As immigration crackdown spreads beyond Minneapolis, the small town of Northfield resists
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Normally at 1:45 p.m. on a Wednesday, Carleton College English professor Adriana Estill would be grading papers or meeting with students. But things have been far from normal in recent weeks, so on Jan. 28 Estill’s office served as an emergency call center as she worked a three-hour shift as a volunteer ICE watch dispatcher.
Estill is one of several bilingual residents of the area volunteering with Northfield Supporting Neighbors, an organization founded during the first Trump administration that provides legal support to immigration detainees and operates an ICE alert system.
While working her ICE watch dispatch shift, Estill fields calls and texts from residents who think they’ve spotted federal agents in town. She shares those reports with other volunteers who drive out to verify them.
If the verifiers confirm the license plate as belonging to a federal vehicle or if they see federal agents, Estill sends out an alert in English and Spanish that reaches more than 1,500 people in and around Northfield.
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While much of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, called “Operation Metro Surge,” has been concentrated in the Twin Cities, federal agents have been conducting immigration enforcement operations all across greater Minnesota, too.
And since the killing of Renee Macklin Good by a federal agent in Minneapolis almost a month ago, Estill said she feels as though Northfield has become a major ICE target. She said the number of federal vehicles spotted in the town has skyrocketed.
“It was immediate. It felt like being attacked,” Estill said.
In recent weeks, federal agents have been spotted in this small college town 45 minutes south of Minneapolis almost daily. The same day Estill was dispatching, federal agents entered a local bakery with immigrant employees to verify the business’s I-9 documentation.
Shortly after that, at least four agents were spotted combing through an apartment complex where immigrant families live. When verifier Chris Frago arrived on the scene, federal agents boxed in his car with their vehicles. He said an agent told him, “If you follow us, things are going to get messy.”
Federal authorities have not reported exactly how many people have been arrested in the immigration crackdown in Northfield, but observers and aid groups say it’s been about a half dozen.
And despite the intense federal presence here, community organizations like Northfield Supporting Neighbors have also seen an unprecedented surge in local support. Increasingly, people are volunteering and donating to serve and support immigrant families who have gone into hiding and to alert them of ICE activity in the city.
The observers hope that having more eyes on the roving ICE and border agent patrols will reduce the risk to the immigrants being targeted.
Gina Washburn, a retired lawyer, is part of the leadership team of Northfield Supporting Neighbors. That day she stayed at the apartments where ICE was spotted for about six hours to make sure kids could safely return home from school.
She said she starts fielding calls from volunteers on the lookout for ICE early, at about 7 a.m. Then she is in constant communication with people monitoring ICE activity and coordinating aid to immigrant families “until about 11 or 12 at night, every night, seven days a week.”
Some residents in Northfield haven’t left their homes or apartments in a month because of fear of ICE. Volunteers help provide many of them with food and help get their children to school safely. Washburn said with many of these parents staying home from work and not getting paid, they now can’t pay their rent.
“It’s just a complete and utter disruption of life,” Washburn said.
Northfield is about 80 percent white, but many of the Latino immigrant families here have planted deep roots over the last few decades.
One Mexican immigrant told MPR News she hasn’t left her house in three weeks because she fears ICE. We aren’t naming her because she fears for her and her family’s safety. She arrived in Northfield almost 20 years ago and she and her husband, a U.S. citizen she met here, have raised their two children in Northfield. Speaking to an MPR News reporter in Spanish, she said her family’s life has completely changed.
“La verdad es algo muy difícil que nunca pensamos vivir,” she said.
“The truth is this is something really difficult that we never thought we’d have to live through.”
She said she acts strong in front of her children, but “la verdad es que es una impotencia bien grande porque no puedo imaginarme sin ellos. Es muy difícil estar todo el tiempo con temor.”
“The truth is I feel really helpless because I can’t imagine being without them. It’s very difficult to be afraid all the time,” she said.
The mother said she can’t leave her house to take her children to church or school, or to the doctor like she normally would. And she’s especially concerned about the toll this is taking on them.
“Ella todas las noches no puede dormir solo de pensar si un día me agarrará la migra.”
“She can’t sleep at night because all she can think about is if one day ICE will take me,” she said about her 14-year-old daughter.
That same day when Chris Frago was confronted by ICE agents at an apartment complex in Northfield, she received the alert from Northfield Supporting Neighbors and realized that operation was nearby. She said she felt panicked all day long, constantly glancing out her windows as she did chores around the house.
Many families like hers are in hiding here and Northfielders describe an organic network of support that has sprung up to support them. Volunteers make sure children arrive at school safely, families don’t go hungry and anyone arrested has immediate legal support. The ICE alert system run by Northfield Supporting Neighbors is just one piece of that support. Churches, nonprofits and the city all coordinate to provide services.
Northfield Mayor Erica Zweifel said she’s connecting local residents to resources and providing information to local businesses on how to respond if immigration agents demand employee records. Zweifel also said she sends regular updates to the area’s members of Congress: Rep. Angie Craig and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
“The trust is broken in the community,” she said. “Even if ICE activity stopped tomorrow, things would not go back to normal.”
However, Zweifel said she’s proud of how she’s seen Northfielders step up to support each other in this moment.
Another example are Northfield’s children of immigrants who were born in the U.S. and are now trying to protect their parents.
One 30-year-old, first-generation Mexican American patrols Northfield, looking out for federal immigration agents whenever he can. MPR News is not naming him because he fears for the safety of his family. He drives through his neighborhood, hotel parking lots and locations where federal vehicles have been seen before. He’s exhausted and he stress-smokes out his car window even when the temperature is below zero. But he said he’s not slowing down because this issue is personal to him.
Federal officials have argued that ICE is targeting criminals in Minnesota. “It’s not. It’s families,” the patroller said. “I'm protecting my f---ing family.”
He’s not part of Northfield Supporting Neighbors, though he coordinates with them. Instead, this patroller is part of a loose collection of college students, union organizers, other 20- and 30-somethings from across Northfield and first-generation Americans like him.
“Increasingly, I wanted first-generation kids that could be there, that could be able to organize and speak for their parents and speak for the community,” the man said.
President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan arrived in Minnesota last week and talked of an eventual “drawdown” of immigration agents in the state. But he also warned people not to get in agents' way.
“You interfere, impede, assault an ICE officer, you will be arrested,” he said.
In the week since Homan took over operations, there’s been no slowdown to the immigration crackdown, and the 30-year-old patroller said he and his friends won’t be stepping off the gas anytime soon either.
“I don’t think we are at a position to be like, ‘OK, guys, we got to slow down,’” he said. “No, we’re still going. It feels like wartime.”
