In a Minnesota town outside the Twin Cities, Emily is a nurse who treats many immigrant patients. She can’t locate a patient who just had a test result that shows they might have cancer. The patient was recently detained by ICE; situations like these have forced the clinic to adapt, making house calls and triaging care.
“I’d love to know how well somebody’s kidneys are functioning today,” Emily said, but “I’m gonna wait till three months because I don’t want them to come in for a lab appointment that’s not critical.”
Emily is one of many Minnesotans mounting a quiet, secretive resistance to the Trump administration’s hard-nosed and often violent immigration agenda. Across the state, neighbors are helping neighbors and communities are building grassroot systems to support immigrant families.
This week on Reveal, our Minnesotan reporters Nate Halverson and Artis Curiskis report on how Minnesota is teaching the country to resist federal agents who have arrested children, killed citizens in the street, and pepper-sprayed high schoolers.
Dig Deeper
Read: ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Longer and Crueler (Mother Jones)
Read: Federal Prosecutors in Minnesota Are “Demoralized and Pissed” (Mother Jones)
Read and watch: The Army Veteran Arrested for Protesting at a St. Paul Church Was Just Set Free (Mother Jones)
Listen: The City of Minneapolis vs. Donald Trump (The New Yorker Radio Hour)
Listen: How an Errand for a 12-year-old Immigrant in Minneapolis Became an Underground Operation (NPR)
Credits
Reporters: Artis Curiskis and Nate Halverson | Producers: Ashley Cleek, Artis Curiskis, Nadia Hamdan, Kara McGuirk-Allison, and Sam Van Pykeren | Editors: Jenny Casas, Cynthia Rodriguez, and Brett Myers | Fact checkers: Artis Curiskis, Jeffrey Kelly, and Chasity Hale | Legal review: Victoria Baranetsky | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs, with help from Claire Mullen and Garrett Tiedemann | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson
Support for Reveal is provided by Reveal listeners, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. For the past three years, Emmett Bongaarts has worked as a letter carrier for the US Postal Service, going door to door, walking miles a day. He loves it. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I think the USPS really is, in a way, a logistical masterpiece because if you think about it, the post office every single day sends somebody to every single address in the country. And to me, that’s like a miracle that a government service can do that. |
| Al Letson: | Even before he got the job, Emmett loved writing and receiving letters. Taking time to put pen to paper for someone you care about is special, even if people don’t do it as much anymore. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | Maybe they’re not receiving as many letters from their lover as they used to back in the day, but there’s still just this sense of connection that I think the postal service can provide people. |
| Al Letson: | That connection to community that Emmett describes is why we wanted to talk to him. Because the city where he lives and works, Minneapolis, has been at the center of the national spotlight for weeks. There’s been an all-out assault by federal agents, including Customs and Border Protection, and ICE, widespread protests, and the killings of two Americans. And despite it all, postal workers like Emmett are still out there walking the icy sidewalks. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I think an important thing for communities is (beep) can be hitting the fan, but the mailman’s still going to deliver your mail. |
| Al Letson: | That’s right. Neither snow nor rain nor plumes of tear gas are going to keep couriers like Emmett from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. And we wanted to know what it’s like. What it’s like to know Minneapolis as well as they do, and see the city transform? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | There’s kind of this grim lack of sound. There’s a tension that you can hear from what you don’t hear. |
| Al Letson: | Today, we’re bringing you stories from Minnesota, the federal immigration raids that have gripped cities like Minneapolis and the historic resistance mounted by local residents. And in part, we’re turning to our own colleagues who grew up in Minnesota to report on what’s been happening there. |
| We start today’s show with a story from reporter Artis Curiskis. Artis grew up in Minneapolis. He went to middle school and high school with Emmett, and it got him thinking about what Emmett and other postal workers can tell us about how the city is changing. They agreed to talk to him as long as we made it clear that they are speaking from their own personal perspectives. I’ll let Artis take it from here. | |
| Artis Curiskis: | All right, Emmett, can you hear me? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I can hear you. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Okay. When I saw what was happening in my hometown in Minneapolis, I knew I had to call Emmett. We are now all set up, and I’m sorry about that delay. I was a bit nervous because I never interview my friends. Do you have any questions? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | Not really. I mostly just have answers for you. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Emmett’s always been witty and marched to the beat of his own drum. There was a stint during college where Emmett and I would mostly correspond with letters, part of his longstanding admiration for the mail. And now he walks the streets, carrying everything from junk mail to wedding invites in his bag. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I walk about 12 miles a day on average when I’m working. |
| Artis Curiskis: | How many shoes have you worn through in your time at the post office? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | Oh, plenty. Dozens. |
