Gas Masks, Signal Chats, and a Honda Fit: Chasing ICE With Will Stancil
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
“The backseat has easier access to the gas mask,” Will Stancil says as he guides me into his black 2011 Honda Fit. On his patrols tracking ICE around Uptown and Whittier earlier this month, Stancil was tear-gassed for the first time in his life. The second time happened that same week.
Stancil was “radicalized into action” by ICE agents invading his Minneapolis neighborhood, and like many others, when Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good on January 7 in Minneapolis. His resolve only fortified last Saturday when immigration officers beat, shot, and killed Alex Pretti two miles from the site of Good’s death.
Stancil describes himself, accurately, as a mild-mannered 40-year-old lawyer. While he always opposed ICE, he didn’t see himself chasing armed agents around Uptown, breathing in tear gas, or using Signal chats to check the license plates of suspicious-looking SUVs a month ago. But, in a city that continues to be under federal siege from Operation Metro Surge, he joins a growing network of outraged and organized residents determined to track, document, and confront roving gangs of 3,000 immigration officers.
The big difference with Stancil? He’s frantically updating his 100,000+ Bluesky followers in the process, and continuing to transform his very online persona from relentless (and at times exhausting) political pundit to aspiring lawmaker to, these days, tireless anti-ICE crusader.
The general strategy for ICE spotting looks something like this: Drive around your neighborhood, patrol a few streets (in Stancil’s case, Lake, Lyndale, and Hennepin), and listen to the Signal call for your neighborhood. On that call, you’ll hear other drivers reporting plates of suspicious vehicles to be checked by dispatch, or you can request that someone tail a suspicious vehicle. All of this comes with a bit of a learning curve; not everyone is familiar with the tricky NATO phonetic alphabet, which is used when identifying plates.
There aren’t any hard and fast rules to spotting ICE vehicles, but Stancil says he generally looks for middle-aged white guys wearing sunglasses in domestic SUVs with out-of-state plates. This isn’t an exact science. Early on in our ride-along, another driver calls in some plates to see if they had been previously confirmed as ICE. Without pause, Stancil hops on the call to say he remembers the plates: They belong to a local Door Dasher who’s often confused with ICE because of his big, clean ride. Later we come across that Door Dasher, blasting hip-hop from his shiny black SUV on Lake Street, presumably waiting for an order to come through.
While the web of rapid responders—drivers, foot observers, “man-in-the-chair” types—covers a lot of ground in our state, the decentralized structure means mistakes do happen. The people involved don’t have special training—they’re citizens armed with smartphones and whistles, doing their best to protect their communities. And the only way to really identify ICE is through license plate checks, which responders do through a makeshift database. Visual clues only offer so much, since the difference between an ICE logo and a Patagonia one can be hard to discern from behind the windshield of a Jeep Wagoneer.
“What if I let them go and they go get somebody?” Stancil asks. (The Department of Homeland Security claims, without evidence, that 3,000+ people have been detained during the current occupation of Minnesota.)
But Stancil says rapid responders are usually good at identifying actual feds. Generally, he says, ICE agents can tell when someone is following them, and that can lead to intimidation tactics like arrest threats.
“They act all scary, but when you follow them, they run away,” he says, noting that it’s not illegal to trail them. “Unless they get out and club you.”
Stancil says a couple ICE agents have tried to make one thing clear: They know where he lives.
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Stancil is the perfect example of the well meaning progressive with all the perfectly correct opinions who has no idea who he actually associates with and how power in left wing organizations work. He's goes from being celebrated for helping the cause to exiled within a couple days.
He helps anti-fa track ice but says "please don't light fires in my neighborhood" and for his trouble gets beat up and exiled from the leftist controlled spaces as a danger to his community.
He's like a character in a Russian novel. The dedicated party member exiled to the labor camps/death row who insist there "must be must some mistake" and never understanding that's exactly how their system operates.
Also, kudos to Minnesota insurrectionists who've erected walls and check ids before letting anyone in their occupied zone. It's like they've figured out that's how you act when you to protect something you care about.
Since they hate America it's open borders for it though.
Can you imagine this bullshit going on in your neighborhood? You're coming home from work or the gym and some blue haired lunatics try to stop you getting to your house, demanding to see your papers?
W. T. actual F. is wrong with these morons?
These idiots are doing EXACTLY what they are complaining ICE is doing.
The lack of self awareness for most leftists is astonishing.
It's perfect.
Between this and that idiot singer saying "nobody's illegal" at the same time she's denouncing "stolen land" at the Grammys has almost convinced me this whole thing is an orchestrated skit.
I/m curious as to when that idiot will forfeit her mansion that is located on "stolen land"?
I'm sure it will be any time now. s/
"Accurately." Right. Yeah. Sure. Because "mild mannered" people usually follow LEOs to harass and commit obstruction. And they all have gas masks.
Really. ICE agents came to my Texas neighborhood. None of us were "radicalized". Maybe we've just more used to LEOs doing their jobs, I dunno.
I don't think people know how sieges work.
You mean "what if federal law actually gets enforced"?