When Fear Keeps Families Home: A Youth Perspective from Minnesota

In December 2025, federal immigration authorities began Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. The operation later expanded significantly, with the United States Department of Homeland Security announcing plans to deploy roughly 2,000 federal agents and officers across the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area (AP News, 2026). Federal officials presented the operation as an effort to enforce immigration law and investigate allegations of fraud. As enforcement intensified across the Twin Cities, however, its effects extended far beyond the people directly arrested.

Workers stayed home. Students missed school. Families postponed medical appointments, and immigrant-owned businesses experienced sharp declines in customers and revenue. Even as the federal presence began to decline, many families continued to face lost wages, food insecurity, and uncertainty.

In June 2026, the City of Minneapolis estimated that Operation Metro Surge caused nearly $700 million in economic and community impacts (Minneapolis City of Lakes, 2026). According to the assessment, businesses lost approximately $445 million in revenue, while workers lost an estimated $152 million in wages. These figures reveal the scale of the disruption. Yet they cannot fully explain what it feels like when going to work, attending school, or purchasing groceries becomes a source of fear.

To better understand how immigration enforcement has affected daily life in Minnesota, I reached out to Tallulah, a student from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. Tallulah does not claim to speak for every immigrant family. Instead, she offers the perspective of a young person watching fear reshape the community around her.

Tallulah, 17, a student from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.

Tallulah explained that people outside Minnesota often understand the effects of immigration enforcement primarily through the word fear. What they may not recognise, she said, is how deeply that fear can alter ordinary routines.

Some people are now afraid to leave their homes to purchase groceries, attend appointments, take their children to school, or go to work. For these families, remaining home means more than postponing a single errand. It can threaten their access to food, income, education, and other basic necessities.

Tallulah is particularly concerned about immigrant households supported by a single parent. When one parent provides the family’s only income, missing work can immediately threaten the household’s ability to afford groceries, rent, and other necessities. Yet that same parent may fear being stopped whilst travelling to work or worry about what could happen to their children if they are detained.

“It’s not just the fear factor. People are struggling to do anything.”

— Tallulah, Student, Minnesota

Reports from Minnesota food organisations reflect what Tallulah has witnessed. During the operation, many immigrant families stopped leaving their homes and going to work, leaving some unable to afford basic necessities. Food shelves, schools, and volunteers developed delivery systems to reach families who were afraid to collect groceries themselves. The effects have also reached beyond individual households.

For Tallulah, immigrant communities are inseparable from the identity of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Restaurants, local businesses, food, and art throughout the Twin Cities have been created and sustained by immigrants and their families. Some businesses are immigrant-owned, while others depend upon immigrant workers and customers.

When employees are afraid to attend work, customers remain home, and family-run businesses lose revenue, the culture and economy of the entire community are affected. As Tallulah explained, it is not only immigrants themselves who are affected—it is the whole community of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. One experience made that reality especially personal for her.

One of Tallulah’s closest friends was adopted from South America and is a United States citizen. According to Tallulah, because he has darker skin, he became concerned that immigration officers might stop and question him. He began carrying identification and documents connected to his adoption because he feared being unable to immediately prove his citizenship.

Whether or not he would have been detained, the fact that he felt compelled to carry those documents changed how Tallulah understood the situation.

His papers were no longer simply identification. They represented the fear that his appearance could cause someone to question whether he belonged in the country where he had grown up.

For Tallulah, watching a close friend experience that anxiety demonstrated that the effects of immigration enforcement can extend beyond a person’s legal status. Fear can also reach citizens who worry that their skin colour, name, language, or appearance may cause them to be viewed with suspicion. Nevertheless, fear has not been the only force shaping Minnesota.

Across the Twin Cities, Tallulah has witnessed churches collecting food for families who are afraid to shop, neighbours delivering groceries, residents displaying signs of solidarity, and communities organising demonstrations. Local reporting has documented similar efforts, with faith congregations, teachers, families, and volunteers distributing food and essential supplies throughout the region. Tallulah described seeing examples of “resilience and kindness everywhere”. These acts cannot replace lost income or erase the fear of detention. They can, however, remind affected families that they are not facing those experiences alone.

Tallulah’s account is only one perspective from Minnesota, but it reveals what political arguments and breaking-news coverage often overlook. Immigration enforcement is not experienced only through arrests, government announcements, or courtroom decisions. It is experienced through a missed shift, an empty restaurant, a child staying home from school, or a parent wondering whether purchasing groceries is worth the risk. It is also experienced through the neighbour who delivers food, the church that organises donations, and the young person who chooses not to look away.

Behind every statistic is a family, a friendship, a business, and a community. Tallulah’s story reminds us that when fear keeps one group of people home, its consequences do not remain behind closed doors. They spread across an entire city. So, too, can resilience, kindness, and solidarity.

To learn more or support immigrants and refugees affected by immigration enforcement in Minnesota, visit the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a non-profit providing free immigration legal representation to eligible low-income immigrants and refugees, educating communities about immigration matters, and advocating for policies that protect immigrants’ rights — or explore the Resource Hub under One of Many's Take Action tab for more ways to get involved.