This photographer was tackled by ICE – and threw his camera to save it

‘It’s important to see what’s going on – what’s really going on”.
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That’s what Pierre Lavie said after fellow photographer John Abernathy was taken down by federal agents at a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 15 January.

John Abernathy says he couldn’t breathe after being pushed to the floor and having tear gas canisters deployed near him, and that he was afraid of what would happen to his camera – and more importantly the images on it – if he were arrested.

He decided to throw his camera and phone towards a photographer he had never met before – Pierre Lavie – because the images of the protests “deserve to be seen”.

The Department of Homeland Security told CNN Abernathy had been arrested for obstructing pedestrian and vehicle traffic on federal property. Abernathy says he spotted what he believed to be “far-right agitators” holding bear spray canisters, which he grabbed from one of them and threw away. When he was taken down, Abernathy says officers told him that it was because he had “bear sprayed his [own] people”, and that they had a video – which they refused to show him.

Abernathy, who suffered chemical burns in his eyes and wounds from pepper bullets, is aware his experience could have been a lot worse. “I didn’t have any worry of being sent to another country.”

The Minneapolis-based photographer has covered protests in the past, including Black Lives Matter in 2020. But he says the violence from government agents recently is “a different type of aggression”, like nothing he has seen there before.

Protests have sprung up in Minneapolis after an ICE surge in the state, and have grown further since the killing of Renee Good, an unarmed woman shot by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.

“A lot of people are very fearful, but the community here is quite amazing,” says Abernathy.

A “no work, no school, no shopping” blackout day of protest was kicked off by community leaders, faith leaders and labor unions on Friday, whose demands include that ICE leave Minnesota and the officer who killed Good be legally held accountable.

Find out more via the link ► https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/23/minnesota-economic-blackout-ice-protests

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