My heart rate spikes over and over and over again. They detain somebody in front of my favorite bakery - the bakery where my love and I share pastries on Friday mornings. I watch a video of a boy walking on the sidewalk before being taken. He implores: "Can I just go home?" I want to scoop him into my arms and rock side to side. I want to bring him home. 

On the way home from school today, my daughter told me something that stopped me cold. When I asked about her day, she said that instead of playing with her friends at recess, they had to practice what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came to their school.

We need other good hearted bodies to be with us. To help deliver food. To blow whistles when we witness the abduction of our immigrant family members. To stand in solidarity on the streets, night and day in front of businesses, in neighborhoods. To sing. To record what is happening in our city. To tell the stories. To comfort the scared and traumatized. To offer healing. To cook. To touch. To dance with us so we can remember who we are. To rage with us and cry with us. And help us hold onto hope.

A pervasive, ominous hum of helicopters is making us all on edge. And. And, Minnesotans are tough and resilient, smart and resourceful. Facing this together is making our connections stronger. A growing solidarity, protecting the community where we live.

I am quite used to the sounds of cop cars, fire trucks, and ambulances at all hours of the day and night—not because Minneapolis is “dangerous” like right wing media and the presidential administration would have you believe, but because we are a major city and things happen in major cities around the clock. Normally, this is a mere annoyance as the noise might wake you from a nap or make you turn up the volume on your TV, but this week has been something new entirely: The sound of whistles and honking break periods of relative normalcy and sirens wail at increasing intervals. Any sudden sound or imagined whistle blow in your mind causes you to tense up and turn your head to see if masked men are about to descend upon you. 

This video is me filming today, 1/11/26, as two friends and I were pepper sprayed by an ICE agent. I inadvertently continued to film as neighbors - some of whom I don’t even know - cared for us. I wasn’t there to witness the real terror as ICE unlawfully (they did NOT have a judicial warrant, as is legally required) forced their way into a neighbor’s home and took him away. Luckily, others were there to document.

It is Tuesday, January 13, 2026 at 12:23 p.m. My mother in law texted asking if we wanted her to pick up our 2 year old at daycare and bring him to our house. My husband wrote back “do you mean today?” because she usually picks him up on Wednesdays. She wrote back: “Yes. ICE was teargassing and pepper spraying 34th and Park. Detaining people”. I wrote back “that’s just what life is like here now.”

…While we're on our way to a breakfast spot, we drive past a street where, minutes prior, ICE had broken down a family's front door. Two kids are inside. A woman in the house, livestreaming on Instagram, demands to see a warrant. ICE enters anyway, tazes two adults including the woman filming, and grabs a man.

when this happens to your city, and if they get away with it here they will do it in your city, everyone will do the right thing. when this violence comes to your front door, you and your neighbors will run toward men with guns and pepper spray to protect your neighbors. don’t even worry about it, just start getting phone numbers now to better coordinate. 

Folks outside of Minneapolis, call your Senators and Reps. This is a military occupation. I am shaking with fatigue and it is 7:45am. I am especially pleading with you to call if you have Republican reps of any kind, at any level.

…In the time my wife was taking me to the bus stop, ICE showed up to kidnap one of our neighbors. Block response mobilized, my daughter heard the car horns and whistles and saw masked men with guns outside. She didn't know what to do so the only emergency training she's ever gotten kicked in. She turned off all the lights in our house and went and hid in the back room. You know, like an active shooter drill at school. 

A friend said those of us who live in Minnesota should write about what’s going on here for folks who live elsewhere. You need to know that whether you’re a Republican, Independent or Democrat, the Constitution is being violated by our federal government. This is not about catching criminals, or even deporting people. It is about punishing an entire state, including citizens, for not supporting the president.

Not far from where I live, an ICE agent shot and killed a woman. At first, I didn’t know her name, just the location. That morning, I received the news via text from an old friend of mine, a Latino activist and a fellow poet. The block where she was killed—34^th and Portland—is the Minneapolis neighborhood right next to mine, a little over half a mile away from where George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight by Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020.

At Hyvee by my home, ICE took a 20 year old US citizen and member of the Red Lake tribe even while he told them he was a citizen. While this happened Robbinsdale Police were present and did nothing. He has since been released.