Alfonsina works quickly in the morning.
Hovering over an electric skillet, she prepares eight meals to go for her family. Everyone has different preferences. Some want rice and eggs, others quesadillas or sandwiches stuffed with fillings of their choosing.
Alfonsina puts the meals into to-go containers or wraps them in foil, and calls down the hall for the kids.
“Let’s go! It’s already 8 o’clock,” she calls out in Spanish. “Let’s go!”
Seven kids grab a meal and head off to the bus stop. Her husband, Carlos, takes his lunch to a job site.
Alfonsina, a mother of three, was used to busy mornings. But when her sister, Erika, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Jan. 10, her life became even busier and stressful. And sad.
Alfonsina, originally from Morelos, Mexico, who is being identified by her first name due to her immigration status, was terrified and heartbroken when her 16-year-old nephew called her five months ago to tell her Erika had been arrested But she had to be there for her four nieces and nephews who suddenly needed a mom.
For six weeks, they stayed with her, Carlos, and their three daughters in their south metro mobile home.
All nine stayed inside, fearful to even take out the trash as rumors and ICE sightings were shared in a neighborhood message thread. The seven kids went to school online and she and her husband stopped working.
At first, the kids kept asking Alfonsina when their mom would return. The youngest, a 7-old boy, slept with Alfonsina. Her nieces shared a room with her daughters, and the oldest nephew slept on a mattress in the living room covered with a Mickey Mouse blanket.
Today, her nieces and nephews are living with their father, who is divorced from Erika, but they still rely on Alfonsina for home cooked meals, support and comfort while they await the results of their mother’s immigration case. Erika remains in immigration detention in El Paso, Texas. The kids sleep at their dad’s home but get dropped off at Alfonsina’s three times a week before school and regularly spend time there.
As agents retreated from Minnesota in March, the family slowly began emerging. But the shadow of Operation Metro Surge looms over their daily lives.
“The truth is that I still feel afraid,” Alfonsina, 46, told Sahan Journal. “I feel afraid but I also have to be strong because my kids and my nieces and nephews need me.”
Under the table
Alfonsina and Erika were raised poor in Morelos, a small state in south central Mexico that has deep connections with Minnesota. A 2020 report by the Minneapolis Foundation and Fundacion Comunidad Morelos documents the history of migration between the states.
As they approached adulthood, the sisters had a choice: be poor in Mexico with virtually no possibility of advancement or take a risk and head to the United States to work and live under the table.
“We heard that yes, you’ll work a lot, but life will be a lot better,” Alfonsina said.
When the United States, Mexico and Canada entered the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, it drove many Mexican agricultural families into poverty and spurred a massive increase in migration north. The sisters, two of seven children, decided to try their luck in the United States. They wanted to be able to help send money home to support their parents and younger siblings.
Erika came to Minnesota, but Alfonsina first moved to New York in 2001, and was there when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Alfonsina moved to Minnesota to be near her sister in 2006. She met Carlos, also originally from Morelos, and got married. They built a life together and had three daughters, currently 18, 16 and 12. The sisters bought homes in the same mobile home park about 14 years ago and raised their children close together.
They always knew there were risks to being in the country illegally, and they accepted that while trying to live in a quiet and otherwise law-abiding way, Carlos said. They had no previous run-ins with immigration enforcement.
But the swarm of federal immigration agents that descended on the Twin Cities in early January caught Alfonsina and her family by surprise.
“This last year has been really hard, it’s hurt a lot of kids,” Carlos said.
Dramatic, drastic and sad
In December, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Operation Metro Surge, which deployed hundreds of additional ICE and Border Patrol officers to Minnesota, they were nervous and on guard. But when President Donald Trump’s administration doubled down in the effort and sent in 2,000 more agents after the new year, no one was prepared.
“It happened very fast,” Alfonsina said. “We didn’t know what to do. Truly, it was very dramatic, very drastic and very sad.”
