On a sub-zero day in Willmar, Minnesota, fifteen residents gathered around a table at a restaurant in town. It was the middle of the usual lunch rush on a Saturday, but the group sat alone. The restaurant was closed because ICE was in town.
Invited by the restaurant’s owner Willie Gonzalez, the residents pushed tables together and sat in a large circle.
They were there to talk about what was happening in their town. Thousands of ICE agents had descended upon Minnesota in recent weeks at the orders of the Trump administration – largely in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but also in places like Willmar, a small town enriched by its residents of Somali and Latino descent.
That morning, ICE agents had shot and killed U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. As in urban hotspots, ICE presence was escalating in Willmar.
For his part, Gonzalez, a Mexican-American citizen, made sure to sit on the side of the table facing the window so he could watch the street for ICE.
The residents around the table were high school students and business owners, children and parents, white neighbors witnessing the terror in their community and neighbors of color living it. Some preferred not to share their full names in this article.
Shedding many tears, passing many tissues, but still managing to find moments to smile and laugh, the residents told their stories.
Christina Vander Pol speaks to a group of residents in Gonzalez’s restaurant. (Photo by Betsy Froiland)
“It’s the faces”
Christina Vander Pol spoke first. “Willmar is a very diverse community,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I want to live in Willmar, because it makes my life rich.”
“You can see how much Willmar supports immigrants,” a young woman at the table said. The year prior, she had spoken at her high school graduation about how proud she was to be the daughter of immigrants, and how almost everyone in Willmar comes from an immigrant family in some way. After the speech, she said, she had feared the audience would be quiet. But the room erupted into boisterous clapping and yelling.
Home to people with roots all over the world, Willmar is a celebration of different foods and cultures. According to residents, there are nearly 20 ethnic-specific grocery stores in the town of just 21,000.
A mural by artist Lili Lennox hangs on the side of Midtown Plaza in downtown Willmar. Inspired by a classic Midwestern potluck, the mural depicts eight Crock-Pots painted with flags representing the people who have immigrated to Willmar and made it home: Somalia, Mexico, Honduras, India, and the flag representing the Karen people. (Photo by Betsy Froiland)
Vander Pol turned to the people sitting next to her – Juan, who owns a Mexican grocery store in town, and Lizbeth, his daughter who works at the store – and recounted what happened when she picked up a cactus fruit in their grocery many years ago. Juan noticed Vander Pol looking at the fruit like she had never seen it before. He then walked over to her, sliced the fruit in half, and handed it to her to try. “That’s not something that happens at a Walmart,” Vander Pol said.
These days, Juan said, his store is much emptier than usual. Many regular patrons are afraid to leave their homes to buy groceries. “They’re just grabbing people now,” Juan said, his daughter translating from Spanish.
Many people around the table had witnessed ICE agents arrest their neighbors in recent weeks.
Vander Pol was downtown when ICE agents violently arrested a 19-year-old Somali high schooler, in the country legally, dragging her out of her car, detaining her at the Whipple federal building in Minneapolis, and later releasing her in the freezing cold two hours from home.
“You see things in the news and you think, ‘that’s never going to happen here,’” said Myra, another resident who was at the scene. “And then you’re witnessing it firsthand.”
Gonzalez was eating lunch at El Tapatio, a Mexican restaurant in town, when he saw four ICE agents eating a couple tables away. He even talked to them, telling them plainly to “treat people with respect.” After they had finished dining, the agents returned to arrest the restaurant’s owners and dishwasher. “For [ICE] to do that, after they got fed and everything,” Gonzalez said.
A man at the table who knew the restaurant staff personally said, “these are people who have been here in the community for years, in the process of getting their citizenship.” It was horrible to see, he said, “especially [to do this to] a working person that’s feeding the people here in town.”
Another incident that looked to be more abduction than arrest took place outside the local Goodwill. Residents Allen Clark, Brielle Barrett and her 15-year-old daughter Adyssey Barrett were there when they noticed six ICE vehicles outside, with two agents in each.
