Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan met with Marshall area residents at the campus of Southwest Minnesota State University on Saturday. Flanagan took questions from the audience and encouraged people to participate in precinct caucuses in February.

MARSHALL — There were a few different issues area residents wanted to ask Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan about as she visited Marshall over the weekend. But there was one topic that came to the forefront right away: the ongoing ICE surge in Minnesota.

“I just want to acknowledge the moment that we find ourselves in right now. I don’t know if you have seen it here in the streets as you have been living your lives here in Marshall, but I will tell you there are ICE agents everywhere,” Flanagan told an audience of about 40 people gathered at the campus of Southwest Minnesota State University on Saturday. Flanagan said that as she was traveling around Minnesota last week, she had seen ICE agents at businesses in communities like Alexandria, Detroit Lakes and St. Cloud.

“We’ve been going through it,” Flanagan said. “While much of what we see has been done under the guise of safety, what we are seeing feels like anything but.”

Flanagan, who is running for U.S. Senate, made a few different stops in southwest Minnesota communities over the weekend. At the Marshall event, she told area residents that non-violent, peaceful protests were “one important tool in our toolbox” in responding to the ICE surge, as well as neighbors taking care of each other.

Flanagan also said there needed to be another way to move forward in U.S. immigration policy.

“I believe that we can have immigration policy that is grounded in actual safety,” Flanagan said. “We shouldn’t have violent criminals in our communities, I get it. We can secure our borders. But we can also have a pathway to citizenship, DACA recipients can be here and continue to give to the community. And we can have a policy that’s grounded in humanity and dignity and actual safety, and I think that is what we should all be striving for.”

Flanagan told the Independent that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison “has a big role to play” in the state’s response to the ICE surge. “He’s sued, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, to get ICE out of Minnesota. So some of those legal tools are in our toolbox,” she said. “The ACLU just sued on behalf of protestors who are citizens who have been detained or who have experienced violence at the hands of ICE agents. And a judge just ruled . . . that ICE can no longer essentially treat protestors – non-violent, peaceful protestors – in that way.”

Recording what is happening with ICE agents is “one of the most powerful tools of democracy right now,” Flanagan said.

Flanagan touched on a few different topics and took questions from the crowd at the Marshall event. She said Democrats couldn’t continue to “fight from a defensive crouch.”

“I think that we find ourselves in a really interesting place where we continue to be told that we shouldn’t ask for too much,” Flanagan said. “I think it’s going to take all of us to ask for more.”

Flanagan said some of the things the U.S. needed at the national level included increases to the minimum wage, a paid family and medical leave policy, universal child care, and the right for farmers to repair equipment.

Flanagan also said health care needs were a pressing concern she’s heard from many Minnesotans. One audience member asked her about universal single-payer health care.

“I support Medicare for all. And I want to be really honest with you, I didn’t start out here. But I got here because I heard story after story of folks who were having to file bankruptcy,” Flanagan said.

“There certainly are, you know, things that we can do along the way before we get there. But let’s go ask for the moon shot,” she said of Medicare for all. “Because you know what moon shots were before? Social Security and Medicare. And now folks are like, oh these are things that we just do.”

Another audience member asked Flanagan if she would make a stand against billionaires.

“I don’t know a lot of them personally. But the answer is yes, because I truly believe what it is that we are experiencing right now, is because of the incredible gap between the folks at the top, the very, very top who have the majority of the wealth in this country, versus everybody else,” she said. Flanagan said she supported measures like a version of Minnesota’s North Star Promise at the national level, and rolling back tax cuts for billionaires.