Councillor apologizes for posting ICE joke

A Brandon city councillor has apologized for making a Facebook post through a community centre group page joking about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Tuesday morning.

The social media post included a photo showing three people standing on the ice rink at the East End Community Centre in winter clothing with their faces partially covered. The caption of the post said, “ICE Agents spotted at East End CC today.”

Coun. Glen Parker (Ward 9) told the Sun on Wednesday that he wrote, published and deleted the post within 30 minutes once he noticed some people commenting thought it was inappropriate.

“Obviously, we didn’t think it was offensive,” said Parker, who’s a volunteer board member for the East End Community Centre.

“The intent was to, you know, have a little chuckle and … have a little fun at (Donald) Trump’s expense, basically.”

When asked whether he was in the photo, Parker responded with, “What do you think?” followed by saying it was EECC volunteers and that it “doesn’t matter” who was in photo.

In hindsight, Parker said he and those involved could have worded the caption differently, so people understood it was meant to be a “play on words” to recognize the centre’s volunteers who were flooding the ice in the cold weather.

The Facebook post “wasn’t trying to make light of the seriousness of the situation in Minneapolis,” he said, adding that none of the community centre’s volunteers condone any actions taken by federal immigration officers in the U.S.

The post comes after U.S. President Donald Trump cracked down on immigration, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pledging to put more than 2,000 ICE agents in Minnesota, The Associated Press reported.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was killed on Saturday by U.S. Border Patrol officers. He was shot more than a mile from where an ICE agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, on Jan. 7.

The two deaths have sparked widespread protests across the U.S.

Parker said about 20 people who liked the Facebook post seemed to understand the joke, but others took it out of context and “don’t have much of a sense of humour.”

“It’s mind-numbing that we don’t have more to worry about, but that’s their opinion and that’s their right … but it doesn’t make me or anybody else want to volunteer in the community when, you know, something simple turns so stupid,” he said.

An apology statement was posted to the community centre’s Facebook page on Wednesday afternoon. It said: “Many did see the humour and reacted appropriately … we will be more mindful in the future.”

Brandon resident Tamara Studer said she commented on the original post, denouncing it as “gross” and “embarrassing” behaviour, but her comment was deleted and she was later blocked from seeing the page.

Studer said the statement apologizing was just as bad at the first post because it didn’t take accountability and continued to blame people for being offended by not finding it funny.

“It’s not a joke,” she said.

“People are dying. People are being shot in the streets or people in their care are dying, too, in ICE’s custody.”

Studer said Brandon is blossoming into a beautiful community with a wide range of newcomers and it’s “disheartening to see a community centre that’s supposed to be a welcoming and inclusive space make that comment.

“I just thought as Canadians, we were better than that,” she said.

“What’s going on is scary and … I think now is a time to be standing up against what is happening.”

Studer, who lives close to the EECC, said she may not take her four children there in the future if those responsible for the social media post don’t take accountability.

She encourages Manitobans to speak out to condemn the violence affecting people south of the border.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the post was a “poor effort at some kind of humour.”

“The fact that their acronym is ICE, and they’re working on ice, like I think we can see how he tried to connect to that like they do in the U.S. with all their comedians all the time, and it didn’t land,” Fawcett said.

He said the City of Brandon takes what’s happening in the U.S. very seriously as Minnesota is one of the province’s closest neighbours.

He’s recommending that Parker apologize “at council” and has an in-person meeting at the community centre with people who want to voice their concerns about the post.

“In the scale of the issues we have going on in the city — I hate to say it — it’s not a really, really big one. Sounds like a councillor made a mistake,” Fawcett said.

He said he hopes people in Brandon don’t judge all community volunteers based on a few who were not good at landing a joke.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com