“It looked like it was an FBI raid,” said Gonzalez, who came to the scene later.
While Clark and Brielle ran inside the store to alert everyone that ICE was there, Adyssey remained outside, under her mom’s instructions to stay in the car. “I didn’t,” she said, laughing through tears. When Adyssey saw ICE agents violently arresting a man, she approached them, recording on her phone, and asked to see a judicial warrant, at which point agents threatened to arrest her.
Clark, also watching and recording, said that ICE agents did not confirm the man’s identity, did not give him any time to show documentation, and did not even allow him to speak with the Spanish-speaking ICE agent on the scene.
ICE also arrested the man’s wife, all while yelling out confused questions about who she was. “If you don’t know their name,” resident Steve Vossen added, “what makes you think they’re the ‘worst of the worst?,’” citing the catchphrase the Trump administration has employed to justify their operations.
“But they still cuffed her, and in the van she went,” Clark said.
“It’s the faces,” Clark, Brielle, and Adyssey said, that stick with them the most. The faces of a father and his children inside the store when they were told ICE was outside. The faces of the people who were taken.
“And now they’re gone, and we don’t know where they are,” said Jennifer Lindquist, another resident at the table. “We have [so many] people being taken from this country, and how are we supposed to find them?”
“That doesn’t feel like an American story to me”
Perla Ocampo, an 18-year-old college student, spoke up next. It wasn’t Ocampo’s first time speaking up that week. A few days prior, she took to the podium at the city council meeting, telling the room how ICE agents had followed her home from work on several occasions, even violently dragging her out of her car once.
“I was born here in Willmar,” Ocampo said. “But my color’s brown, so they think, ‘oh, she’s illegal.’”
“We can’t even be out in our own community without thinking we’re going to get brutalized,” said an employee of Gonzalez’s restaurant.
Gonzalez said he too had been personally terrorized by ICE: agents following his car, circling his restaurant, trying to record video of him, and even knocking on his mother’s apartment door.
“It’s like a cat and mouse now,” Gonzalez said. “It’s one of those strategic things to do for them to put fear in people.”
The feeling is familiar to Gonzalez, who was born and raised in a border town in Texas. Under perpetual surveillance by federal immigration officials, he said he grew up in a state of hypervigilance. He moved to Minnesota 20 years ago in part to get away from that. And now, he said, “to see it up north, it’s absurd.”
An intersection in downtown Willmar. (Photo by Betsy Froiland)
As a car rolled by outside, Gonzalez looked up out the window to see who was behind the wheel. Others did the same.
“Out of the 35 years that I’ve been alive, I’ve never felt any sort of heat like this until right now,” a man at the table said.
Residents feared for the community’s children. Ocampo said her six-year-old niece is scared to go to school because her friends are missing. As a volunteer “lunch buddy” at the local elementary school, Ocampo has heard kids say they’re afraid they won’t see their parents again. She once walked home with a kid who was afraid of being taken by ICE.
“Kids are going to be living with that for the rest of their lives,” said a man at the table. “Like, ‘remember, mom, when we were younger and we were tucked away for months and months on end?’ That doesn’t feel like an American story to me.”
A mental health professional, Vander Pol talked about the cost of this psychological trauma, the cost of kids missing schoolwork, the cost of picking up the pieces after someone is taken. “We as community members are having to pick up that cost.”
Not just a psychological cost, the economic toll is also mounting. With people too afraid to leave their homes to work or shop, many local businesses – including Gonzalez’s and Juan’s – are taking a financial hit. A young woman who works at her parents’ restaurant said they had to close for two weeks because her parents are immigrants, and when they re-opened, they put cameras around the building, reduced their business to just pickups and deliveries, and lowered prices – both to incentivize business and make food more affordable for community members who may be struggling financially.
