‘I try to bring hope’: Minneapolis residents step up for immigrant kids threatened by fed agents

More than 2,000 federal agents are reportedly out in Minneapolis-St. Paul looking for immigrants to detain them.

Faced with heightened anti-immigration vigilance and increased cases of detentions in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents, volunteers are teaming up to provide safe homes for children who are vulnerable on account of their parents' detentions.

A protester holds a placard against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after federal agents fatally shot a man while trying to detain him, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (REUTERS)

Several residents of the Twin Cities are stepping up to help immigrants as people are appalled by the coercive tactics adopted by the federal agents as they crackdown on immigrants, the Associated Press reported.

More than 2,000 federal agents are reportedly out in Minneapolis-St. Paul looking for immigrants to detain them as the US Department of Homeland Security reports more than 3,000 arrests since early December. Residents have responded to the brutal crackdown with protests and disrupt the crackdown in the streets.

Show of community strength

As federal agents aggressively track down immigrants, breaking the doors to detain people, Minnesotans are standing together, looking out for each other.

People have paid rent for immigrant families whose breadwinners are afraid to go to work, delivered home-cooked meals and arranged for regular check-ins and emergency custody arrangements to make sure children are cared for in case their parents are detained, AP reported. Christian nonprofit Source MN has expanded its food bank program to provide for hundreds of sheltering immigrant families.

‘I’m afraid that I’ll be taken away’

A 20-year-old youth in Minneapolis who spoke to AP was afraid for the safety of their siblings as their mother, 41-year-old Indigenous Ecuadorian office cleaner, was detained in early this month. The family of 10 is living in fear as the eldest children feared they would be next, leaving behind their 5-month-old brother and six other children under 16 years old, per the report.

“The immigration agents were knocking on our door very late at night, and that’s when I became afraid,” the 20-year-old son told AP on condition of anonymity out of fear of deportation. “I’m afraid that I’ll be taken and my brothers and sisters will be in the hands of the government.”

Fearing more detentions, the family reached out to Feliza Martinez, a friend from church, who rallied a group of volunteers to quietly move them to a safe house in south Minneapolis.

“I do receive calls every single day from families and they're terrified, and we're just trying to help them as much as we can,” Martinez was quoted as sayin. She is a mother of five and works on a factory assembly line. But currently she ahs taken off to volunteer for Source MN. “I just try to bring hope — like, ‘We’re here with you.'”

Martinez, a devoted Christian, said she voted for President Donald Trump in the last three elections as she was influenced by his hard-line stance against abortion and gender-affirming care for youth. She is the granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant and was in favour of deporting violent criminals. She had not paid much attention to reports of family separations in the first Trump presidency.

But what happened over the last two months compelled her to have a change of heart as she watched on videos how federal agents were aggressively detaining her neighbors and separating families.

“Being on the front line and what I have experienced and seen, I wish I would’ve never voted for him,” Martinez said. “What he’s doing, it’s not Christian. It’s not my beliefs.”

Anger over detentions

Meanwhile, Trump administration has denied the accusations of separating families. Tricia McLaughlin, DHS spokesperson, said in a statement that “ICE does not separate families,” and that parents are asked whether they want to be removed with their children or place them with a designated person.

Federal agents are also under backlash over the alleged detention of a 5-year-old boy in the massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschool student, and his Ecuadoran father, Adrian Conejo Arias -- both asylum seekers -- were taken from their driveway as they arrived home, according to reports.

Vice President JD Vance confirmed Ramos was among those detained, but argued that agents were protecting him after his father "ran" from officers.

"What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?" he said.