Families in hiding and defiant observers: This is Minneapolis in the wake of the so-called ICE ‘drawdown’

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

Minneapolis, Minnesota (CNN) — Her long dark hair flowing from a bright pink beanie, the 11-year-old from Ecuador calmly recalled her mother venturing out of their small South Minneapolis apartment last Monday morning for the first time in a month and a half.

“Bye, dear, take good care of yourself,” her mother said in Spanish.

“Mami, please be careful,” the girl, whose name CNN is not publishing because of her age, responded. “That was the last time I saw her.”

The sixth grader was groggy that first Monday in February. She was up late with her mom the night before, contemplating the risks of a quick run to a nearby grocery store for supplies. Food and money were running low. They had relied on food donations from her school but her mother, who had not worked in more than a month, was embarrassed to ask for more.

“She decided it was too dangerous to go out,” the girl told CNN, reflecting the widespread paralysis and fear among many families in a city where for weeks aggressive federal immigration officers carrying out raids near schools, at homes and in workplaces have been on a collision course with enraged residents.

“It was like mother had a premonition something was going to happen. She reminded me where she kept an envelope with our immigration documents. She had trouble sleeping.”

The next morning, the girl got a brief call: Crying, her mom said federal immigration agents were after her. Then the call ended. On a video posted to social media moments later, she watched as federal officers took her mother into custody.

Her mother had been transferred from the federal building in Minneapolis to a controversial Texas detention facility 1,400 miles away, according to John Hayden, an attorney who within days secured a federal court order demanding her return to Minnesota. Hayden asked that his client, who has applied for asylum in the US, not be identified for fear of retaliation. She was returned to a Minneapolis detention facility Friday morning.

Days after federal agents arrested the Ecuadorian mother hiding under a trailer on a snowy Minneapolis street, White House border czar Tom Homan said 700 federal law enforcement personnel will be withdrawn from the state. Still, a few hundred departing would leave more than 2,000 agents in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas – a federal force more than three times the size of the Minneapolis Police Department.

Even with the so-called “drawdown,” many Minneapolis-area activists say little has changed and they’re preparing for prolonged resistance. Reports of federal officers near schools and homes continue to circulate on chat groups and social media, keeping many immigrant families in their homes.

Anxiety has mounted since two fatal shootings of US citizens by federal agents in January: Mother of three Renee Nicole Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

Small armies of residents still gather to observe federal officers from cars or on foot – honking horns and blowing whistles to alert neighbors. Volunteers shuttle people to and from job sites. Teachers and school workers monitor parents dropping off and picking up students. Individuals, nonprofits and local businesses collect bags of food, baby formula, diapers and other items and deliver them to people too scared to leave their homes.

‘American Mom’ and ‘ICU Nurse’

A sprawling makeshift memorial along Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, a popular stretch of restaurants and shops, marks the place where Pretti was gunned down. There are candles and flowers wilted and dried by the cold air and surrounded by letters and poems and hand-scrawled signs.

Outside a shop, a pair of posters are plastered next to one another with photos of Good and Pretti — two people whose shootings by federal agents DHS has defended – along with the words “American Mom” and “ICU Nurse.” Large red letters under their images say, “Murdered by ICE.”

Near the entrance to a nearby restaurant, a group of horn players performed “Angels from the Realms of Glory” behind a sign that read, “We support our neighbors.”

Standing on the corner a few feet away, Laura Purdie Salas, who writes children’s books and poetry, held up a cardboard sign with the message “We all belong” on one side and “ICE out” on the other. Some passing motorists honked in support.

“It just feels like you can’t stay silent anymore,” she said as her husband played a horn outside the restaurant.

The Twin Cities has been the epicenter of President Donald Trump’s hard-line enforcement since early December, when the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, deploying roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota and sparking nationwide protests over their militarized tactics and confrontations with the public.

The White House has justified the immigration crackdown as a response to widespread fraud in government-funded safety net programs, especially in Minnesota’s Somali community.

“This is a huge wake-up call,” Purdie Salas said. “As somebody who doesn’t face a lot of bias myself, it’s been a real eye-opener and inspiration that there are people out here just like me who want their families to be safe and that it’s time to get off my butt and be heard about it, even when that’s not what I’m comfortable doing.”

Bishop Kevin Kenney, who was born in Minneapolis and has ministered to the Latino community for years, recalled a litany of tragedies that have shaken and transformed the Twin Cities in recent years, including the murder of George Floyd at the knee of a city policeman.

“More and more we’re getting used to these rallies and these protests, but it’s unfortunate that we are. This is a historical moment,” said Kenney, who last month blessed members of an Ecuadoran family from Minneapolis who decided to leave the US voluntarily rather than risk deportation even though they were on a path to legal status.

After Pretti was fatally shot, Homan replaced the hard-charging Border Patrol official Greg Bovino as head of the Minnesota operation.

“I think Alex Pretti’s death woke up America. I don’t think it’s just immigration. I think we have to look at our freedom,” Kenney said.

Across the street from Hamburguesas El Gordo, a Mexican street food spot on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, a 29-year-old arborist stood on a corner Wednesday morning wearing a black hooded jacket under a reflective vest and an orange whistle on a string around his neck.

The man, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution, said he decided to become an observer after the Pretti shooting.

“I feel special as somebody living in this area, and I feel a sense of pride in Minneapolis and Minnesota and the community at large,” he said.

He has considered the risks.

“There are parts of this that are kind of scary,” he said. “But there’s so much going on and there’s people dying in detainment and I want to just try to help in the ways that I can. This is the first time I do something like this.”

‘We need to be the eyes and the ears’

Under the soaring wooden beams and shimmering stained glass of a church in Saint Paul on Wednesday evening, more than 400 people attended a training session for legal observers who monitor and document ICE enforcement actions.

