ICE killed small talk, too
No one in Minneapolis is talking about the weather or the Vikings. Just ICE.
On Friday January 9, I have a doctor’s appointment. I’m tense and upset because I have a few work deadlines closing in and also my second grader is unexpectedly home. Minneapolis Public Schools closed all schools for the rest of the week after an ICE agent1 shot and killed Minneapolis resident and mother Nicole Good on Wednesday, January 7.
A nurse in my doctor’s office greets me and ushers me into a room. She says she’s going to take my vitals. She asks me to step on the scale and I avert my eyes from the number.
“How are you feeling today, Ms. Ash?” She asks me.
“Not great. Public schools are closed, so my kid is home.”
“Same. Where does your child go?”
I answer and ask where hers go.
“Oh my gosh2.”
She wraps the blood pressure cuff around my arm and squeezes,
“He saw one of his teachers get taken into custody by ICE. He’s been a wreck ever since. I feel badly even being here at work.”
I’m horrified. I think I say “Ohmigod” but I can’t remember.
We sit in the little room and talk about ICE. About what we say to our kids, sharing the specific language we use to explain what is happening. We cry about how backwards everything feels…this unsettling, sinking feeling that apparently happens when your government tells you to believe them over your own eyes, threatening to hurt you if you don’t shut up, look away, and submit. Even when they’re doing something both illegal and grossly inhumane and immoral.
How much longer do we have of this? Democracy. Freedom. Rights.
“112 over 70. Looks good.”
I’m nostalgic for the easy, breezy conversation we would have had a few months ago. “How are you? Staying warm out there? Any fun holiday plans? I like your earrings. Tough luck about those Vikings…”
These conversations do not exist in the Twin Cities anymore. From the cashier at Target (who is also surreptitiously glancing over their shoulder every 8 minutes) to our neighbors we see dragging out their trash bags, we all know what is going on. We feel it. We hear it. We see it. ICE agents are everywhere. Neighbors and protestors alike are being abducted with seemingly little foresight, strategy, or self-restraint from agents and very little recourse after the fact.
No one in the Twin Cities is safe. This is not hyperbole; it’s just reality.
In January 2026, President Trump sent 2,000 Customs and Border Protection officers to Minnesota (with 1,000 more on the way), making this their “largest operation to date.” In comparison, the Minneapolis Police Department has roughly 600 officers.
But why Minnesota? If the administration is so concerned with deporting as many people as possible, why not send resources to higher-populated states like California or Texas? According to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, American Experiment, and Minnesota Compass, immigrants make up just 8.6% of Minnesota’s residents (500,000 people) vs Texas in which immigrants make up 18.4% of their state’s total population (5.8 million Texas residents).
Because—duh—it’s not about the numbers or making any kind of real impact. It’s about being petty and punitive, and demonstrating power.
Minnesota is a Blue state, and ICE has been deployed disproportionately to Blue states to show Americans just how difficult Trump will make anyone’s lives who criticize or oppose him.
It’s a show of force.
And in a lot of ways, it’s working. Here in Minneapolis these last two weeks have been more unnerving and dystopian than any video on the ground, press photograph, or written analysis can communicate. This is an emergency that is affecting everything and everyone: children, families, schools, businesses, the economy, our mental health and sense of safety. We are under attack by our own government who is using extreme force, fear, violence, and countless constitutional violations to try and control and intimidate us.
I mean, let’s be honest. The whole immigrant thing is also a total ruse. ICE agents don’t care if you’re actually an immigrant or not. They care about your skin color and if you’re in their way. Immigration status is pretext for harassment and abuse and terrorizing people who look and think differently. No one is safe here and we all know it. It’s not really about immigrants.
