from the series ICE Encounters…
By ANONYMOUS
I wanted to share my story, to document what is happening with ICE in our community. I am originally from Western Wisconsin, but visited Minneapolis every chance I had, once I got my driver’s license. Growing up gay in a small town, Minneapolis was a place of freedom and community I always dreamed of. I moved to South Minneapolis almost 30 years ago. I lived in several neighborhoods around South and ended up in Phillips because my husband grew up here. My husband was born in Mexico. His mom brought his siblings and him here in the early 1990s, looking for better opportunities. They started the legal process, which is very slow. Their priority date, even though applied for right away when they got here, was almost 15 years later.
My family’s experience with Ice started months before the surge in Minneapolis. In July, 2025, ICE agents surrounded my brother-in-law’s neighborhood in a northern suburb of Minneapolis. They created a checkpoint requiring all people traveling in and out to show ID and they directed all non-white people to pull over and have their vehicles inspected. They detained my BIL and 6 other men that day. They left his car running with the keys in it on the side of the road. His fiancé only found out he had been taken, because his boss called and said he didn’t arrive at work. She walked the neighborhood and found his car.
We were not too worried when the abduction happened, because he had been detained a couple times previously for traffic violations in counties that did not provide sanctuary from ICE. Each time that he was transferred to ICE previously, he was released in a day or two once we could provide his documents and work authorization. He had been married to an American Citizen and had sponsorship to make him able to live and work in the US legally.
ICE held my BIL in a former women’s prison in Freeborn County, in southern Minnesota. It took over 2 months to get a hearing. After two court hearings, with Minnesota immigration judges who both thought my BIL should be released, ICE appealed the case to a judge in the state of Virginia. The Virginia judge’s opinion was that even though he was here with a valid work permit, ICE did not want him to stay so they would hold him until they had “enough evidence” to deport him. The only other option was to self deport. The threat they used was that if he was forcefully deported, he could not come back to his US citizen daughter for 10 years. If he self-deported, he could return in 2 years. We raised the money for self-deportation. (They charge you for the armed ride to the airport $700, since they cannot release a detainee to get their own ride.)
Everything was set for BIL to self-deport in October, 2025. We were on alert, because ICE does not tell you the date or where they will deport him to, in order to prevent family or friends from trying to intercept the detainee. We had money ready to wire him once he got on the ground in Mexico, and to get him to a city where he could set up his new life. November went by and in the beginning of December guards woke my BIL up at 3am with the news that they were transferring him to a jail that was now being used as a detention center in Iowa. Guards taunted him that they wouldn’t have room for him in Minnesota, because the detention center was about to be “filled with Somalis.”
Currently, my BIL is still in detention in Iowa. We found out last week (early February) that one of the judges from Minnesota has been writing opinions back to the judge in Virginia, advocating for him to be released due to having a valid work authorization and green card application in process with USCIS. ICE is still holding the money we paid for self-deporting and is not giving any date for when he could be released or deported. BIL’s attorney is an immigration attorney and said that many of his cases are being handled similarly. He said it seems that ICE is trying to wait people out by detaining them for no reason, until they have used up all their savings and lose their apartment or home and choose to self-deport. My BIL has not been able to work and if it wasn’t for his fiancé paying the rent and expenses, he would have lost everything in the more than 6 months he has been held with no charges.
