know what else to say.
SUMMERS: Yeah. How do you instruct or coach people who want to be observers, who are faced with an interaction by federal agents or law enforcement that they see out there, and it starts to escalate, and they're starting to see or - see something or feel unsafe?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Yeah. The most important thing is the observer's safety. Be safe. Don't ever intervene. No matter how much you want to come to my aid, don't, because I will also be met with high level of violence. What you need to do is take a step back, get a safe distance. Keep recording if you want to record. But don't get in the way, and make sure that your safety is the most important thing.
SUMMERS: I also heard you during the training talk about the level of privilege that observers have...
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...Compared to the people whose aid they might be trying to come from. Can you talk about that?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Right. You know, we know of a lot of citizens that have been detained who get released in a few hours. Was it horrific? Yes. Should they sue? Yes. But being able to get out in a few hours is not the same as someone who's fully going to be detained, processed, expedited removal and be shipped to a different country. So let the individuals and the detained folks have their due process. Let your documentation stand for itself and be able to document that and give that to the attorneys so they can have a day in court. We also know that people - the moment they interact as an observer with someone being detained, the detained individual also gets heightened, right? And in a rush moment, they may do something that may actually jeopardize their case, and that's not what we want.
SUMMERS: Did I hear you say earlier that you wear an AirTag?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: Yeah, I do.
SUMMERS: Why?
TORRES DESANTIAGO: For my own safety. I think if I get removed, if I get put in a detention procedure, I at least want someone to know my whereabouts as much as they can before I'm being stripped of that.
SUMMERS: That is Edwin Torres DeSantiago with the Immigrant Defense Network, speaking after a constitutional observer training outside of Minneapolis.
And tomorrow, we'll be speaking with Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz, about the federal immigration actions in his state. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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