The ICE surge is fueling fear and anxiety among Twin Cities children : NPR
A, the mother of two young daughters who are American citizens, has not left her Minneapolis apartment for more than a month, for fear of being arrested by ICE agents. She says her 2-year-old is crying more and throwing more tantrums because of all the time he’s spending indoors.
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In a frozen neighborhood in south Minneapolis, the street is relatively quiet except for nearby horns and whistles — protesters alerting that neighborhood to the presence of immigration agents.
In an apartment on this street, the blinds are drawn. Inside, a 2-year-old girl walks towards her mother, crying, to be picked up.
“We haven’t gone out for anything in almost a month,” the mother, A, says in Spanish. NPR is only using her first initial because she is an asylum seeker and fears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, will deport her.
A lives here with his wife and two daughters, both U.S. citizens. Her daughters are fighting confinement. The toddler cries more, throws tantrums. Her 10-year-old son doesn’t understand why they can’t leave the house.
“She keeps asking, ‘Why can’t we go outside, why can’t we play in the snow?’ And we tell him, ‘No, no, you can’t be out there alone,'” A said.
She tells her daughter it’s not safe – and it’s true. As the massive escalation of federal immigration enforcement continues in Minnesota, children have been physically harmed.
The same day, an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Macklin Goodimmigration officers used chemical irritants on a crowd including students during the layoff period at a Minneapolis high school. Last week, a family tried to get around an explosive protest was tear gassed in their car. Their 6-month-old baby was hospitalized. In previous statements on both incidents, Department of Homeland Security officials defended the actions immigration officers.
And on Wednesday, in north suburban Columbia Heights, federal agents arrested a 5-year-old boy who the family’s lawyers say was used as “bait” to lure family members out of their home. Officials with the Columbia Heights Public School District say federal agents have arrested three more students, all under the age of 18, in recent weeks.
According to MPR News, the boy’s whereabouts are still unknown. “Why detain a 5-year-old child? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Zena Stenvik, the district commissioner, told reporters on Wednesday.
Twin Cities parents, teachers, counselors and health care workers say many Minnesota children are living in fear or seeing those fears come true. They fear that their loved ones will be taken from them, that they will witness violence or that they themselves will be harmed.
“Every patient I saw yesterday, we had a discussion about the increased stress, trauma, worry, anxiety and depression that comes from the presence of ICE in our communities,” said Dr. Razaan Byrne, a Minneapolis-based pediatrician at Children’s Minnesota, a pediatric health system.
Byrne says fear shows up in children’s behavior. Some have emotional outbursts. Others gradually regress: children who have learned to be toilet trained, for example, wet the bed again. And many are asking troubling questions.
“I’ve had patients specifically ask me, ‘If my friend doesn’t come to school, is it because he’s sick or is it because he’s not safe?'” Byrne says. “‘What happens if I’m no longer with my family?’ I say it bluntly.”
A school bus pulls away from a bus stop in Minneapolis as Brooke Magid Hart and James Umbanhowar watch for ICE agents. Parents and community members patrol near schools throughout the Twin Cities area. “It seems like there’s no stopping what ICE is going to do, they just keep pushing and prodding us,” Umbanhowar said.
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Other adults NPR spoke with said they worried about long-term effects that cause stress could have on children and families. And the increase in immigration agents also affects children whose families are not directly at risk of deportation.
“We live in an immigrant part of town. That’s who’s at our bus stop. Those are our friends,” said Jennifer Arnold, mother of a 7-year-old in south Minneapolis. “He immediately became very upset, he cried on my lap, worried about what would happen if the parents of one of his classmates were picked up while they were at school.”
She says her son feels angry and has become quiet.
Kelly Fulton, a south Minneapolis mom, says her 9-year-old daughter was on a date last week across the block when the other mom texted her a video of immigration agents surrounding a car while protesters whistled and honked their horns.
“She said this is happening in front of our house right now,” Fulton said.
In the video, she said, ICE agents broke the car’s windows, opened the doors and forced one of the passengers out. Fulton rushed. Her daughter had seen at least part of the incident and couldn’t stop talking about it that night.
“She kept saying things like, ‘I think I hear whistling. I think I hear horns,'” Fulton said. “She wanted to stay downstairs in the basement, and she told me she felt safer in the basement, away from the windows. And what she said was, ‘I just don’t want to see ICE.'”
Many community members are taking steps to make children feel safer.
On a recent afternoon, parents stood guard as children left a Minneapolis elementary school building, just blocks from where Good was killed. But not all the kids who would normally be there were. In a neighboring building, another house had its blinds drawn.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, being stuck in my own house,” V says in Spanish. NPR is only using her first initial because she’s afraid ICE will deport her. V has a work permit and a current immigration case seeking longer-term legal status.
V and her 8-year-old daughter haven’t left their Minneapolis home in more than a month because they don’t feel safe going out amid the city’s heavy icy surge. V says she feels trapped in her own house.
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V lives with her 8-year-old daughter, an American citizen and third grader at school. In their apartment, a pastel-colored Christmas tree always sits in the corner, next to a pile of well-kept stuffed animals.
“My daughter has no way to go out and I feel very bad,” V says.
The two have been inside for over a month. The girl takes advantage of her school’s remote learning option during immigration enforcement, and neighbors bring them food.
Her daughter says that in the apartment she feels safe because ICE cannot enter. But his mother didn’t tell him: with a warrant, they could do it.
They are both sitting together in an armchair. Hanging on the wall above them is a wooden sculpture in the shape of Minnesota, carved in the middle: the word home.
NPR’s Alfredo Carbajal contributed to this report.
