WELCOME

I have not been personally confronted by ICE, and I have been attending smaller, local protests rather than the larger ones. But I can tell you that I have never felt so unsafe and so betrayed in my life. I am an affluent, white woman living in a small suburb, just north of downtown Minneapolis, and I have been perhaps cravenly cautious in my approach to protesting. I have chosen to attend smaller, local protests based either in the neighborhood where I live or in an area of St. Paul where I have many friends. 

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Nevertheless, I no longer attend any protest without a slip of paper that I can hand to someone else in an emergency, giving my name and my daughter‘s contact information. I am careful about what I wear, because people who have been detained at protests may be released without all the items of clothing they were wearing when they were detained, or clothing may be irreparably damaged during arrest. I am considering purchasing a burner phone because phones are confiscated and not returned. Anyone who is taken to the detention center at the federal building near the airport is released without their phone, sometimes without outerwear. 

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There are volunteers who try to maintain a 24-hour watch at the exit from the federal building to assist people who have been detained and who have no resources when they are released to contact anyone or hire transportation.

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I am taking a foreign language course at a local adult learning center on Saturday mornings. The center runs in parallel with a children’s school for parents who would like their children to learn this language. Most of these parents are foreign; about half of the adult learners are either American adoptees who have decided to learn their native language as adults or partners of the foreign speakers. The school uses a building that belongs to the St. Paul public school district, which during the week is an adult learning center for immigrants trying to learn English. We are now terrified that the building will be raided or staked out while the school is in session. One of my classmates, who is an American citizen adopted from abroad when she was a toddler, currently has her husband escort her to class to make sure she arrives safely. Several Minneapolis immigrant communities have been targeted, and ICE agents just see ‘non-white.’

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My neighbor across the street is a professor of nursing at the university; she is half Panamanian. She now does not feel safe going grocery shopping. The University itself just resumed classes last week after Christmas break. All classes are required to offer a hybrid option, because so many students are afraid to take public transportation or even be dropped on campus and risk the patrols that are targeting students walking from classroom building to classroom building. A hotel literally across the street from the campus is housing ICE agents.

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Most of the rest of my family is in Maine. They have just been invaded as well. Two people in my sibling’s town have been detained to be processed for deportation. Both had valid immigration papers and work permits and one in fact was working for the local police and had cleared an extensive background check as well as the normal hurdles for an I-9.

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It is exhausting, enraging, and terrifying. I come home from the street corner protests and rage; donate to the ACLU and local diaper banks supplying food and basic household goods to families who cannot leave their houses.

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I don’t know what to say. I went to a candlelight singing vigil tonight for Alex Pretti, the VA nurse killed this morning. He was an ICU nurse, but earlier worked on an important study to improve treatment of C diff, an infection that is the scourge of immunocompromised cancer patients like my late relative. When I read about his killing, I remembered sterilizing my whole house, including the banisters on my staircase, when my ill sibling visited, and I just lost it over his death.