Storefronts in downtown Willmar, where many businesses have closed doors or remained open at reduced capacity. (Photo by Betsy Froiland)
“This is not bringing wealth or security or a greater America to this town,” Vander Pol said. “It’s bringing devastation.”
Lindquist also thinks about the cultural cost. Many of the town’s ethnic-specific grocery stores and restaurants have been forced to close their doors, while big-box corporations stay open. By default, the foods and cultures that remain are those that are protected by some level of privilege.
“Apparently we’re trying to make America greater, bigger, better,” Vander Pol said of the Trump administration’s purported goal. In reality, the ICE siege on Willmar is only making the town poorer, smaller, more afraid.
“It starts like this”
Residents are doing everything they can to minimize the damage to their community.
They are keeping watch around Willmar for ICE agents, whistles around their necks at the ready to alert neighbors to ICE activity.
They are picking up the pieces after ICE arrests a neighbor, contacting their family, returning their belongings, and arranging care for children and pets left behind.
And they are caring for their neighbors who are too afraid to leave their homes. Lindquist, a veteran community organizer, said that the community had mobilized in a big way, donating to food and hygiene product drives, helping deliver resources, and giving rides.
“When I look around at the people that I’m sharing space with and they’re out there bringing food, giving rides, I know I’m on the right side of this,” said Lindquist.
Juan and Lizbeth have started donating perishable foods from their grocery store, even driving to people’s houses to drop off food when they are too afraid to leave. Another resident started organizing raffles to donate raised funds to impacted families.
Residents are also showing their solidarity with neighbors in everyday interactions.“I find myself making eye contact more often than I used to,” said Vander Pol. She does it in the grocery store now, trying to signal to people that she is a safe person. “We need to be really intentional that we are standing alongside each other, and that we’re letting it be known through micro actions.”
“We’re finding out who we really are as neighbors,” Vander Pol said. “We’re not just businesspeople, partners, people driving past each other on the street. There is community inside this community that’s taking care of each other.”
Though the community has come together in many ways, the presence of ICE has also fractured the politically diverse town. Many residents had managed positive relationships with neighbors across party lines before the siege began. One man at the table talked about his good friend who is a Trump supporter: “I love the guy,” the man said. But when it comes to what ICE is doing in his community, the man said, “I’m not going to stay quiet. I love you enough to tell you that.”
While some cross-party relationships remain intact, others have devolved, particularly online, into political sparring about ICE.
The pro-ICE rhetoric that frustrates residents the most is the narrative that ICE is after “illegals” and “criminals.” Residents talked about the immigrants they know, people who had poured decades and thousands of dollars into obtaining citizenship under constantly changing rules, people who had no criminal record or nothing more than a couple traffic tickets, people who had come to this country to work hard for a better life.
“It’s not about illegal or legal anymore,” Lindquist said.
The sun sets in downtown Willmar on Saturday, January 24. (Photo by Betsy Froiland)
Many residents looked ahead to the future, thinking of ways to rebuild their community if and when ICE ended its targeted operation there.
Looking around the restaurant, a man at the table said, “they’ve been feeding people here for years.” Pointing to Gonzalez, he said, “to go to date night with my woman, I come here.” Pointing to Juan, the grocery store owner, he said “when I’m trying to grill out, that’s my people.”
When businesses open their doors again, the man said he hopes people flood back in. For now, the people around the table remain laser-focused on supporting their community and – especially for those unlikely to be targeted themselves – standing up against ICE and the government that sanctions it.
“I think about my childhood as a privileged white person from Willmar,” said Steve Vossen. “Being silent’s not an option anymore,” he said. “This is not the America or the humans we want to be.”
Looking at her daughter Adyssey, Brielle said, “When she has her own kids and they’re like, ‘what in the world happened?’ She can say, we were on the right side. We stood up.”
Julie Vossen-Henslin, another resident in the room, wondered aloud about how the community might recover from an experience like this.
Then, looking at her neighbors sitting around their big, makeshift table, she answered her own question, “it starts like this.”
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