How much can a city take?

I live in minneapolis. I grew up in a suburb of St. Paul, not far from here; After living on both coasts, my wife and I braved the cold to raise our daughters here, where we have always been warmly welcomed. As the ongoing occupation of more than 3,000 ICE agents reaches its third week — with no clear end in sight — I have been receiving a steady stream of messages from increasingly concerned friends across the country. They all start the same way: Uh… is it really as bad as it looks from the outside?

My answer to that question is simple: No, it’s worse. Not since the pandemic has my daily life been disrupted in such a terrifying and unrealistic way. Then, at least, there was a feeling of the country being united. Aside from the idiots rallying against masks and vaccines, most Americans can at least agree that the world would be a better place if COVID-19 didn’t exist.

There is no such ease with ICE, which is literally a hostile, heavily armed, masked police force that is violently taking over Minneapolis. No one – certainly not the ICE agents themselves – is really bothering with the excuse that they’re here to make the city safe. This is Donald Trump’s revenge campaign, and they are the foot soldiers.

Unfortunately, their apparent incompetence and stupidity do not make them any less dangerous. The murder of Renee Good was bad enough, but the blatant lies that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told about the incident — and the FBI’s refusal to share evidence that would allow the state of Minnesota to investigate the death of one of its own citizens — made it clear to both sides that ICE would face no consequences for anything they did, at least not while Trump is in the White House.

In the days since, ICE agents have responded accordingly. We know that they are often poorly trained, wear masks to avoid detection, and have the unquestioning support of an administration that almost openly promotes violence on the streets of Minneapolis. At the time I write this, Trump is still considering invoking the Insurrection Act and deploying 1,500 paratroopers to the city. How worried am I about what ICE will do to people who oppose its tactics? It’s just that I considered whether I should publish this story anonymously.

And so the second question that people are messaging me – You are Ok? – It is difficult to answer. I think it’s because the answer is no. Call me naive, but despite abundant evidence of the hatefulness and skepticism of the Trump administration and its activists, I was not prepared for them to unleash this level of chaos and violence in my city.

The presence of ICE is not an abstract thing for the people who live here. It is a constant threat that requires constant vigilance. Our public schools were closed because the state government could not guarantee that students would be safe. Many stores and restaurants, including 80 percent immigrant-owned businesses, are not open, protecting both employees and patrons from the threat of ICE raids. Many non-white Minnesotans — regardless of whether they are citizens or not — are essentially sheltering in place, skipping grocery stores and doctors’ appointments to stay home, where ICE (theoretically) needs a judicial warrant to harass them.

A right-wing adage often used by Trump is that anyone who opposes ICE must be a paid protestor. Of course, the reality is the opposite. Many of us have families, most of us have jobs, and we all have bills to pay. None of this has changed, but the work of protecting our community still requires many unpaid hours. As a white American citizen, I am one of the “lucky” ones: ICE can still detain me, as they have many other lawful protesters, but I am much less likely to be actively targeted. I’ve been lucky in another sense, too: So far, I haven’t had to face any bad situations with my young children. But I hope that luck runs out soon.

Over the past two weeks, I have become a volunteer driver, taking non-white people between their homes and their jobs. My passengers put hoods over their winter coats before getting out of the car to hide their faces, and enter houses festooned with Christmas lights and wreaths. Unless they’re behind closed doors, I don’t go.

With no alternative, parents have become organized through platforms like Signal and WhatsApp. Working together with people around my community, I have taken shifts as a security guard, waiting outside schools, daycares, and community centers to send rapid response alerts should ICE arrive. I marched and raised money by boycotting stores like the Minnesota-based company Target, without having the courage to issue an indifferent, lukewarm defense of the people of Minnesota.

Whatever I’m doing isn’t enough. But all this, I convince myself, is better than this Nothing. What is most heartening about this deeply troubling moment is how consistently and strongly Minnesotans of all demographics are pushing back. It’s been inspiring and radicalizing in ways I’m not sure anyone outside the city can really understand. High school students in the Twin Cities metro area have organized a walkout. Parents who might normally be busy with PTA duties are patrolling their neighborhoods, honking car horns to chase away ICE agents, and blowing whistles to warn the community of their presence. My father-in-law, a devout Catholic in his 70s, made a cardboard sign that read “Love Thy Neighbor” and joined thousands of people rallying against ICE on a cold afternoon in Powderhorn Park.

It’s been a particularly tough year for Minneapolis. The assassination of Democratic state Representative Melissa Hortman, and Donald Trump’s particularly senseless response to it, is still an open wound. Pink lawn signs are still erected in many yards as a sign of community support following the deadly shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in August. The murder of George Floyd, never far from the background of the city’s collective memory, has returned to the surface, as one needless murder on the streets reminds of another. How much can a city take?

I guess we’ll all find out. Over the past two weeks, I wake up more angry than tired and go to bed more tired than angry. I’ve been eating more restaurant takeout than expected, but it seems like a good time to support local businesses — even if many of them remain closed. I bought a pack of whistles and messaged a few neighbors to see if anyone needed them. Nobody picked me up on this; All of them had also bought packets of whistles.

The community is united in outrage, action and, remarkably, also in good humor. A variety of local businesses, including Detroit-style pizza hub Rectangle and sex shop Smitten Kitten, have become centers of resources and community activism. We share the ICE view on Signal and Troll r/Minneapolis. When conservative influencer Jake Lang — who was pardoned by Trump after spending four years in prison for attacking Capitol Police officers with a baseball bat — announced an anti-Muslim march in Cedar-Riverside, group chats in the Twin Cities lit up with the same Tom Hardy GIFs. We’ve already experienced enough to know when ICE and their allies are trying to ensnare us.

We talk optimistically about how much money ICE is spending every day and how difficult it will be for them to withstand this full-scale attack in the coming weeks and months. We’re hoping that Trump’s disinterest in anything complicated means he’ll get frustrated with the standoff between ICE and the people of Minneapolis, or that his childlike obsession with new, shiny things means he’ll just get bored and order his minions to do something else.

We also know that we will win. Time is on our side. ICE may have inflated wages and the support of a tyrannical federal government, but we’re the ones who live here, and as the city’s greatest musician, Prince, once said, the cold keeps the bad guys out. And when ICE agents finally take off their masks, leave their shitty chain hotels, and fly back to where they were before they came to terrorize us, we’ll still be here.

This is the last message I send to anyone who checks in with me: Wherever you are, get settled now. Find out who your like-minded neighbors are. Set up your Signal chat. Get some whistles (I can leave some whistles if you need). This administration has made it clear that Minneapolis is only the beginning, and when they come to your city, you’ll want to be ready.