Footage from the scene of a Minneapolis protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to contradict one couple’s claims that their baby was tear-gassed by federal officers as the family merely headed home from an after-school activity, a story that went viral last week amid liberal outrage over ICE operations in the Twin Cities.
Shawn and Destiny Jackson, the parents of six children, are raising a large sum of money for themselves off of the Jan. 14 incident. Within a week, the Jacksons raked in more than $170,000 in donations on GoFundMe.
According to the couple’s fundraising campaign, they were “innocent bystanders” caught in the crossfire of a peaceful protest when ICE’s crowd-dispersal units threw tear gas bombs, one of which rolled under the Jacksons’ SUV, where their children, between the ages of 6 months and 11 years old, were strapped in.
Upon the canister’s detonation, the car began to fill with toxic fumes, and the airbags were deployed by the concussive blast of a flash bang, trapping the chemical irritants inside. Both parents scrambled to open the car doors as the safety locks automatically activated.
Once all of the children were pulled out, the couple noticed that their baby was not breathing. Destiny Jackson described performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the infant, “with what little breath I had in my body,” until he eventually regained consciousness.
Emergency services arrived shortly after to assist, and some of the children were taken to the hospital to treat their exposure to tear gas.
Since then, the Jacksons have gone on a press circuit, giving one-on-one interviews to national news outlets across the country, including CNN, CBS, ABC News, and the New York Times.
The family is working with a publicist, according to a mass email to members of the media obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Unbendable Media, a “movement-focused” public relations firm specializing in attracting media attention on behalf of progressive organizations, campaigns, and high-profile clients, blasted out an open call to the press on Jan. 20, pitching interviews with the Jacksons and a racial justice researcher from the University of Minnesota’s medical school, who can speak complementary to the impact of “chemical weapons on kids.”
As the Jacksons continue their press tour, the couple — calling their family of eight “the latest ICE victims” — is pleading for financial help while they take time off from work to tend to their children through “such a traumatizing experience.” Contributions to the family’s relief fund will also cover the cost of housing, medical bills, legal fees, and a new car.
However, conflicting accounts of how exactly the ICE encounter unfolded have since surfaced, challenging the couple’s viral version of events.
Social media sleuths say they found footage allegedly showing the Jacksons at the anti-ICE protest for approximately 50 minutes before first responders were called around 9:22 p.m., per archived dispatch logs.
Based on screenshots of Minneapolis activist Jonathan Mason’s livestream from that night, the adult Jacksons appeared to be mixed into the crowd during the demonstration and standing calmly next to masked protesters, seemingly with little to no sense of urgency.
The two, wearing matching Hmong International Academy hoodies with “Mr. Shawn” and “Ms. Destiny” written, respectively, on their backs, first appeared in Mason’s Facebook Live feed, which started at 8:16 p.m. local time, at around the 16-minute mark or 8:32 p.m.
They were captured on camera milling about the protest zone over the course of the evening, even after anti-ICE agitators started setting off fireworks, undercutting their claims that they were desperately trying to escape the chaos.
According to the Jacksons, they were just passing through the neighborhood on the way home from their son’s 5 p.m. basketball game at Anderson United Middle School when the family happened to stumble upon the ICE protest.
The couple sensed that the standoff could quickly spiral out of control, Shawn Jackson told the New York Times, and supposedly tried to turn their car around, but a blockade of federal agents swarming the cordoned-off street prevented them from driving away.
Certain moments in Mason’s full hour-and-a-half footage, however, fuel suspicions that the couple was part of the protest.
Destiny Jackson appeared to be palling around with protesters at various points, according to a Washington Examiner review of Mason’s video. At times, she is seen interacting with Mason, who was encouraging others to “protect our hood.” When he tells a group, “I had guns on the way,” Destiny Jackson says, “Bring ‘em out! Bring ‘em out!”
Later on, when Mason speaks with a woman who was tuning into his livestream, Destiny Jackson says, “Aye, that’s my sister, period!” Mason replies, “It is up right now! They gonna turn Northside [Minneapolis] up!”
THE PRIME OF TOUGH-GUY PROGRESSIVISM
Destiny Jackson initially told CNN that they were not aware of the protest ahead of time, nor that it was taking place on their typical route home. She said the family simply found themselves in the middle of a clash between activists and federal agents, unable to maneuver their way out due to protesters and parked cars blocking the road.