| Artis Curiskis: | After years on the job, his days felt pretty routine, but that changed in late December 2025 when he and his colleagues noticed a bunch of unmarked vehicles in the employee parking lot. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | We quickly realized, “Okay, those are ICE agents.” We saw them arrest somebody in our parking lot. And so that was kind of our first inkling of what was to come. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Emmett says his supervisors told everyone to avoid ICE operations because of safety concerns. He hasn’t witnessed an immigration raid, but he’s seen remnants of them along his route. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | Ghost cars are kind of this phenomenon that have become a far too regular occurrence in the city, where you’ll just see a car either in the middle of the street or maybe poorly parked on the side of the street, hazards sometimes on, sometimes not, windows broken or rolled down. And at this point now when you see that, you know this person was taken by ICE. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Emmett’s route cuts through a largely residential immigrant neighborhood. And in early January, while he was out delivering mail, he saw a crowd gathering on the street. One of the people told him an ICE agent shot somebody. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | It was like an extremely surreal experience just delivering mail as there’s choppers above. |
| Artis Curiskis: | And then he gets a news alert from the Star Tribune, the local paper. It was Renee Good. She’d been killed a block away from Emmett’s route. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I saw a tow truck driving with Renee’s car, and behind that tow truck was probably 10 to 15 cars full of agents. I mean, there were hundreds of federal agents in the area that day. And that was very striking to see as I’m just waiting to cross this intersection while this whole convoy of feds drives by. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Emmett said he went into autopilot. He just put his head down and did his job, unable to process the news. Around him, people were starting to grieve and take to the streets to protest and build a memorial. The following day, he and his coworkers talked about what happened. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | One of my coworkers, he was like, “I probably gave 20 people hugs on my route yesterday. People were just shocked.” It’s hard to explain. There was just this ominous feeling. |
| Artis Curiskis: | One of Emmett’s coworkers, Luke Ferguson, told me he saw the writing on the wall months ago when he noticed… |
| Luke Ferguson: | An uptick in letters arriving from Department of Homeland Security. |
| Artis Curiskis: | At the time, DHS was sending letters to residents telling them to leave the country immediately. |
| Luke Ferguson: | I do remember one time walking up to somebody in their yard and asking them, “Hey, does this person live here?” And just watching her face fall as she recognized the name, recognized that it was from ICE. And I was just like, “Man, this does not feel good to be delivering these threatening letters to people.” |
| Artis Curiskis: | As mail carriers walk the streets of Minneapolis in the sub-zero temps of January, they tell me they’ve been noticing these small details that to them all equal fear. Snow is piling up on people’s walkways because residents are too scared to go out and shovel. Mail vans are filling up with large boxes of household supplies as people avoid shopping in stores. Luke says on his route, families don’t even want their names visible. |
| Luke Ferguson: | They had taken their names off of their mailboxes because they were so terrified that ICE agents might see them. |
| Artis Curiskis: | The same thing was happening on Bianca Sonnenberg’s route, and she understands why. She feels scared too. She says she’s Native American, a person of color. |
| Bianca Sonnenbe…: | They’ve been stanching up Native Americans, so without me having my uniform on, I don’t feel safe going out in the streets. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Her uniform has become a security blanket. At the end of her shift, she doesn’t change out of it to go home the way she used to. |
| Bianca Sonnenbe…: | I wear my uniform home because I’m too scared not to. I could be targeted. It’s crazy because I always say I only fear God, but they have definitely triggered something in me to be more protective of myself and of my surroundings and the people that I care about, including other people on my route. |
| Artis Curiskis: | On Saturday, January 24th, Bianca was getting ready to start her shift as news circulated about Alex Pretti’s killing. She realized that Pretti was killed on her route. She could have stayed back, but she wanted to go out and deliver the mail. Bianca says she tried to avoid the rising protests and skirmishes. As she delivered, she saw plumes of tear gas, even inhaling some that wafted through the neighborhood as she was moving between buildings. |
| Bianca Sonnenbe…: | In my head, I’m always thinking, “This is somebody’s medicine or something that they need, and if I don’t get it to them today, they’re going to have to wait till Monday.” And that’s just me doing my part that I could at that moment. |
| Artis Curiskis: | She learned one of her coworkers had Pretti’s apartment on their route. |
| Bianca Sonnenbe…: | And he’s like, “I feel so bad.” He was like, “He has packages today.” |
| Artis Curiskis: | The coworker had packages with Alex Pretti’s name on them. |
| Bianca Sonnenbe…: | And that almost made tears come to my eyes. You don’t think about that. You’re ordering a package, you don’t think, “Oh, I’m not going to be here to get my package.” |
| Artis Curiskis: | As chaos and uncertainty brews in Minneapolis, letter carriers are sometimes helping people feel safer too. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | There’s a customer on my route who hadn’t left his house for weeks. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Here’s Emmett again. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | The only time he would come outside was when he saw me coming down the street to bring his mail and he would come out and he’d say, “Hey, do you have the passport?” And that happened for about a week straight and I didn’t have it, but then finally I had it and I brought it to him. I knocked on his door. I gave it to him and he said, “Finally, I feel a little bit safer.” And I mean, this is an American citizen who just couldn’t leave his house because he didn’t feel safe without his passport. |
