Americans Agree on Right to Protest, if Nothing Else

While there’s not much that Democrats and Republicans can agree on these days, there is rare partisan agreement on the right of the people of Minneapolis to protest peacefully against ICE. According to a YouGov/The Economist survey conducted from January 16 to 19, 77 percent of U.S. adults said that peaceful protests against ICE should be allowed, including 93 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans.

That’s where the agreement ends, however, as there is a stark divide in how Democrats and Republicans view the protests that have gripped Minneapolis since the Trump administration sent more than 2,000 ICE agents to the city in early January to carry out “the largest immigration operation ever.” While 72 percent of Democratic respondents described the protests as mostly peaceful, two thirds of Republicans saw them as mostly violent. And while it’s true that protesters and ICE agents have repeatedly clashed, thousands have protested peacefully against ICE’s presence in the city, its excessively violent tactics and apparent lack of accountability.

The violence culminated in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot by ICE agents in situations that did not warrant the use of deadly force in the eyes of most people outside of the Trump administration and its followers.