Rose Rimler

Hi, I'm Rose Rimler, filling in for Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus.

Today, we're talking about tear gas, and we're talking about ice raids, and what they do to people, according to science.

And we're talking about this stuff because of what's going on in Minneapolis, in the U.S.

right now.

A few weeks ago, the U.S.

government sent in a bunch of immigration and customs enforcement agents to the city.

They called it, quote, the largest immigration operation ever.

There's Border Patrol agents involved, too.

And we're hearing about all kinds of people being detained in all kinds of ways.

And for weeks, Minnesotans have been pushing back.

They're organizing marches and protests, taking video of what these agents are doing.

And federal agents have cracked down violently on all this.

There's reports and video of them using tear gas and smoke on crowds.

Images of agents spraying people directly in the eyes with this stuff.

And they've shot three people in Minneapolis so far, killing two of them.

The government has said that the people they've killed pose some kind of threat to their agents.

Though the evidence and videos from the scene don't back that up.

We talked to some folks who have been there, including this guy that we're going to call T, who's lived in Minneapolis for more than a decade.

We talked to him on the 24th, the day that agents killed a protester named Alex Preddy.

This man was killed just a few blocks away from where T lives.