| Artis Curiskis: | For people of color, carrying a passport has become more common in Minneapolis, just in case something happens. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | It has felt, over the last couple of months, when I’m delivering a passport to somebody on my route, I’m like, “I just feel a little bit better.” |
| Artis Curiskis: | Talking to Emmett and the others, I heard all kinds of stories that had nothing to do with delivering the mail. I heard about postal workers stopping along their route to help people shovel cars out of snowbanks. One even used Narcan to save someone who overdosed. And it’s clear, postal workers are unique observers of our lives. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | The letter carrier is not the main character of the neighborhood, but they’re always in the background and they’re there and they’re part of the sort of fabric of any sequence of streets in the country, right? |
| Artis Curiskis: | The sequence of streets on Emmett’s route feel different now. Some businesses lock their doors. People patrol the local school for any sign of ICE. And kids, including some who Emmett has gotten to know, no longer play in the streets like they used to. |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | I mean, there’s this group of kids, two brothers and a sister, and I don’t need to say what block they live on. They live on my route, and they’re just… I mean, they’re little menaces in a very fun way. Just all summer, they’re riding their bikes around and we goof off. They yell at me every time they see me, I yell back at them. And they just haven’t left their house in weeks now. And that’s something that I’ve really missed, is seeing them. Sorry. Yeah. |
| Artis Curiskis: | It’s all right. Are there windows that you are able to see the kids through or is that all kind of shuttered? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | No, I haven’t seen them. But from talking to neighbors, they’re doing as well as they can’t be doing. Yeah. There’s also some very cute anti-ICE signs that I can tell they’re the ones who made them just based on the language, but… |
| Artis Curiskis: | What stands out? |
| Emmett Bongaart…: | Just, “ICE is pee-pee, poo-poo.” I know which brother made that one for sure, “ICE is dumb because they slip on ice.” With some classic children typos in them. |
| Artis Curiskis: | Emmett lives near his route, so it’s not like he’s just serving this community. He’s a part of it. The same is true for other postal workers I talk to. As someone who grew up in Minneapolis myself, I also know these neighborhoods. As kids, we’ve all biked these streets at different times, and we’ve ventured to the lakes for a swim in the summer or built snow forts in the local park. That’s the Minneapolis I know and hope to see again. |
| Al Letson: | That story was reported by Reveal’s Artis Curiskis. Up next, how a celebrated Minneapolis chef and restaurant owner is thinking about the future. |
| Speaker 6: | We’re supposed to open up two restaurants this year, and we have to consider, “What if we are in an authoritarian state?” |
| Al Letson: | That’s next on Reveal. |
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Whenever our reporter, Nate Halverson, comes back to the Twin Cities to visit family, he usually brings his hockey skates. |
| Nate Halverson: | Oh, this is some nice ice. For being an outdoor rink, there’s some |
| Al Letson: | Great ice. Getting out to the rink in St. Paul has always been a little escape for Nate, a way to unwind. Something he jokes about with some fellow skaters. |
| Nate Halverson: | You just need to take a step back and just do nothing and shoot the puck around. |
| Speaker 3: | I agree, man. Yeah- |
| Al Letson: | This time around, Nate isn’t visiting family. He’s here for work. |
| Nate Halverson: | Some guy asked me where I was from, and I told him I was from San Francisco, I was just out here for work and he said, “What’d he do?” And I ignored the question. He asked me again and I answered, and then we were in it. Then we were in it. |
| Al Letson: | Nate’s been in Minnesota the past two weeks arriving just one day after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents. Minneapolis is experiencing what the Department of Homeland Security is calling the largest immigration enforcement operation in the country’s history. |
| Many living there are calling it a federal siege. And Nate’s been all over the state talking with his fellow Minnesotans about how they’re weathering the chaos. Typically, Nate tries to leave work and worries off the ice, but it’s just not possible this time. | |
| Nate Halverson: | Today it’s tough. It’s tough to get away from the heaviness in the city. For the first time ever, since I’ve been coming to this rink anyway, here in St. Paul, I just wish the ice rink could be what the ice rink is supposed to be, an escape. And it is kind of, but not like it usually is. |
| Al Letson: | Minnesota is changing the conversation about what it means, not only to protest, but how to show up for your community. We begin with someone who starts her day that way. Here’s Nate. |
| Nate Halverson: | It’s early on a weekday morning. So early the sun isn’t out yet. I’m waiting in a parking lot for a woman whose name I can’t say and whose voice you won’t hear. She’s fearful of being targeted by the government for what she’s about to do and has been doing for weeks, shuttling strangers’ kids to and from school so families who are at risk of being picked up by federal agents don’t have to leave the house. Today, I’m joining her. |
| The car ride itself is pretty ordinary. A student gets in the car with a simple, “Good morning,” and then I notice the blinds in the house window are pulled back just a little bit, as someone watches to make sure they get inside safely. The driver offers them a granola bar and a fruit snack, and then we’re off to the next stop. The car is silent, except for the occasional sound of the blinker. We’re just driving kids to school. Something people do every day, all the time, and yet nothing about this feels normal. This is a feeling I had the whole time I reported in Minnesota with everyone I talked to. | |
| Sean Sherman: | I feel like there’s a lot of paranoia, ’cause even coming to work, you’re just looking around to see, is there danger around the corner? That’s what the vibe is. Is it safe to go down this residential street in daylight? |
