When Operation Metro Surge began in Minneapolis, Ana’s wife stopped going to work. She stopped leaving the house altogether, and hasn’t left the house in three months.
Ana has work authorization in the United States, and works for a maintenance company, but worries that won’t protect her from being detained by ICE agents or deported. Now she’s stopped going to work regularly and hasn’t worked in weeks.
For a while, Ana sent her young daughter to the school bus stop with a walkie-talkie in hand so she would know when she was safely on board. The couple didn’t feel safe walking her to the stop a block away from their home. Now a trusted community member drives their daughter to and from school.
Her wife, who cleans homes, does not have work authorization. They have lived in Minneapolis for more than 20 years after immigrating to the United States from Mexico. Ana’s asylum case has been open for more than 10 years.
Three months on, they’re using their savings to pay the rent on their apartment. While they’ve received some cash donations and groceries from the community to get by, it hasn’t been enough.
“We don’t know how long we’ll have to survive like this,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.
They’re not alone. Many immigrant families like Ana’s are still hiding in their homes and as time goes on, struggling to pay for rent, groceries, and other necessities. Nonprofits that work in housing support say they are getting record numbers of pleas for help. Meanwhile, local and state leaders are calling for an eviction moratorium and other protections, saying renters are in crisis.
“Operation Metro Surge and its indiscriminate campaign of fear have pushed many in our community even closer to the edge of housing instability,” Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, said at a Senate committee hearing in February before introducing legislation to support renters.
While the federal government has said that the ICE operation in Minnesota is drawing down, Ana said she still worries about leaving her apartment.
“I really don’t trust or believe what they say,” she said of the federal government. “I think that they’re doing it just to wait and see if we start going out again.”
Tenant advocates say that the impact of Operation Metro Surge will be long-lasting, even if federal agents leave. Like the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, when residents sheltered in place at home and didn’t go to work, the fallout can last for months or years.
Once a person falls behind on one month of rent, it can turn into a vicious cycle.
“It feels like you lose control,” said Yusra Murad, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota and a tenant advocate. “As soon as you are behind a little bit more than a month, it’s very, very easy for people to slip into a debt that is impossible to pay.”
Measuring the impact
The aftermath of the federal operation is still being assessed, though city officials and researchers have released some preliminary findings.
A recent city of Minneapolis report found that $15 million in renters assistance is needed just for the month of January.
A report by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) stated that the statewide rent debt caused by the ICE operation reached between $27.4 million to $51.3 million by February. That’s in addition to the $44.6 million in rent debt typically expected during any two-month period, the report says.
Immigrant families are disproportionately impacted as they usually have lower incomes but face higher rent prices, the report said. Missed rent payments in January and February have heightened the risk of eviction. The city report says there will likely be an increase in eviction case filings due to nonpayment of rent in the next weeks and months. Because it can take a few weeks to file a case, it’s too soon to tell the full impact.
At HOMELine, a nonprofit that provides a tenant hotline, January was the busiest month for new contacts since the organization opened in 1992. More than 2,000 people reached out for help via phone or email.
Compared to the same time last year, HOMELine saw a 116% increase in people seeking financial assistance. The organization does not provide financial aid, and can only make referrals to organizations that can connect callers with aid, such as Greater Twin Cities United Way and crowdfunding resources like Stand With Minnesota.
“Those financial aid requests are higher than really any point that we saw during the pandemic,” said Eric Hauge, HOMELine’s co-executive director.
Hauge said he’s also seen an increase in people wanting to break their lease.
“There’s a lot of inquiries about … ‘I don’t feel safe. I need to get out of this apartment, out of this city, out of the state, out of this country,’” he said.
Greater Twin Cities United Way operates a 211 hotline which helps callers with human services needs, including housing support. The hotline has also seen a significant increase in callers with housing needs.
During the week of Feb. 16, the hotline received 2,666 requests for housing-related resources like emergency shelters and tenant legal aid, or 26% above last year’s quarterly average. There was a substantial increase in callers to the Spanish language line.
Jay Wagner, the associate director for holistic grantmaking at Greater Twin Cities United Way, said the need for housing resources will likely continue, even as some ICE agents leave the state.
“The compounding effects for these families I think will last for a really long time,” he said.
Isolated inside with no end in sight
Life inside the walls of their apartment has been hard for Ana, her partner and their two young daughters. The family didn’t celebrate this past Thanksgiving or Christmas with other family or friends.
“We don’t go out at all. We don’t do our regular things,” she said. “We don’t go out and socialize with people … We don’t go shopping, we don’t take our daughters outside to play in the snow. We can’t do any of those things.”
In December, Ana grew very ill with a virus, possibly the flu or COVID, but was scared to seek care. She took medicine a neighbor offered her, and her body reacted badly.
She eventually went to the emergency room after coordinating a ride with a U.S. citizen, and spent several hours there. She worried about her wife and children.
“I had to stay there all day by myself,” she said.
Ana has left the apartment a few times, and when she does she has to coordinate a plan to get where she needs to go, relying on rides from trusted neighbors to get her there.
She and her wife are still paying for car insurance on their two vehicles, even though they don’t feel comfortable driving anywhere.
At one point when immigration enforcement escalated, and federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Ana kept her daughter at home from school until a community member was able to take her.
Her daughter is also able to attend ballet classes again, also with the help of a community member to accompany her.
Ana said she worries about the impact on her young daughters.
“Financially, it’s been difficult, and that’s one thing, but what’s even more difficult is the emotional toll that it takes,” she said. “We’re trying to take care of these two girls, but sometimes we feel absolutely devastated and hopeless, and so we’re trying to stay strong, and we don’t want our daughters to see us like that, so that’s the hardest thing.”
