Anti-ICE Radicals Are Now Threatening to Burn ICE Agents' Families Alive [WATCH]

The director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s St. Paul Field Office said law enforcement has no issue with members of the public observing or recording their work, but warned that some protests have crossed from lawful assembly into behavior that interferes with operations and exposes officers and their families to violent threats.

Sam Olson addressed the balance between constitutional rights and officer safety while discussing recent protest activity directed at ICE operations in Minnesota.

Olson framed the issue around the First Amendment, drawing a distinction between peaceful assembly and actions that disrupt law enforcement duties.

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“Time we spend here focusing on the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, but if we look to the First Amendment right, I think that the right, it doesn’t read the right to protest, right? It’s the right to peacefully assemble,” Olson said.

Olson said ICE personnel routinely encounter members of the public who observe, record, or speak with officers during enforcement actions, and that such conduct, by itself, is not a problem.

“And when we’re out there, we have no problem with, you know, the public watching what we do, filming what we do, talking to us while we do it,” he said.

According to Olson, the issue arises when individuals move beyond observation and enter operational areas or interfere with officers’ ability to carry out their duties.

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“But there is that line, though, when they start to impede and get in situations where, frankly, we don’t, we don’t want them to be, we can’t have them to be kind of in our workspace,” Olson said.

“That’s when we have issues.”

Olson said some of the individuals involved in these incidents are not engaging in peaceful activity and instead direct aggressive conduct toward officers.

“You know, unfortunately too some of these, the agitators that are doing it, they’re not peacefully protesting,” he said.

He described officers being subjected to sustained verbal abuse during operations, including amplified shouting directed at them as they work.

“Some of the things that are officers here on a daily basis getting screamed at them,” Olson said.

“You know what I mean, I just commend their professionalism as they go along, because they’re getting bombarded with this from megaphones.”

Beyond verbal harassment, Olson said the situation has escalated to explicit threats of violence, including threats directed at officers’ families.

He said those threats fundamentally change the nature of the encounters and remove them from any claim of peaceful assembly.

“We’re seeing threats,” Olson said.

“It’s just, we just had a threat last night.”

Olson said he has personally reviewed threatening messages targeting ICE personnel and their families, describing them as graphic and severe.

“Again, I’ve had to go through threats and reading them that they were coming after people’s families, going to burn their houses down, burn their families alive,” he said.

According to Olson, such threats are part of what officers are facing during enforcement activity and public confrontations tied to immigration operations.

“These are the type of threats that the officers are facing,” he said.

Olson said conduct of that nature cannot be characterized as lawful assembly under the Constitution.

“And that’s not that’s not a peaceful protest,” Olson said.