| Nate Halverson: | I’m topping to see Sean Sherman. He’s a hometown celebrity, a pride of Minnesota, an internationally renowned chef. In 2022, he won his third James Beard Award for Owamni, his famed restaurant featuring an Indigenous menu. |
| Sean Sherman: | It’s really, really difficult to run a business, to even consider who’s even coming to the restaurant. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sean says that while people are still coming in to support them, the numbers at his restaurant and across the city are dropping. |
| Sean Sherman: | We’re seeing staff just being afraid, and we’re protecting our own staff who feel vulnerable. We’re predominantly native, but we’re still being targeted also just because we have a lot of employees with brown skin and they’re racially profiling. |
| Nate Halverson: | Part of Sean’s job involves traveling to other restaurants. And last month he was doing prep work at a friend’s place in Mexico City when he heard that Renee Good had been killed by federal agents. |
| Sean Sherman: | And that just felt unstabilizing. Everything just shifted a little bit. |
| Nate Halverson: | After he heard the news, Sean quickly connected with his team of 160 employees. |
| Sean Sherman: | Everybody was scared because they just watched a murder on social media, basically, right? So we’re just having all these emergency calls back home. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sean shut down the restaurant for two days, and has implemented all sorts of new safety measures that seem to be evolving daily. Turn your cell phone off or on airplane mode when you’re leaving work so you can’t be tracked. Keep your documentation on you at all times. Don’t use public transportation. |
| Sean Sherman: | Does everybody have safe rides to work? Make sure there’s at least two people in every car. |
| Nate Halverson: | They’ve put signs on the door that say, “No agents without a warrant.” Other restaurants have installed doorbells so they can keep their doors locked. Sean says this touches everybody, but especially if you’re in the food business. |
| Sean Sherman: | You know somebody who’s been taken. |
| Nate Halverson: | That includes one of his own staff. |
| Sean Sherman: | So I get a call that ICE was here at the building. |
| Nate Halverson: | One of his employees was giving a ride to her coworker who was originally from South America. Sean says this man had his paperwork, proving that he was authorized to live and work in the country. Multiple videos show that as soon as she parked, federal agents pulled her coworker from the car. |
| Sean Sherman: | And she said she got out of the car and they all had guns drawn, so she had to get back in the car. |
| Speaker 5: | Hello, ma’am. |
| Harvey: | Hi. |
| Speaker 5: | Hi We’re going to just, if he’s fine, we’ll return him back. Okay? We’re just going to check his documentation. |
| Harvey: | Where are you going? |
| Speaker 5: | To the federal building, but if he checks out, we’ll give him [inaudible 00:06:11]. Okay? |
| Sean Sherman: | And they’re just like, “If he checks out, we’ll bring him right back.” But you can’t believe that because he ended up in Texas by morning. |
| Nate Halverson: | Can I just jump in? They said, “If he checks out, we’ll bring him right back”? |
| Sean Sherman: | Yeah, yeah. |
| Nate Halverson: | And he’s got his paperwork? |
| Sean Sherman: | Yeah, yeah. |
| Nate Halverson: | And instead, he’s in Texas by morning? |
| Sean Sherman: | Yeah. |
| Nate Halverson: | A judge ordered the employee be released and he was flown back to Minnesota, but everyone from the restaurant is still worried about what happens next. |
| In the meantime, Sean has organized a petition with other well-known chefs. They’re demanding Congress stop federal agents from taking their employees. | |
| Sean Sherman: | This isn’t sustainable in the long run. We can’t all live like this forever. And if this is our reality, I don’t know. ‘Cause we have to make tough decisions. We’re supposed to open up two restaurants this year and we have to consider what if we are in an authoritarian state? How smart is it to spend money on opening up a restaurant in that circumstance? Right? |
| Nate Halverson: | Yeah. It’s heavy. And when I’m talking to people back in California, friends elsewhere to try to be like, it’s tough to describe how much fear is in the air. The air is thick and it’s heavy. And that’s the kind of thing that doesn’t come across in sound. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t come across in a video. There’s a feeling here. |
| Sean Sherman: | Oh, yeah. Yeah. You wake up with it, you’re thinking about it all night long. It’s just there. It’s constant. ‘Cause every day people are coming into work and it’s automatic, like, “How’s it going?” And that’s just such a [inaudible 00:07:42] loaded question right now. I don’t feel like we’ve seen the worst yet. |
| Emily: | It’s sort of cute, ’cause in Trump 1.0, we had these adorable little stop signs. I was like, “You can’t go past this area.” The ideas that would protect us from agents coming in. And now, the time of signs is over, we’ve had to put locks on everything. |
| Nate Halverson: | I took a drive outside of Minneapolis to meet Emily. She’s a nurse practitioner at a health clinic in rural Minnesota. I’m just using her first name to protect her in the clinic from being flagged by federal agents. |
| By now, most people know that Minneapolis has been heavily targeted by immigration rates, but there’s plenty of activity in surrounding areas too, and it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention. | |
| Emily: | I don’t know what word to use other than the word crawling. I feel as if we are crawling with ICE. It is not uncommon to be on the highway linking town to town and go by a small armada of ICE vehicles. We don’t feel safe at all ’cause we are out of Minneapolis. And if anything, it sometimes feels like there are fewer eyes on us, right? Rural areas are spread out. |
| Nate Halverson: | Fewer eyes, meaning like there are fewer people watching out? |
| Emily: | There are fewer people watching us. |
| Nate Halverson: | There’s maybe not cameras. There’s not somebody to report that somebody just disappeared into ICE custody? |
| Emily: | Yeah. So we don’t have that same robust network of the social media video sharing. It feels much darker, much more hidden out here. |
