‘There’s Still Fear’: The Enduring Trauma Of The ICE Surge In Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS – Despite a decrease in Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in the Twin Cities, the impact of federal agents’ actions continues to be felt, causing trauma, fear, and distrust among immigrant communities, according to advocates and organizers.

“There’s still fear,” said Hodan Hassan, a board member for the Somali American Coalition Action Fund and former Minnesota state representative. “People are still afraid… and, like we said, we haven’t had a chance to process as a community to sit down and talk about what happened to us.”

Members of immigrant communities are still warily resuming basic activities like leaving their homes, going to local businesses, and visiting friends and family members. Others are scrambling to recover financially: Some stayed home during the height of the ICE raids, losing out on work and pay. And many people are continuing to carry their passports due to lingering worries that they’ll be stopped and profiled.

“The long-term damage, I think, has been done where there’s a lot more mistrust in the government,” said Kang Vang, a citizenship teacher at the Hmong Cultural Center. “People are still very cautious, you know. I still carry my passport around.”

Community efforts that began during the ICE surge, including mutual aid and grocery deliveries, have also continued. Neighborhood patrols of religious spaces and schools are ongoing, too.

Organizers note that these efforts highlighted how people in Minneapolis and St. Paul looked out for one another — and continue to do so.

“We just knew people were going to be afraid of going to the grocery store, and we offered help,” Sergio Amezcua, a pastor at DHH Church, said during a panel coordinated by the Asian American Unity Coalition. “We thought it was going to be 10 to 20 families for a couple weeks, and at the end of the day it was 50,000 families, and… we still do it, actually.”

This past winter, more than 3,000 federal agents descended upon Minnesota as part of a campaign the administration dubbed Operation Metro Surge. During their deployment, agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti while the two were observing and filming ICE actions. They also brutally detained immigrants and people of color, dragging Aliya Rahman out of her car, tackling Mubashir Hussen on his lunch break and forcing ChongLy “Scott” Thao from his home in his underwear in the freezing cold. Families were separated as parents and children, including Adrian Conejo Arias and Liam Conejo Ramos, were apprehended while they were heading into work or en route home from school.

Indiscriminate racial profiling was prevalent throughout the operation,