Blog

Since December, Minnesota has been under occupation by ICE and federal forces. In that time, our communities have been subjected to extraordinary violence and fear.

Our immigrant family members, friends, loved ones, and neighbors are being kidnapped, disappeared, and forced into hiding. Victor Manuel Diaz, a father from Minnesota, died in ICE custody after being abducted in Coon Rapids. Others have been beaten, teargassed, pepper-sprayed, intimidated, detained, and – in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti – killed for daring to bear witness.  

Every day since early December, Minnesotans have been surveilled, harassed, and targeted by forces championed by the leaders of our country. Our vibrant community corridors built by the genius and generosity of our immigrant communities are being targeted and shuttered. Our streets – normally home to block parties and neighborhood gatherings – have become sites of grief and terror as families are ripped apart. While ICE has long been a force of displacement and abuse for Minnesota’s immigrant communities, the current escalation is creating unprecedented levels of chaos and fear throughout our state. 

But, as we face this onslaught of state-sanctioned repression and violence, thousands of everyday Minnesotans are rising up and refusing to abandon one another.  

In real time, we are seeing networks of solidarity grow, strengthen, adapt: people throughout Minnesota are out on corners and in front of places of worship, daycares, and schools in the bitter cold ensuring we can all live, pray, and learn in safety. Neighbors are driving each other to work, to school, and making sure we all have what they need to survive this occupation. Community members are keeping watch for ICE and flooding out of cars and houses and into the streets at the sounds of whistles and horns to bear witness when they target our loved ones, friends, and neighbors. New friends and acquaintances are gathering in living rooms to strategize, meet, and build durable networks of care to weather the violence designed to break our bonds.  

These acts of solidarity are taken in the face of real and present danger. Everyday Minnesotans have been brutalized, racially targeted, and detained by ICE in their own cities. People of color are being racially profiled and abducted with no regard for due process. Our Latine, Somali, Hmong, and Native community hubs, businesses, and schools are being flooded with violence and surveillance. Black people are facing heightened state violence. White people are not exempt from this violence, as we have seen in video after video of ICE retaliation for lawful observation of these attacks on our communities. 

And yet – we refuse to abandon one another.  

What we are seeing in the streets of Minneapolis and across Minnesota right now is a fight for collective liberation in real time.

We are seeing what it looks for thousands of us to act grounded in the knowledge that our freedoms and dignity are bound together. We are rising in this moment because we understand that we cannot abandon a neighbor without abandoning our own humanity, our own dignity, and our own self-determination.  

In response to the ongoing crisis in our community, Headwaters has granted $120,000 in emergency funding to organizations throughout Minnesota. 12 organizations resisting ICE terror and standing up for our rights and supporting immigrant communities received $10,000 general operating grants.  

The organizations below are receiving emergency funding: 

• Indigenous Protector Movement  
• Awood Center  
• Unidos MN 
• MN8 
• Restaurant Opportunity Center of Minnesota (ROC-MN) 
• West Side Community Organization (WSCO) 
• Eshara  
• CAIR-Minnesota 
• Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) 
• Greater Minnesota Worker Center 
• Comunidades Organizando El Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL) 
• Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota 

Through community coordination and care, ICE response, legal navigation, community defense, and more, each of these organizations is stepping up to meet this current escalation. These organizations – located in the Twin Cities metro and communities in St. Cloud and Moorhead – are hubs of community organizing building long-term power. 

In addition to this emergency grantmaking, Headwaters continues to provide urgently needed funds through our Rapid Response Fund. We have received a tremendous volume of requests for the most recent cycle which closes this Wednesday, January 28, 2026 at 5 p.m. For those interested, please see our webpage and information session recording. Our next cycle opens February 9 and closes for inquiries on February 25. 

For every organization named here, there are many others doing critical work in this moment. Your support of Headwaters will help us meet the ongoing need of funding work that defends, builds, and grows our immigrant communities’ power, dignity, and belonging throughout the state. Now is the time to step in and stand up. Please consider making a gift at headwatersfoundation.org/donate.