A local Latino advocacy group is organizing voters for this fall’s coming election using lessons learned from Operation Metro Surge.
For the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, Unidos MN trained around 50,000 observers on how to legally document and protest federal immigration raids throughout Minnesota through its constitutional-defense Monarca campaign.
Since the federal operation dwindled in the spring, Unidos has shifted these sessions to prepare for another thing which organizers implore is crucial for the community — voting in elections.
The crux of the strategy involves a block-by-block, congregation-by-congregation approach where one person will agree to spread information and awareness of the election to people living in their community or going to their church.
“We’re inviting everyone who cares about the election to go out and talk to their neighbors,” said Ulla Nilsen, a lead organizer at Unidos who holds training sessions. “Sharing voter information with them, supporting them to get registered if they’re not registered, and making a plan to vote.”
Unidos has done election outreach work for years, but this is the first time the Minneapolis-based nonprofit is encouraging people to create their own hyperlocal networks. The model is mirrored from how people joined small active groups on apps like Signal to monitor and share information about federal immigration raids during Operation Metro Surge, Nilsen said.
“People got connected on Signal groups and did stuff together: delivering food together, going out on patrol together,” Nilsen said. “And those groups that formed are kind of the seeds of this block-by-block approach.”
Among them is Francisco Escamilla, who before Operation Metro Surge had never been involved in organizing or politics. During the surge, Escamilla helped organize laypeople in his parish for rapid responses, which mainly included delivering groceries to people who were too scared to leave their homes.
Roughly 225 people at the time volunteered through the parish to pack food on Thursdays and Fridays and deliver it on Saturdays. At the peak, they were serving 360 families, Escamilla said.
Now, he’s encouraging get-out-the-vote efforts to parishioners at Ascension Catholic Church in north Minneapolis, where he serves as the director of faith formation. A majority of Ascension’s parishioners are Latino.
“At my church, and Latinos in general, we haven’t been the most present when it comes to voting,” Escamilla said. “So it’s pointing out to people that everything that’s happened in the surge could happen again, and by going out and voting, you have an impact, you have power.”
Escamilla said he’s encouraged so far, pointing to a record voter turnout for a primary in Minnesota earlier this month.
So far this year, Unidos has hosted around 40 of these Monarca Democracy Defense trainings since April in places like the Twin Cities metro and also St. Cloud, Rogers and western Wisconsin. They’ll host more on a community request basis leading up to the general election.
“The training takes people through actions,” said Unidos spokesperson Luis Argueta. “Like what do you need to know as you’re getting out to the polls? What are some plans you can make? How do you organize a community to make sure people are getting to the polls in safe, secure ways?”
That includes preparing for hypothetical scenarios of federal intervention into elections, such as immigration agents at or near the polls. The Trump administration has said it has no plans to place ICE agents at the polls this election. Yet top allies like Steve Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief White House strategist during the first year of Trump’s first administration, have called on Trump to do so.
Additionally, allies have implored Trump to use executive powers to declare a national security emergency to wield federal control over elections.
Unidos is preparing voters for possible interference by encouraging mail-in voting, early voting and accompanying voters to the polls if they request it. They are also training people on how to be an observer at the polls, but emphasizing tactics different from how observers monitored federal agents during Operation Metro Surge.
“If there’s a bunch of people in yellow vests with whistles at the ready standing outside the polls, that is going to signal to voters that ICE is there, and they will turn around and walk away,” Nilsen said. “So that is not what we want to do.”
Instead, people who want to observe the polls should “have a table outside where you’re giving out cider and voter information.”
“Have your camera at the ready, and if ICE shows up, then you’re ready to observe,” Nilsen said.
