ICE has been terrorizing Minneapolis residents and performing mass arrests, sometimes pulling them out of cars and leaving them running on the side of the road. Juan Leon can’t bring these people back from ICE detention facilities, but as the owner of Leo’s Tow, he’s been picking up these abandoned cars and returning them to the families of those arrested, reports CBS News.
Leon didn’t start his company late last year to specialize in these types of tows. However, after ICE stepped up its operations in the Minneapolis area, he started noticing more and more abandoned cars, often the aftermath of an ICE arrest. Sometimes the vehicles get towed and impounded, while others are left where they are. From CBS News:
“Seeing there was a need for someone to help out, help clear the streets and get the people back their vehicles. So we stepped up and started doing it,” Leon said.
By late December, Leon and his small towing crew decided to do something about it, all thanks to observers calling in and reporting these vehicles.
“Families reach out to us. If the family isn’t reaching out, we’ll find a way to get inside the vehicle and we’ll bring it back to their house and put it in a safe spot,” Leon said.
They began picking up vehicles and returning them to the families of those arrested, free of charge.
The City of St. Paul has stopped towing abandoned vehicles due to the large number of them resulting from ICE arrests, reports Fox 9. While Minneapolis has towed and impounded abandoned vehicles, the city will release them at no cost if they were abandoned due to ICE detention. This has enabled Leo’s Tow to become the go-between, picking up cars where they were left or from impound and delivering them back to their owners, or their families if the owners have disappeared.
In other cases, they will find the abandoned cars themselves, and ask for the community’s help to figure out who owns them and where they should go. Leo’s Tow posts pictures of cars it finds on its Facebook page. People discuss them in the comments, share them around, and figure out where they belong so they can get returned. ICE is locked out of Minnesota’s license plate databases for good reasons, but even towing companies with good intentions can’t check them, either.
Even better, Leo’s Tow is performing this service for free, on top of its regular business. There is a GoFundMe available for donations, which has raised more than $40,000 so far to cover the cost of these tows, but owners and their families don’t have to pay a cent. They’ve suffered enough.