A family trying to get home from their son’s basketball game in Minneapolis on Wednesday found themselves between protesters and federal agents, before they were tear gassed in their car and the mother had to administer CPR to her infant.
Destiny Jackson, 26, tells CNN her family of eight pulled over because protesters and parked cars were making it difficult to drive past. The family said they did not know about the protest, which erupted the same evening an immigration agent shot a man in the leg.
But Jackson and her family suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the charged political climate in Minneapolis, where tensions have continued to mount after an ICE agent fatally shot a mother of three earlier this month.
Since then, thousands of immigration agents have been sent to the Twin Cities, and they’ve been met with demonstrators, most peacefully protesting, in the street. Still, state and local officials in St. Paul and Minneapolis have been bracing for more protests.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison later told CNN the family was “caught in the middle of” the situation.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, agents responding to protests had “followed their training and reasonably deployed crowd control measures.”
They were not, she said in a statement to CNN, targeting the family.
A federal judge placed new restrictions on immigration agents, ruling agents carrying out a sweeping operation in Minnesota can’t deploy certain crowd-control measures against peaceful protesters or arrest them.
But in the car, Jackson said she heard somebody say “it’s about to go down.”
“Oh, what’s about to go down?” she said.
She started to see federal agents and knew it wasn’t safe for the family, which included her husband and six children ranging from a 6-month-old to an 11-year-old, to be there anymore.
Her husband attempted to back the car up, but realized there were federal agents on either side of the car. They were trapped.
“An ICE agent, one of them like yells in my window like ‘get the F out of here.’ And my husband’s like ‘we’re trying,’” Jackson said.
She told her husband not to move their vehicle until the federal agents were gone, so they didn’t accidentally hit one of them.
“We’ve seen what happened to Renee (Good),” she said, referring to the woman who was killed when an ICE agent shot into her vehicle during an encounter earlier this month.
The next few moments played out quickly, Jackson said. She started to see flash bangs out her window and then watched as a tear gas canister flew through the air and dropped to the ground, before rolling under her car.
Within three seconds, she felt her car go up in the air and slam back down. All the air bags in her car went off and everything went “blurry.” Tear gas quickly started filling the car while the doors auto locked, trapping them inside.
Jackson and her husband tried to break open their windows, but couldn’t get them to budge. She couldn’t see anything through the black smoke, so she flung her body to the backseat to try to unlock the doors for her children.
“I was feeling around, like I was hitting my son’s window and I worked my way to his lock, and then I reached over all my other two younger kids and I unlocked that lock,” she said.
Her husband’s door in the driver’s seat opened, so he went out that way and Jackson followed. She grabbed her two-year-old and passed him to a bystander, as others helped get the remaining children out of the vehicle.
“I couldn’t breathe. And I’m pointing at the car and I’m saying, ‘I have more kids, I have more kids,’” she said, as a bystander pulled her into a house nearby.
Dramatic video shows the moment the family evacuated their car and fled into a nearby home.
The baby was the last to make it out of the car, as the bystanders struggled to maneuver the car seat. When someone brought Jackson her baby into the house, she said he wasn’t breathing and his eyes were closed.
She screamed for a wet towel and gave the baby mouth-to-mouth while people poured milk on her other children’s eyes.
“In the midst of like doing mouth-to-mouth, I stopped and I looked at my baby and I was just like ‘wake up, you have to,’” she said. “I just felt like I’m gonna give you every breath I have.”
DHS said “hundreds of rioters and agitators surrounded law enforcement, began assaulting them and even launching fireworks at them.”
Jackson went to the hospital with her baby and two of her children who have severe asthma. They all still have cold-like symptoms, but she said they are managing and providing the baby with treatments to clear his airways.
The city of Minneapolis said in a statement the tear gas caused “a 6-month-old infant inside the vehicle to experience breathing difficulties,” according to initial reports.
When police and the fire department were able to reach the family, “the infant was breathing and stable, but (in) serious condition,” according to the statement.
Jackson said she hasn’t been able to sleep since Wednesday, as the incident has triggered her existing panic disorder. Their car is also not usable, and she said her two oldest children keep asking if their next car can be an “armored vehicle” in case this happens again.
But she was very thankful to the bystanders who helped her and the home where her family took refuge.
One small coincidence Jackson realized after her baby opened his eyes: The house was the very same home the family almost purchased two years ago.
