from the series ICE Encounters…
By ANONYMOUS
Our family had a major experience with ICE beginning with the December 2025 surge. We attended information sessions on how to prepare our neighborhood for the violence and terror that happened in other cities, like Chicago, at a local church. We started helping share with neighbors any sightings we had of the heavily armed presence of these masked men in our area. My other sister-in law and her husband and three other families, related to us, that live in South Minneapolis all stopped going to work and church due to the fear and threat created by ICE.
On January 7, 2026, you may remember as the day Renee Good was murdered, we had three people close to us who were abducted. Two of the men were taken in the morning from Menard’s parking lot in Saint Paul, our neighbor and his cousin who lived with him. They lived four houses down from us on our block and we had known them for over 20 years. They had a plumbing business and had helped several neighbors with house repairs. The father of the family had all of his work authorization papers on him, because he had been stopped under the previous Trump administration and was released because he had no prior criminal record and was here “legally.” The ICE agents didn’t care and, if his nephew had not been with him, we would not have known that he was taken. The agents allowed him to leave his truck keys and all the cash he had on him with his nephew, who was too young to drive. We had to help our neighbor’s wife get his truck back from Menard’s.
We didn’t hear from our neighbor for 4 days. ICE claimed they did not know where he was. His immigration attorney who had been working with him since he got his work authorization and applied for a green card could not get any information. Finally, we found he had been flown to Texas the same day he was detained. ICE is still holding him in detention and as he said the officers told him, “Your work authorization means nothing. We do not have to acknowledge it and the only people we have to release are citizens.” His cousin was released after 2 weeks, when ICE found out he was here on a U visa. He had to pay for an attorney in Texas and his flight back to Minnesota. We are working with various food shelf programs, churches, and other groups to keep our neighbor’s family fed and assisted with their mortgage payments.
The third person close to us was my husband’s cousin’s uncle. He was flown to Texas and after weeks of being detained and using all of his savings, even though he had work authorization, he opted to self deport. The living conditions were too severe and he feared he would not live through the detention. He is working on coming back to Minnesota where his US citizen children and wife are still trying to survive.
We have been active with our local block club and neighborhood volunteer groups. Through this activity we have found that there are 3 other families on our block that have lost a family member. All of these people had work authorization and no criminal background. Their only crime was living in an area terrorized by ICE and not being white. We have other friends who are Somali and they have had family members made to stand outside in sub-zero weather of January with little or no warm clothing on for hours while ICE ran background checks to determine whether they were lying about being citizens. We have also found that there are at least 6 families on our block who have not worked or gone to school in person, because of this terror in our community. That is only on my block. So many people have lost days that they could be working, income, and had so much stress going about their daily business. One neighbor who was an Iraq veteran said the only time he has seen masked men driving around waiving guns like Ice is doing here, was when he saw ISIS members in the war.
If I had one request, it would be to call your congress person, the mayor, senators, and governor to beg them to disband ICE as an organization. ICE has only existed since 2003. Immigration offenses are a civil paperwork offense. It does not need to be enforced by armed, masked people who terrorize entire neighborhoods of my city. Our democracy is crumbling and will never return to what it once was. But, we can try to somehow reduce the terror and possibly get some sort of normal back if we join together and let our officials know that body cameras and training are not going to change anything. Many of these officers have had years of training. Only eliminating ICE completely will eliminate the risk they pose to our community. We will never be able to regain the sense of peace and safety in our community, but we can try.