Following criticism, the couple added to their story, telling ABC News in an interview that aired on Jan. 20 that they had pulled over partially out of curiosity and then stayed after spotting Destiny Jackson’s mother, who has a heart condition, among the protesters. The pair apparently stuck around only because they wanted to make sure she left safely.
“We wanted her to go home,” Destiny Jackson said. “We’ve never protested. Nobody has ever known us to protest. So, we weren’t just bringing our kids to protest. We were just trying to go home.”
Destiny Jackson similarly told KARE-TV, an NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities area, that they spent 20 to 30 minutes trying to persuade her mother to leave. “I’ve only seen these things on TV,” she said of the protests against ICE. “Some end well. Some don’t.”
Parts of Mason’s footage, meanwhile, show Shawn and Destiny Jackson standing alongside the protesters facing the police line, their children nowhere in sight.
Critics claimed that the Jacksons left their children in the car during a declared riot. That night, anti-ICE activists were revolting over an earlier altercation on the Northside, in which an immigration officer shot an illegal immigrant from Venezuela in the leg who had allegedly ambushed him.
Destiny Jackson acknowledged that they were informed about the shooting by the protesters, yet still decided to linger.
In a now-deleted X post, the Department of Homeland Security originally blamed the parents, accusing them of child endangerment and being active participants in the protest. “It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots,” DHS posted. “PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin later faulted other actors instead for creating a dangerous environment that necessitated non-lethal mob control measures. When pressed by CNN on why the X post was scrubbed, McLaughlin said, “Because [the Jacksons] were victims of the rioters but didn’t bring their kids to the riot.”
Independent journalist Yaakov Strasberg, who witnessed the incident, told the Washington Examiner that he does not believe ICE intentionally targeted the Jackson family.
At the time, Strasberg rushed to the family’s aid, giving them Sudecon wipes, which are specialized towelettes designed to decontaminate eyes exposed to tear gas.
ICE was responding to a crowd blocking an intersection in a residential neighborhood, Strasberg said, and some of the protesters subsequently kicked or hurled the canisters of irritants back at the ICE agents. Strasberg himself was shot with a spray of pepper balls.
Meanwhile, the Jacksons’ car was parked around the corner from where most protesters were congregated; thus, there was no reason for ICE to have taken notice of their vehicle behind all of the protesters, Strasberg said.
The inconsistencies surrounding the Jacksons’ story parallel controversy over the circumstances of the ICE-involved shooting of Renee Good, an anti-ICE activist who was killed while driving toward an immigration officer.
Good’s supporters insisted that the young mother was wrongfully shot on the way home from morning drop-off at her son’s school. Multiple angles of the altercation soon emerged, showing Good and her wife, Rebecca Good, antagonizing ICE agents for a prolonged period leading up to the shooting, with Rebecca eventually encouraging Renee to “drive, baby, drive” when officers moved in to make an arrest.
ICE OFFICER WHO KILLED RENEE GOOD SUSTAINED INTERNAL BLEEDING AFTER BEING HIT BY HER VEHICLE: DHS
The Jacksons themselves have drawn direct comparisons between Good’s case and their situation, claiming that they were too scared to drive off because they were boxed in by ICE agents and did not want to be killed like Good.
“We’ve seen what happened to Renee,” Destiny Jackson said.
Strasberg, who had filmed the aftermath of the tear gas incident, said that ICE agents did not surround their van, adding that they could have left at any point during that time.
“[G]iven that they were at the protest at least 45 minutes before anything happened, left their kids, including a 6-month-old baby in the car the entire time, and didn’t bother to leave after things started getting wild, this is very much parental neglect and carelessness,” Strasberg said.
Strasberg recalled seeing articles in the following days suggesting that ICE tried to kill a family with six children.
Numerous news outlets reached out to Strasberg about licensing his footage of the incident, and a handful did indeed use it. Strasberg noted that those same sites interviewed the Jacksons, but none of them asked for his perspective.
“But not a single news outlet even bothered to ask me, a journalist who was on the scene before and after the incident, who helped the family, and who a number of them licensed footage of the incident from, for an interview or any sort of comment about what happened,” Strasberg said.
“It feels almost hypocritical in a way,” Strasberg added, “but I’m assuming that it’s because they specifically have an anti-ICE narrative to push, and some of what I had posted about the incident contradicts the narrative that they are attempting to push.”
The Jacksons did not respond to requests for comment via Unbendable Media.