Brad and I watched Marcello Hernandez’s Netflix special, American Boy, last week and it was both a hilarious delight and also filled with insights about how Marcello grew up in Miami as the child of immigrant parents from Cuba. This part especially stood out to me:
“I’ve been watching the news now for the first time in my life because they’re talking about us and it’s crazy. Every time I turn on the news, there’s a white lady and she’s like ‘THE IMMIGRANTS ARE COMING IN HERE AND THEY’RE DOING CRIME.’ I grew up around immigrants. Everybody I grew up with was an immigrant: my parents, my parents’ friends, my teachers, my soccer coach. Maybe we are doing crime, but the biggest crime we’re doing is working illegally, which is a pretty solid crime. There are a lot of Americans who don’t want to work legally, so we are filling a void there. We’re helping out. And I don’t like the idea that the Latino immigrants are scary. I don’t know about politics or laws. But I do know about Latino immigrants because that’s who raised me. And when they get on the news and go ‘The immigrants are scary!” I’m like no. We’re not scary and white people are not scared of us. Have you seen a white person at a resort? Do they looks scared of us when they’re like ‘Hola! ¿Cómo estás?’ They love us! they go to a bar, they make a joke with a Latino bartender and they go, ‘That’s it, Santiago! You’re coming home with us!’ You love us! We’re fun!
Honestly, if I don’t find ways to laugh, I won’t get out of bed.
The ONLY modicum of hope I have is seeing firsthand how our community is responding to ICE and organizing against them. Minnesotans have been out in the frozen streets with our whistles and phones, sending updates on Signal. Giving each other rides. Donating money, food, time, childcare. We’ve adapted. Made space. We’re sheltering and trying to support each other. The biggest takeaway:
We show up. We are resilient. We are hungry for justice and peace. We don’t care if it’s 10 degrees out. Do not fuck with us. We are not the ones.
I’ve been reading Alison Bechdel’s (yes, the same Bechdel of The Bechdel Test) latest graphic novel, Spent, and this cell caught me at the perfect time:
The whole book is astounding and funny and relatable, but this specific theme around political complacency and how much *worse* things continue to get stuck out to me.
Personally, I have been spiraling.
In my defense, it’s hard to know when to take certain threats seriously. I’ve always had a faulty nervous system. I’m prone to packing a bug-out bag at the slightest whisper of unrest.
Growing up Jewish, I learned about the Holocaust when I was very little. I don’t even remember a time before I knew about Anne Frank. I knew the phrase “gas chamber” before I was Bat Mitzvahed. In a way, I have been preparing for this my whole life. The scary bad guys with guns, sniffing around for people who look or seem different with no accountability or recourse. I was extra good at hide-and-go-seek because I simply imagined the Nazis were searching for me instead of my friends, which really cranks up the stakes.
I don’t say any of this to be alarmist, I just want to communicate to those who don’t live in Minneapolis or its suburbs what it feels like to be here right now. To observe these agents infecting your city and feeling like if you stand up to them, you might get killed.
My second grader attends a before-care program in a community building and this week they started keeping the front doors locked. Brad and I were annoyed at first. Ugh. Now we have to wait in the cold for someone from the program to let us in…WHY!? But then we learned that it’s on purpose. ICE can only enter public spaces and one of the key indicators if a place is private or public is if a door is locked. So now they keep the doors locked. And they’re not being paranoid. ICE agents were loitering in front of the building Monday morning. They’d made the right call. And Brad and I felt like privileged jerks.
And the news keeps coming.
Last night, ICE shot a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg in North Minneapolis. They travel in unnecessarily large packs, perched outside schools, churches, grocery stores, and hospitals just snooping, sniffing, waiting; armed vultures with a chip on their shoulder and violence in their hearts for who knows why.
This morning, President Trump is threatening to send the military here via the Insurrection Act over anti-ICE protests.
Minneapolis has been through so much pain. We’ve seen injustice and violence firsthand. I spent June 2020 listening to helicopters hover over my home as our community set police stations on fire and destroyed our city; the grief and anger just too much to bear. Every day I worry that things will get more violent. Trump is just looking for a reason to maim even more people who disagree with him.
I don’t have any tips or insights. No hacks. No light-hearted list of things to do.
I’m not an activist or pundit or strategist. Just a mom living in Minneapolis who doesn’t want anyone to be abducted by the government or separated from their families. That’s literally it.
I use this word VERY loosely since most “agents” do not have proper training and are basically just playing Call of Duty IRL
For those not seeped into Minneapolis politics or geography, this high school was raided by ICE agents on Wednesday afternoon where they traumatized students and abducted faculty members.
It's all so overwhelming and traumatizing. Your blood pressure is incredible given the circumstances!
Your writing makes so much sense to me. Thank you for putting words to my feelings! Love you friend.