| Nate Halverson: | Emily’s clinic serves people with limited healthcare options, like people who are new to the country and aren’t eligible for insurance. She says 80% of their patients are either Somali or Spanish speaking. |
| Emily: | Even during COVID, it’s point of great pride for us, is we never locked our doors. We never had to. |
| Nate Halverson: | But now, they do. Patients are let in one by one. And while we’re talking, we notice a man outside trying to get in. |
| Emily: | Yeah. Okay. So there’s somebody hasn’t gotten a memo on our door being locked yet. Just give me one second. Hi. I know. I know. Come on in, come on in, come on in. I know. It’s super cold. Okay. Take a seat and I’ll tell somebody you’re here. Okay. [foreign language 00:09:52]. Yes, sit down. You’re welcome. [foreign language 00:09:55]. |
| Nate Halverson: | The clinic has had to adapt in other ways as well. They’re delivering medicines and doing more virtual visits. They’re not only handing out condoms and vitamins, but now whistles, too. They’re also assessing how important a follow-up visit is, and sometimes delaying less urgent things like blood tests and mammograms. |
| Emily: | Now we are much more in a triage situation. I’d love to know how well somebody’s kidneys are functioning today. I’d love to know what their average blood sugar is. I’m going to wait. I’m going to wait till three months because I don’t want them to come in for a lab appointment that’s not critical. That’s all of a sudden our primary concern is, “How can I manage you so you don’t have to leave the house?” |
| Nate Halverson: | And that means a lot of worrying. Emily runs through a list. They’re once lively recovery meetings. |
| Emily: | Those have been completely quieted because of fear. |
| Nate Halverson: | Patients with diabetes. |
| Emily: | You could blow through a bottle of insulin really quickly. |
| Nate Halverson: | Annual vaccinations. |
| Emily: | I worry about the kids missing their shots. |
| Nate Halverson: | A patient with an abnormal pap smear. |
| Emily: | So somebody who has early signs of cervical cancer, we cannot find the patient. |
| Nate Halverson: | The staff later learned that this patient got picked up by federal agents and they have no way of contacting her. But Emily says what it really boils down to is less time with her patients. So to serve those who need it most, the clinic has started making house calls. |
| Emily: | My colleague and I, we made a home visit to see a sick baby on Saturday. Baby had influenza A, sick, six month old. I don’t like to see a sick baby over the phone. |
| Nate Halverson: | And Emily worries about what all this does to someone emotionally. |
| Emily: | It’s so difficult to see your kids suffering and sick and not know if they need more care than you could give them at home. It’s the constant grinding fear and stress that is leading to lack of sleep, extreme anxiety, depression, aggravation of any underlying health condition. |
| Nate Halverson: | How are you processing this emotionally? |
| Emily: | I like being useful. I like working. I like taking care of problems. I feel that all my energies are just going towards the next thing we can do. |
| Nate Halverson: | Like Sean said earlier, “How are you?” can feel like a loaded question for Emily. She even jokes about this with one of her colleagues. |
| Emily: | I get emotional, like how hard it is for me, and I can’t do it because I’m just so focused. |
| Nate Halverson: | It’s hard to let your guard down when the threat is still there. |
| Emily: | And there is so much beauty and so much community, spirit in everything that we’re doing, but then you stop for a second and you realize why we’re doing this, and none of this has to happen. People are doing this to us. And I hate that so much. |
| Nate Halverson: | I’ve spent so much time talking to people like Sean and Emily who are helping others, but it’s much harder to talk to those who are actively being targeted. And then I met Sofia. |
| Sofia: | I love to live here. I don’t want to move from here. This is my place. |
| Nate Halverson: | I was born here, but Sofia has endured more frigid winters than I have. I’m not using her real name because she’s undocumented. These days, Sofia barely leaves her home. And if she does, she’ll wait until she can ride with someone, and that’s because of what happened last month. |
| Sofia: | That day was nice, was everything quiet. So then, I just grabbed my coffee, my lunch, and drive. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia was on her way to work when she noticed a car in her rearview mirror. At first, she thought she was being paranoid, but then it started speeding up. |
| Sofia: | In my mind, “Okay, I will slow down and maybe he want to just pass me.” |
| Nate Halverson: | Instead, she says the car cut her off and blocked her path. Within seconds, federal agents were at her door. |
| Sofia: | I don’t have any moment to think. It was like a fast, everything. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia says she had all these plans in her head of how she would handle this situation. Press the panic button in her car, make a run for someone’s house, but there was no one around to help her and there was no time. |
| Sofia: | They say, “You have to go with us.” |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia’s detained. She says they already knew her name and started asking her questions. Sofia stayed quiet because she knows the law. She doesn’t have to say anything without a lawyer present. |
| Sofia: | And he’s kind of like, “Okay, if you want to be hard, it’s going to be hard. You can make easy or you can make difficult.” |
| Nate Halverson: | So Sofia cooperates and they let her call a friend who then immediately calls an attorney. Sofia says she was handcuffed and taken to a federal detention center in Minneapolis known as the Whipple Building. |
| It wasn’t until they drove up that she finally burst into tears. It was swarming with protestors, and Sofia says the federal agents turned up the music in the car to drown them out. | |
| Sofia: | They like laughing like, “Those people’s here,” and they turn the music so loud, too. They can hear what they say and just laughing. |
| Nate Halverson: | She’s put in a holding cell with other women who have been detained, which she says smells terrible because one of the toilets was clogged and overflowing. |
