I arrived at work Monday morning, January 12th, 2026, puzzled to see a nearly empty parking lot. We had closed suddenly, I learned, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were seen congregating across the street. Truthfully, this was a relief: for weeks my colleagues and I had been looking out the windows, waiting, fearing they would show up. 

I work for a non-profit organization in Saint Paul that offers social services, education and job training to immigrants and refugees. Beginning on this January morning, all of our non-white, foreign born staff (well over half), were now working from home. All classes and our hundreds of students from more than 150 countries moved online. I spent that day delivering computers to students who needed them to join their class.

That same day I received news that one of my students, a quiet, kind father and economist from Venezuela, had been taken and quickly sent to a prison in Texas. I helped his wife find a lawyer. With our help and the support of her Minneapolis church she was able to pay that lawyer and get her husband released. But he now faces deportation proceedings. He is in this country legally and had broken no laws.

Already in November I’d heard of neighborhoods and church groups doing whistle- or constitutional-observer trainings to protect their immigrant neighbors, teaching them how to safely witness and film ICE actions. “I’d do that,” you might think. But would you do it when you’re about to sit down to dinner, or when you’re putting your kids to bed? Would you be out there when it’s minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit, when you’re worn out and have had a rotten day? Would you do it when you learn agents are now accessing your personal data, following and sometimes arresting observers?

We’ve all seen historic events happen to a group, from a distance. What I didn’t know about being in it myself is what it feels like. Aside from the disbelief, outrage, stress and anger simmering inside and at times bubbling up, there are the series of choices you face each day. Some are small, some big, some unclear. You ask yourself what impact they will have. Should I do this, or spend my time resting to do more of that? And the despair: It sets in, as it did for me, as cynicism bloomed. This won’t end. They want revenge. They’ll keep coming for us.

But Minnesotans were out there: driving neighbors’ kids to school, assembling food at      faith-based and other non-profit organizations. Our refugee services manager was in constant contact with organizations in Texas that help people who were released from detention. They were usually dumped someplace remote, often without their ID so they couldn’t travel home. We know of at least one employer who flew at his own expense to Texas and rented a car to pick up a young employee of his and drive her back to Minnesota.

I heard first-hand accounts of so much harassment, intimidation and cruelty, not toward criminals, but toward hard-working, kind people with families. That’s what hurt most.

I know a young Ukrainian couple with a baby boy and a dog, trying to make a living with their new food truck business. They closed and stayed home for two months, even though they’re white. Their young friend was arrested, not allowed to show her papers, and held in New Mexico for a month, taunting her with threats of deportation, before she was finally released. She remains badly shaken. I have colleagues who were afraid to leave the house. Some are US citizens, and afraid their older or disabled family members could be left alone with no care. Every person I heard from is here legally and never committed a crime.

At work, we were flooded with donations of money and time. We filled our large event hall each week with groceries, and an army of volunteers in their own cars delivered food to our clients so they could stay home, and, hopefully, stay safe.

While I was processing requests for emergency rental assistance for those who didn’t feel safe going to work, Rob, my husband, was baking bread to deliver to our neighbors and friends. He also braved the minus-15-degree weather to attend protests with his homemade sign, alongside hundreds of thousands of fellow Minnesotans. Some businesses brought hot drinks and warm food out to the protestors, or offered their business space for them to step in to warm up. These acts multiplied in every neighborhood across the Twin Cities and their suburbs.

As all of this was happening, my 17-year-old daughter was deep in theater rehearsal. The kids intentionally had chosen plays like Hadestown, which were so very relevant to the current climate. (“Why do we build the wall? My children, my children….”)

On the day they killed Alex Pretti, we attended her performance just a few blocks from where it happened. As we left the theater that evening, thousands of protesters with signs were streaming by. Along a main Minneapolis street, groups of people holding candles and bundled up against the sub-zero weather stood on every single street corner, for miles. 

The staggering number of Minnesotans who got up each day to do these small but significant acts in the face of despair, in bone-aching cold, added to an overwhelming sum of community support of immigrants, of witnessing and peaceful protest. The weight of each act, no matter how small, accumulated like the tiny snowflakes falling in the Cities to make a light blanket at first, then drifts, then heavier banks of snow.

It accumulated, pressed into sidewalks to freeze into slick sheets of ice. You may have seen a video of one ICE agent captured on camera, slipping on this solid, slick surface to fall heavily to the ground on his backside. All of these videos, posts, outrage, kind acts protecting neighbors, viewed by the world, began to bear down. Slowly, (to us it seemed like forever) the weight formed enough pressure for something to give, for the targeting to stop, at least here, at least for now. I wouldn’t have believed it, until it happened.

Carrie Mann works as a Business Navigator for the International Institute of Minnesota. She is an educator, advocate, and community development professional dedicated to empowering immigrant and refugee communities. She has almost a decade of hands-on experience supporting New Americans through career advancement, entrepreneurship, English language instruction, and cultural orientation. Her work spans curriculum development, financial literacy, and organizational development. She has a Master’s degree in International Environmental Policy and German from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a certificate in Development Project Management.

Carrie is also a long-time promoter of women’s health and wellness, a hatha yoga instructor and health educator with a focus on prenatal care, birth education and postpartum well-being.