#23: What I Saw In My Minnesota: It's Still Intense & Not Over

I just got back from home - the Twin Cities in Minnesota - and I’ve been trying to find the words to describe what’s happening there. If you’ve been following my work over the years, you know how much Minnesota has meant to me as it was a place where I spent much of my childhood into early adulthood. It’s where my family is.

Like many of you, it’s a state where we made a life and home for ourselves, not only as immigrants, but as Americans with a deep and abiding love for our neighbors and communities.

But the Minnesota I left a few days ago doesn’t feel like the “warm in spirit” place I know. Since early December, our streets and neighborhoods have been turned upside down by ICE’s presence and clearly into a practice run for authoritarian use of force against civilians. Yes, that’s right.

What I witnessed over the last month was a level of federal enforcement and occupation that I only recall seeing and working on when I used to work in international humanitarian emergencies and conflict settings.

It wasn’t “immigration enforcement” by any means. It felt like being under seige, with random militia allowed to stalk houses, sit in front of playgrounds, stop people demanding identification, just wreaking havoc in the streets.

Highways empty, shopping areas and businesses eerily quiet. The look I would get from white Minnesotans as I walked to my car, or out of a store, wondering if they needed to be on alert to protect me on my way. Tinted SUVs with out-of-state plates —unlabeled, no “ICE” markings—just sitting outside schools and staking out residential neighborhoods.

It felt like a brutal occupation, a seige, a looming sense of fear and high alert. And if you were black, brown, immigrant - you almost started to feel paranoid and anxious if you had to leave your house and go outside. What did this do to my sense of self? What is it doing to our communities - our babas and mamas, our black, brown and immigrant children who can’t play and exist normally?