| Sofia: | I’m just crying and the other lady’s trying to calm me down and say, “You need to calm down. Otherwise, it’ll be hard for you.” |
| Nate Halverson: | By that afternoon, Sofia is on a plane to Texas, and this is something we’ve heard over and over again in our reporting. People on flights within hours, not days. And while she sat on that plane shackled, she overheard federal agents talking about how much money they were making doing this. |
| Sofia: | Every time they talk, this seems like a business. We are like business. You know when you put the cows in the- |
| Nate Halverson: | The slaughterhouse? |
| Sofia: | Yeah. It’s how I feel because it’s how they treat you. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia arrives to a detention center in El Paso, where she says she’s led into an outdoor enclosure with a tinted roof, metal link fence and AstroTurf. Then she’s moved to a room with a row of bunk beds. She’s given a pair of socks, men’s underwear, and a small blanket not large enough to cover her entire body. |
| Sofia says almost all the women she shared that room with were Latina and from Minnesota. Sofia just tried to keep herself busy as much as she could to stop herself from overthinking. | |
| Sofia: | “Why I left my house that day? Why don’t I stay at my house? Why I did this?” If you live your head, think too much, you can’t stop. |
| Nate Halverson: | But she can only keep it up for so long. |
| Sofia: | You can feel the energy. Sometimes the energy you can feel is very heavy. I got depressed, a lot of anxious because my body finally quit, and I just feel like my body is going to be collapsed. |
| Nate Halverson: | Minutes became hours and hours became days. Eventually, Sofia gets word that she can return to Minnesota. Her friend who had called the lawyer tells her the judge has ordered her release. |
| Sofia: | I’m happy, but I’m not sure they’re going to take to Minnesota. I was scared, because since they don’t respect any rules, I was like praying to God to send me to my house to Minnesota and not send me to another place. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia says she couldn’t fully believe she was going to Minnesota until she was there because everything had been so disorganized. She tells me about an older woman who was on the flight with her back to Minnesota. |
| Sofia: | That lady came to Minnesota with us, but she never leave the airplane. So, they took her to Texas again because they don’t have idea what to do with her. |
| Nate Halverson: | Wait, what do you mean? There’s a woman who, when you went from Texas, you flew to Minnesota and then she flew right back to Texas? |
| Sofia: | Yes. That poor lady. It’s what I said, they don’t know, people who work there, I think that they just hire people and they don’t know what to do. It’s a mess. |
| Nate Halverson: | We couldn’t independently verify this woman’s story, but it echoes other reports coming out of Minneapolis of the chaos and dysfunction in the detention process. Sofia said at first, none of it felt real, being detained, but also being at home. And then she saw her kids. |
| Sofia: | My body started shaking. I don’t know why. Maybe because of all the stress. I don’t know. I can’t describe the feeling. It’s a lot of emotion. A lot of emotion. Like I said, everything is emotional, so they can kill you emotionally. |
| Nate Halverson: | Sofia is back home now, sitting in her living room. Her house is filled with soft lighting, stuffed animals, and a candle like pumpkin spice. The same one my aunt uses. It couldn’t be more different from that detention center in Texas, she tells me. She basically spends all her time here. |
| Sofia: | For me, it’s hard to go and sit in my car right now or drive. I don’t know how long it’ll take. It have to be because I can’t stop my life, but now I’m waiting. I have my family here. I’m not ready if they going to send me to my country. It’s not something that’s in my mind, but if it happen, I have to. |
| Nate Halverson: | What do you hope happens? What’s your dream? |
| Sofia: | Can stay. Like I said, when I came here, I never thought of the consequences. I’m trying to be a good person and my dream is one day I can feel free. One day I can feel free. |
| Al Letson: | Before Nate left Sofia’s house that day, she told him she wanted to thank the protestors. That when things get really hard, seeing them brings her hope. Then a few days later, while reporting outside the Whipple Building, Nate mentions their conversation to a protestor named Harvey. |
| Nate Halverson: | She told me what it meant to see the protestors out here being her voice. What does that mean to you? |
| Harvey: | I mean, it’s heart-wrenching. We shouldn’t have to do this. People shouldn’t be stuck in their homes, terrified that something’s going to happen to them or their loved ones or their neighbors. It’s just wrong. |
| Al Letson: | That story was reported by Nate Halverson, with help from Pykeren. It was produced by Reveal’s Nadia Hamdan. People in Minnesota and across the country are demanding action from Washington. Coming up, we sit down with Senator Chris Murphy to ask what Democratic lawmakers are doing to reign in federal agents. |
| Senator Chris M…: | I think it’s hard for people to get inspired to take chances in their own lives if they don’t see members of the Senate taking chances. And it is a chance to say, “I’m not funding the federal government unless the government starts acting legally.” |
| Al Letson: | You’re listening to Reveal. Stay with us. |
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Federal agents arrived in Minnesota at the beginning of December, stopping immigrants on the street, really, anyone with brown and black skin. Agents have detained thousands of people in Minnesota without warrants at their homes, schools, and in their cars. And it’s only in the past few weeks that Democrats in the Senate have taken a stand, refusing to continue to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless there are substantial reforms. To learn more, we called up Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. Senator Murphy is a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration raids. For weeks, he’s urged senators not to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which he accuses of leading a racist effort to disappear immigrants. Senator Murphy, thanks so much for coming onto the show. |
