Make breakfast. Check the news. Wake the kids. Check ICE activity website for updates along the drive to school. Pack lunches. Text friend to confirm I’ll bring home her kids today since she’s not leaving the house. Brush kids’ hair. Put Signal app notifications on silent since local mutual aid groups are already buzzing, but I can’t answer. Brush kids’ teeth. 

Scribble grocery list of items to buy for neighbors who have been at home for weeks. Run outside to warm up the car. Hear radio updates about local preschooler detained by ICE. Dash back inside, zip kids’ coats, pull on mittens, tug on hats. Head out into the frigid cold again.

I am a Catholic author, a mother of five, and a Minnesotan. In the past month, the last part of my identity has taken over my life and work. The dramatic and violent occupation of our cities by federal agents in Minneapolis and Saint Paul has become national headlines. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the detainments of children and elders, the countless friends who are U.S. citizens staying home out of fear that their brown or black skin will put them in danger all have moved me to join thousands of Minnesotans in rallying to care for our neighbors living under the threat of deportation.

We are buying groceries for families who have not left the house in over a month because they fear being targeted by ICE. We are driving children to school because their bus stops are no longer safe. We are organizing patrols to stand outside daycares and schools, to make sure children and parents can get in and out safely. We are fundraising rent money for neighbors who can’t go to work for fear of detainment or deportation. We are helping find midwives for pregnant women terrified to go to hospitals and finding nurses willing to check on elderly and disabled neighbors with serious conditions. 

We are calling our representatives and writing our bishops. We are asking our pastors to speak up for their suffering parishioners and thanking our liturgists for including the dead in the Prayers of the Faithful. We are mobilizing parish emergency funds, holding prayer services, buying diapers and formula, and bringing coats to the detention center where people are put out into the subzero cold after they are released, with no way to get home.

The best way to understand what life is like in Minnesota right now is to listen to stories from ordinary residents. The following stories were shared with me on social media and I share them here, anonymously and lightly edited, with their permission.

Neighbors are organizing to help protect neighbors from the federal government. ICE agents are everywhere. The aura of fear is palpable, but so is the care for each other.

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Pregnant mothers are not going to their prenatal appointments because they are scared to leave their homes. This week I helped a mother find home birth resources because she is due to deliver any day now.

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My 7-year-old and I watched a man being pulled from his car at a red light. My daughter works at a restaurant and it had to close, because the owner fears for the safety of his staff. My kids’ events are being cancelled left and right because schools are afraid—basketball games, mock trial competitions and even school fundraising events. The custodian at the Catholic Church attached to my children’s school was deported after living here for 25 years.

•••

I am a pediatric emergency medicine doctor. Our patients are terrified to seek medical care due to the risks of being detained by ICE. Children will come to the hospital much sicker, and my colleagues and I are afraid kids will die because families are too scared to come to the hospital. The women doctors I work with are constantly discussing how we fiercely protect the children and families who entrust their most precious thing to us.

•••

I am an American citizen, but BIPOC. I have started to carry my passport. I’ve avoided going on walks. It’s been incredibly stressful for my children as well, who worry they might be snatched off the street.

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Restaurants and shops that are minority-owned by U.S. citizens are now closed in our first-ring suburb because of the harassment they have been getting. Kids are not getting on school buses so they reduce the risk of running into an ICE agent. The complex at the end of my street is mostly minority residents and usually full of life. I haven’t seen a person on the street in almost a week.

•••

The physicians I know, many of whom are immigrants or people of color themselves, are fundraising, delivering groceries, coordinating protection at their kids’ schools and coordinating pro bono house visits/medical care on top of their exhausting jobs. I’m mentally bracing myself for cases of home births gone wrong (maybe no one there to help or a high-risk case to deliver at home), late stillbirths and other deadly/catastrophic complications. It’s going to happen.

•••

It is terrifying and horrifying. I say this as a white, middle-aged, married mom that isn’t the typical ICE target. It is worse than the national media is showing. Agents have been in my upper middle-class neighborhood. Children in our kids’ Catholic school have been targeted. It is not the America I love, and I’m terrified for our future as a country and terrified for all of our friends and neighbors and colleagues that aren’t white.

•••

I saw ICE abduct two people a block from my house in Minneapolis this afternoon, a fleet of SUVs blocking the road. Two people were taken from a car, and all we could do was get loud, blow whistles and film with our phones. When they left, I sobbed, and I hugged a neighbor I had just met. At one point, an ICE officer yelled at my husband: “Are you even a U.S. citizen?” Another observer yelled back: “It shouldn’t matter!” This is the United States, where all residents have the right of due process under the Constitution. Where were these people taken, and how are they being treated? Loved ones are disappearing and are nearly impossible to track.

•••

I am a resident of South Minneapolis with a school that has a large immigrant population. Our community is amazing and has stepped up to support families. What you read in The Diary of Anne Frank is happening here. Parents have been taken by ICE in front of their elementary-aged kids who were then left alone. ICE left the kids and didn’t help get them to another adult. Thank goodness for compassionate neighbors who took the kids in. Kids are hiding under beds and in closets when they hear the door knock. This is our government. As a community we are patrolling school grounds, walking kids home because their parents are scared to leave the house, organizing and finding rides and safe spaces for kids. I have never felt afraid to live in Minneapolis. Never afraid of violence. Now I am afraid. Afraid of the violence caused by ICE.

•••

What you see is only a fraction of what’s happening, and it is real, and it is awful. I wish people would recognize that this is not just as simple as “follow the laws and you’re all right.” People are following laws, and they’re still being hurt.

•••

So many people I know are scared to leave their homes, not going to work or church out of fear. My husband is from Mexico and has legal status, but is terrified going to work every day, as is his family. A lot of my white friends have no idea. We are getting my toddler a passport just in case. I feel the heaviness which is of course different for me as a white woman who is a citizen; I’ll never fully understand. But I see hope in the people in my community who are caring for each other, delivering food, giving rides, not giving up. I have to believe that we will get through this and see the other side.

•••

Every morning I wake up and check the news. Every day I hear from more and more Minnesotans on social media and from Catholics from around the world. They want to know why people don’t understand what’s happening here. They want to know what they can do to help. Every night I look at the disheveled house, the unfinished work, the boxes of groceries waiting to be delivered the next day. “How long, O Lord?” I ask again. Until justice rolls like a river: the only response.

Tuck the younger kids in bed. Try to answer hard questions in the dark: “Why is my friend scared? When will the men with guns leave? What can we do to help?” Go downstairs and talk to the teenagers about what to do if they get pulled over with friends in the car, how to check on classmates whose parents are staying home, whether school will be canceled for the strike and the march. Fold laundry. Wash dishes. 

Go to bed. Try to pray. Try to sleep. Wake up and repeat.

Laura Kelly Fanucci is a Catholic writer, speaker, and digital creator from Minnesota. She is the author of several books, including Living Easter: 50 Days to Practice Resurrection.