“Make no mistake, we are in a very dangerous crossroads. Our state is currently gripped by fear, anger, hurt, but also by determination,” a volunteer named Karmit told the gathering, sponsored by a coalition named Monarca that says it has instructed more than 26,000 people about their constitutional rights as observers of ICE operations.

“What we’re facing now – the deaths, the chaos, the fear – this is a campaign of organized brutality and we cannot stand silent.”

One participant said he lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, about 90 miles east of the Twin Cities. A day earlier, he said, there were reports of ICE agents near his son’s elementary school.

“It just feels like there’s this big, dark cloud coming toward our city and I’d like to kind of find out what to do,” he said.

In her introduction, Karmit told participants, “We’ve been called domestic terrorists for our peaceful protesting… We need to be the eyes and the ears that hold federal agents accountable. The information we document with our cameras can be used in legal cases. They can be used in litigation against federal entities or agents.”

Volunteers spoke of the risks of verbal and physical confrontations with ICE agents, including the use of pepper spray and other irritants against observers and even arrests.

“We should not act alone,” Karmit said. “You should go with a buddy. You should make sure there are other people with you. You should let people who you reside with know where you’re going, and there may be violence. Don’t let it scare us into inaction.”

In the days after the training session, about 190 of the more than 400 people who attended had signed on to be observers, according to Luis Argueta, a spokesman for the grassroots organization Unidos MN and a speaker at the event.

‘We are not going to give up’

Sprawling memorials for Good have been erected near the spot where she was shot and around the wooden pole where her SUV crashed after she was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. There are wooden crosses and paintings, flowers and candles and hundreds of messages and letters along the snowy sidewalk. Volunteers sitting by a burning fire guard the memorial around the clock.

One of them is a photographer from Atlanta named Ryan Vizzions, who said he had been traveling for five years working on a photo book about “where we are as a country.” He was in Minneapolis the day Good was killed.

“I just kind of put away the camera and picked up a shovel and started taking care of the vigil,” he said. “On any given day, you’ll see people from different walks of life come down here and show their respect. It’s been really beautiful to just sit here and watch all the love that comes into it.”

Another volunteer watching over the memorial is a woman from Ecuador named Fabiola Rodriguez, a single mother who works as a construction contractor. She said she knows at least 30 people who have been detained by ICE in Minneapolis in the last two months.

“It doesn’t matter right now if you are legal or not legal,” she said. “But we are Minnesotans. We are not going to give up. I realize that sitting at home, I’m not doing anything. It’s better to stand up and talk and ask for justice.”

Some 100 students are learning from home

The entrance to Valley View Elementary School in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights resembles a food pantry these days, with cabinets filled with cans of food products and plastic crates brimming with children’s clothes. Jason Kuhlman, the principal, said the school delivers food to 140 families a week.

Kuhlman said 100 of the school’s 570 students are learning virtually. About 66% of the students are Latino, mostly from Ecuador.

“A majority of those families are not coming out of their homes,” he said. “They have green cards. They have visas. They have work permits. They’re in the middle of seeking asylum. And there’s some that are probably undocumented.”

Four days before Pretti was killed, a photograph of 5-year-old Valley View student Liam Conejo Ramos circulated widely. The boy is wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack. A federal officer towers over the child, his hand on the backpack, as the boy and his dad are detained after school lets out.

Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were taken from their snowy suburban Minneapolis driveway last month to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, sparking widespread outrage.

After more than a week at the Dilley center, the preschooler and his Ecuadorian father are back home in Minneapolis after a judge ordered them to be released. Their detention ended but their future in the United States remains in limbo as the family will now have to make their case for asylum.

Nearly 30 Valley View students as well as parents or caregivers have been detained by federal officers during the immigration sweeps, according to Kuhlman.

‘In case mami comes home’

Another parent snatched by federal officers off the streets of Minneapolis is the mother of the 11-year-old girl from Ecuador – who has been staying in the home of an ICE observer she met just this week.

The girl said she has spoken by phone with her mom several times since her arrest and subsequent transfer. Her attorney said she was taken to the Camp East Montana detention facility in Texas and, according to ICE’s online detainee locator system site, later moved to jail in Willmar, a city about 90 miles east of Minneapolis.

“I would tell her I was OK so she wouldn’t worry,” she said.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

She recalled long days she spent inside the apartment with her mother as federal agents carried out raids and, at times, clashed with protesters. There is no TV in the apartment, but they watched videos and photos on their phones.

Her mother, who washed dishes at a restaurant on weekends and cleaned hotel rooms six days a week, stopped going to work. The girl received packets of classwork delivered from her school – which also dropped off bags of food a couple of times. She liked to tidy up around the apartment to keep busy, she said.

“Mom cooked. Every single night it was soup,” she recalled. “In the morning, she would make eggs and rice.”

On the day of the arrest, the girl said she dialed her mother’s phone several times and got no answer. After a while, she grabbed the envelope with their immigration documents, as her mother had instructed, and headed outside for the first time in more than a month for a long walk to the home of a family friend.

“At first, I was afraid. I knew it was dangerous,” she said. “But I thought about my mother. What would happen to her if I didn’t help? I prayed to God the whole way.”

On Friday, her mother called to say she had been returned to Minneapolis but was still being held at the federal building downtown. She told her daughter and her caregiver that she was unsure if she would be released. Hayden, her lawyer, said he had not been notified of the transfer.

A day earlier, the girl said, her caregiver took her to the apartment where she lived with her mother to retrieve some clothes.

“I cleaned the apartment. I made the bed. I washed the dishes. I left everything in order in case mami comes home,” she said.

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