| Senator Chris M…: | Yeah, thanks for having me. |
| Al Letson: | So, Senator, you’ve been extremely critical of the Department of Homeland Security. Let me just ask you straight up. Do you think the agency is operating with a white supremacist agenda? |
| Senator Chris M…: | Well, I do think this is a version of ethnic cleansing. I just want to be honest with you. They’re walking around neighborhoods looking for people with dark skin, listening for accents, and they’re throwing people in jail regardless of whether they’re here legally or not. I was in a courtroom in San Antonio, Texas a week and a half ago, and they didn’t care whether those people had legitimate claims to stay in the country. If you had brown skin and if you didn’t speak English as well as everybody else, you were going into jail. And so, this is on its face a racist discriminatory policy, and I just think we have to name it for what it is. |
| Al Letson: | I’m curious, just really unofficially, when you talk to your Republican colleagues in the Senate, do they agree with this? I’m sure there are things that they are unwilling to say on the camera, so I’m wondering about what they say when the cameras aren’t on, when it’s just you and them talking. |
| Senator Chris M…: | Yeah, that’s a popular question. And I totally get it because you want to believe that they’re craven, that they’re actually good people inside, that they don’t believe in what Trump is doing. I understand how that’s comforting, but that’s not what’s happening. In the first term, there was much more of that. But from 2017 to 2025, essentially the Republican Party was purged of independent thinkers. The only people that were allowed to win races for the House or the Senate were people that were true believers in Trump’s project who really do believe that America is weaker because we allow people from other countries to enter the United States because we empower people other than white males. So, those conversations are just not happening like you hope they would be. There’s a handful of them, but the folks that do speak up, somebody like Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina essentially has to immediately announce he’s retiring from Congress the minute that he starts to speak out against the administration. Privately, they’re not saying much different than what they’re saying publicly. |
| Al Letson: | As the minority party, what power do the Democrats have to compel Republican lawmakers to reign in DHS? |
| Senator Chris M…: | Well, the most significant power we have is one given to us by the Senate rules. The Senate rules, as they stand now, say that you can’t pass a budget with Republican votes alone, that you have to have 60 votes to pass a budget and there’s only 53 Republicans. So, that gives us the power to say, “Listen, you’re not going to get Democratic votes unless the President is going to act lawfully with the money that we give him.” Now, I would draw a much harder line than my party has drawn. I’ll just be honest with you. For instance, a couple weeks ago, we did pass with Democratic votes, the budget for the Department of Justice, even though the Department of Justice right now is behaving wildly illegally. We just saw them lock up a journalist, two journalists in Minneapolis for just exercising their First Amendment rights. |
| But at the very least, when it comes to the DHS budget, we can’t fund this version of DHS. We can’t give Democratic votes to keep funding ICE if they are going to be murdering American citizens, teargassing schools, disappearing legal residents. Our power is to say, “You’re not going to be able to get the money to operate these budgets unless you change.” | |
| Al Letson: | Can you give me examples of what you’re demanding? |
| Senator Chris M…: | Sure. For me, there’s a long, long list of reforms, but I think it comes down to three things that need to change. The most dangerous thing I think that ICE is doing in Minneapolis are these roving patrols, these show-your-papers patrols. They’re not going after a specific immigrant. They’re just wandering around. What we want is for the law to be changed to say, at least for the time being, the Department of Homeland Security has to get a warrant to go after a particular individual. So, if they say they want criminals, then find a warrant to go after a particular immigrant who has committed a crime that would stop these roving patrols, that would stop this profiling. |
| Second, no more secret police. We want body cameras on. We want the masks off. We want identification. I don’t know that these guys would do the things that they do if they were ID-ed, if they were accountable. I think there’s something in human psychology that allows people to get away with something different when they don’t feel like anybody knows who they are. And then lastly, accountability for what’s already happened. The state of Minnesota needs to be able to investigate the murders and the assaults right now, they’re being stopped from investigating by the department that needs to end. So, listen, that’s the top of the list. If those three things happen, I do think they would probably get Democratic votes for the budget and that would be good if the secret police practices ended, if the roving patrols ended, and if we had real accountability. | |
| Al Letson: | What about refusing to fund DHS? Is that a possibility if they don’t agree to these requests from you? |
| Senator Chris M…: | Well, I won’t give my vote to fund DHS if they don’t agree to, at the very least, this set of reforms. That’s just the beginning of a list. And by the way, these reforms have to apply to not just the money and the budget, but also the money in the big, beautiful bill. This is important. I know this gets down to the weeds a little bit, but it’s important. Right now, these operations in Minneapolis and all across the country are being funded not just by the yearly budget, but also by that huge bill they passed earlier this year that Trump calls the big beautiful bill. So, any reforms we pass have to apply to all the money that’s being spent on ICE enforcement or it just won’t work. And so, hopefully, we will have gotten either agreement from Republicans to those changes and that would not stop the abuse, but it would make life a lot better for immigrant communities and for the citizens of Minneapolis or we’re going to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. |