ICE arrested 981 immigrants in Minnesota from Jan. 6 through Jan. 13, the heaviest week of the surge according to the Deportation Data Project. That week Alfonsina watched the news in horror after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Minneapolis mother Renee Good on Jan. 7.
“I said, ‘My God, how could this happen?” Alfonsina said. “This woman spoke out to defend us, those of us without a voice who can’t do anything. I said, ‘My God, they’ve left children without a mother.’”
After that, she stopped watching the news. She couldn’t take all the sad stories. Three days later, her nephew called her, and through tears told her ICE agents had arrested Erika during a traffic stop on County Road 42 in Burnsville.
ICE agents left her nephew, a US citizen, in the car. He drove home, and arrived shaking. They looked out the window to make sure there were no other agents looking, and Carlos brought him inside.
“He came crying and trembling, and he said, ‘Why my mom, Auntie? Why?’ And I told him, ‘I don’t know, my dear. These are things that happen. There’s no explanation,’” Alfonsina recalled.
Esperar: Waiting and hoping
Erika called her family from the Whipple federal building and told them she was being sent to Texas. On Jan. 22, they filed a habeas corpus petition seeking Erika’s release. But the case was filed in Texas, not Minnesota.
In February, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court, which includes Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, ruled in favor of the Trump Administration’s position that immigrants with pending cases can be held without bond. While hundreds of immigrants arrested during Operation Metro Surge won their release through habeas cases filed before federal judges in Minnesota, those whose cases were filed in the south have been far less successful.
On April 22, the court ruled against Erika, court records show. The ruling does not weigh Erika’s circumstances, but points to the Fifth Circuit ruling as the deciding factor.
Erika did not have an order of removal prior to her arrest, and only had misdemeanor traffic infractions in Minnesota, according to court records. She refused to sign a voluntary departure agreement and instead filed for a cancellation of removal, an immigration application that can grant green cards to people in active removal proceedings.
Immigration courts can grant cancellation of removal at their discretion for people who have been in the United States for more than 10 years and have citizen dependents, conditions that fit Erika. The process usually takes years, and asks for applicants to show their deportation would cause extraordinary hardship for their family. Erika had an appearance in immigration court in her case on May 5, and is awaiting a second hearing on June 10, but the family doesn’t know what to expect.
For now, they’re waiting and hoping. Alfonsina tries to be a source of love and support for her nieces and nephews. They like her cooking. They listen to her advice. She’s trying to keep their spirits up, but going more than five months without seeing their mother is taking a toll. Erika is able to call her kids roughly every four days.
The children are studying hard, Alfonsina said, and she wants Erika to be proud of them when she sees them again.
“We are trying to encourage them, because we don’t want them to sink into depression,” Alfonsina said.
‘It continues’
Slowly, Alfonsina and Carlos have resumed their lives. Carlos started working again in April. He hangs drywall and travels to job sites across the metro. At first driving was scary, and he got nervous every time he saw an SUV with tinted windows.
Alfonsina stopped driving after her sister’s arrest, but she also got back behind the wheel in April, when her 16-year-old daughter asked for a ride to a job interview at Valleyfair. Alfonsina was nervous, but she wanted to show her kids that it’s OK to resume their lives. Her daughter got the job.
Another tough decision looms this summer: soccer for their youngest daughter. Carlos played in Mexico and coached their 12-year-olds youth team. But they didn’t play this spring, fearful of being out in the community. Carlos hopes to be out on the field with her this summer.
As ICE agents swarmed the metro, Alfonsina and Carlos thought briefly about returning to Mexico but feel they owe it to their kids and their nieces and nephews, who are all U.S. citizens, to continue.
“We have to stay here because they are still in school,” Alfonsina said. “My daughters want to study, and I don’t want to rob them of their dreams.”
Last week, their oldest daughter graduated from high school. She’s enrolling in college this fall.
Life goes on, but the impact of Operation Metro Surge is felt daily.
“It still continues because my sister is still locked up and fighting to return to her kids,” Alfonsina said.
