ICE Is All Around Us.

On January 7, I was getting my nearly-3-year old daughter ready for daycare. My wife was watching her on the kitchen counter eat her favorite breakfast, a big bowl of fruit, yogurt, and granola. I went into our living room to open up the blinds when I see a black SUV with no front license plate and blackout tinted windows reversing into the alleyway across the street. They park, blocking the alley. ICE had ramped up patrols in the city for the previous week, and we were all on high alert. Having gone through training with organizers based in Chicago, and recognizing signs that raised suspicions, I tell my wife, "Keep eyes on that SUV across the street."

I live on a block next to a school that has a large Hispanic and Latino population. The school safety guard walks from the corner, phone in hand, to film the vehicle blocking the alley across the street. My wife walks our daughter out to the car to go to daycare, and I get a text saying a second ICE vehicle, a red Dodge Durango with tinted windows and Illinois plates, is blocking the alley and that they cannot get out until the agents leave.

I take the dog for a walk as a pretext to introduce myself to the school security guard, who confirms to me that my wife and I saw two of three ICE vehicles that were circling the school that morning. I tell him I'll be back later to help monitor the pick-up period, then walk to the business on the corner to notify workers about the ICE presence. They tell me two white men who seemed out of place had just come in, used the bathroom, and left without buying anything. 

Later that morning, an ICE agent killed Renee Good.

That afternoon, I leave the house to walk the dog and patrol the school while kids get picked up, and I notice something small in the context of the overt, physical violence happening throughout the city: I start to tear up as I see an administrator walking children one by one from the school exit to an idling line cabs.

When I get home, I see the videos from Roosevelt High School, our neighborhood school, where two of our neighbors work and their daughter attends. ICE waits outside until the school day ends, then marches onto school grounds where they tear gas and pepper spray kids, teachers, and staff, and detain a special ed paraprofessional and US Citizen.

Minneapolis Public Schools announce closures for the rest of the week and ask parents and neighbors to patrol during drop-off and pick-up windows. 

The following day, January 8, I learn of the terror among staff at my daughter's daycare. Most are people of color. Many are Hispanic and Latino. Several are immigrants. One Hispanic/Latino staff member, a US Citizen, was stopped by ICE the weekend prior with her 10 year old sister in the car. Staff is afraid to leave the school building to get lunch. They're afraid to take transit, since ICE abducts people at bus stops. They're afraid to walk to their car at night. Parents have pitched in to buy the staff meals during the work day and pay for Ubers to get home. Administrators and parents are walking staff to their vehicles at night.

That same day, a 17-year old, US Citizen delivery driver was abducted at the nearby Target and dumped out of an ICE van at a Wal Mart two miles away, bleeding and shaken. An acquaintance in the music scene, a US Citizen, is thrown into the back of a Dodge Challenger on Central Avenue in Northeast.

Two years ago, a multigenerational Hispanic/Latino family moved into a house on my block. I can't remember the last time I saw them. There's no car on the street out front anymore. The lights are off.

I drive past the Whipple on my commute into work. Masked men in unmarked cars with tinted windows and out-of-state plates merge into traffic around me.

Over the weekend, we had to get out of the house. While we're on our way to a breakfast spot, we drive past a street where, minutes prior, ICE had broken down a family's front door. Two kids are inside. A woman in the house, livestreaming on Instagram, demands to see a warrant. ICE enters anyway, tazes two adults including the woman filming, and grabs a man. Across the river in St Paul, at a gas station near the college I attended and where I would buy cigarettes and snacks, Greg Bovino watches as his agents beat a man unconscious in his vehicle, slam his head into the pavement, and carry his motionless body into an unmarked SUV. 

I'm a white dude. I'm a US Citizen. I'm a dad. I can't afford to get arrested or detained and be separated from my family. Latent and overt violence permeates time and space around me, places I remember fondly, routes I regularly traverse, locations and institutions where I want my daughter to grow up. I'm suspicious of every vehicle that goes by. I think about the death of the 4th amendment amidst a campaign of state sponsored terrorism. 

At night, my daughter and I build houses and rocket ships out of Magna Tiles. She doesn't understand why I hold on to our hugs longer than I used to.