| And though they still have all this other money from the big beautiful bill, it will slow the pace of their operations. Now, some people will say, “Well, the Department of Homeland Security is more than ICE.” It is. For instance, TSA is in the Department of Homeland Security, but Democrats would vote to fund TSA. So, we would easily keep that agency open. I just hope that if we don’t get the reforms we’re asking for, we’ll at the very least vote to stop funding for ICE and for CBP. | |
| Al Letson: | So, not too long ago, it seems like years ago, but really it was last year. Trump came after Jimmy Kimmel. Do you remember when all of that happened? |
| Senator Chris M…: | Yup. |
| Al Letson: | And he got taken off and all of that. And a lot of the American people responded by quitting any products that were Disney and it made an impact. It really hurt them. And thus, Jimmy Kimmel came back. The average person who may not be all that connected with politics, but knows what’s going on, there was something clearly that they could do. It seems like the Democrats are leaving that groundswell there. It’s a tool that they refuse to pick up. And so, a lot of people around the country are wondering what they can do, but the Democrats seem to be uninterested in giving people tools to actually fight back. |
| Senator Chris M…: | Okay. Let me say a couple things about that because it’s a super important point. So, I have been arguing for basically the entire last year that if Democrats don’t act with urgency, if we aren’t willing to take risks, then how can we ask anybody else to do the same, to show up to a protest, to boycott a particular company? I know that for a lot of senators, the last thing they want to do is have a government shutdown because it feels like you failed at your job to not keep funding the government, but what’s the purpose of funding this version of the federal government? Don’t we look like suckers voting to fund, for instance, as we did just a few weeks ago, the Department of Justice, when the Department of Justice is operating to hunt us down and to put us in jail? I think it’s hard for people to get inspired to take chances in their own lives if they don’t see members of the Senate taking chances. And it is a chance to say, “I’m not funding the federal government unless the government starts acting legally.” |
| Second, we should support the groups out there that are mobilizing around boycotts and around protest. I’ve put about a million dollars of my own campaign money into mobilization groups all around the country. I’m about to make a grant to some of the people who are organizing in Minneapolis and more of us should be doing that. We have millions of dollars in our campaign accounts. There might not be an election in 2028. Spend your money now to help people stand up. And then lastly, to people out there, I know sometimes, it feels like ordinary public action doesn’t work. Standing on the overpass with my sign doesn’t make a difference. It just does. The reason right now that we are actually in a negotiation to try to restrain ICE is because Republicans looked at all those people coming out and peacefully protesting in Minneapolis, looked at the support they were getting from all over the country and said, “Ugh, man, if we just sit here and defend ICE for the next two weeks, I think we might lose our election this fall.” And so, they decided to come to the table. | |
| Now, the protest, listen, it doesn’t solve things overnight, but it does work in empowering people like me on the inside to try to press for change. | |
| Al Letson: | That was Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut. Before we close out today’s show, we want to return to Minneapolis. |
| Jessica Hauser: | I will try to keep this brief because I know in Minnesota fashion, nobody can feel their toes. |
| Al Letson: | It’s sunset on Monday, February 2nd, and dozens of people in puffy coats are circling together to remember and pay tribute to Alex Pretti, who was killed after being shot 10 times by federal agents. |
| Jessica Hauser: | I would love to stand here and tell everyone Alex and I had an immediate unique bond. Maybe we did, but my gut is just telling me he just had a way of making everyone feel lucky enough to make them feel special and be his friend. |
| Al Letson: | Jessica Hauser was a nursing student. Alex was her mentor at the VA hospital where he worked as an ICU nurse. Jessica says for the past four months, she spent many days next to him learning. |
| Jessica Hauser: | Alex always was cheering me on. He knew even before I did when I was ready to learn something new. He would smile, his head half cocked and say, “Jessica, you’re up.” Alex taught me that nursing is more than the skills and knowledge we carry into a room. It is the presence we bring with us once we enter it. He told me the ICU is in no panic zone. Panic is rarely helpful, especially in medicine. He said, “If something feels overwhelming, just pause, breathe, calm yourself. You will find that clarity waits just beyond that first rush of fear.” |
| Al Letson: | People like Jessica, Emily, and Emmett are past the shock. They’re past the fear. Minnesotans are standing up in a place of clarity, reflecting it back to all of us. This cannot be how we live. |
| This show was produced this week by Ashley Cleek, Artis Curiskis, Nadia Hamdan, Kara McGuirk-Allison, and Sam Van Pykeren. Cynthia Rodriguez, Jenny Casas, and Brett Myers edited the show. Thanks to Daniel Schulman for help with today’s episode. Artis Curiskis, Jeffrey Kelly, and Chasity Hale were our fact-checkers. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production manager is the great Zulema Cobb, score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando “My Man, Yo” Aruda. They had helped this week from Claire C-Note Mullen and Garrett Teterman. Taki Telonidis is our deputy executive producer. Our executive producer is Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado Lightning. | |
| Support for Reveals provided by The Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember, when things fall apart, it’s our job, all of us, to bring it back together. |