“Grab your keys,” the masked federal agent told 19-year-old Diego as he sat in the passenger seat of his dad’s pickup truck, telling him to “take the vehicle.”
Diego, his older brother and his dad, Abel, had been delivering groceries to their neighbors in Burnsville on that cold January day when a black SUV began tailing them.
By the time the encounter ended, Abel had been detained by immigration agents, leaving his sons to make their way home and tell the family what had happened.
It wasn’t the first time immigration agents had targeted Abel, who asked to use a pseudonym for this story because of his immigration status. When he was a first-grader, Diego watched Abel tie his shoes as two strangers waited by their open apartment door. His mother said his dad would be gone for a bit.
That night, his dad was back home. His parents explained that Abel had been taken by immigration agents for questioning but had been released. Diego learned then that, because his dad was an undocumented immigrant, there was a risk that he could be taken from them and sent back to Mexico.
Twelve years later, with Operation Metro Surge in full swing in Minnesota, Diego saw it happen again — worse this time. Diego returned home to his 10-year-old brother whose face flashed with confusion when he didn’t see his dad. Diego had to deliver the news: “Dad isn’t coming home.”
For 29 years, Abel’s home has been in Minnesota, where his four children were born. For several years, he supported his family as a line cook at the Mall of America in Bloomington. Then he took a job with a company that sent him to corporate offices in downtown Minneapolis to clean bathrooms, wax floors and empty trash cans. As his kids got older, he worked at Burnsville’s Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet for about 13 years. In the last few years, he had returned to office settings, installing cubicles across the state.
During Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s large-scale deployment of federal agents in Minneapolis, Abel worried about the families in his community. In January, he saw a Facebook post from his church, La Viña, which was coordinating grocery deliveries for families hiding from immigration agents. He wanted to help. “People couldn’t come out for food,” he said.
On Jan. 13, Diego, his older brother and Abel loaded their Chevy pickup with groceries and set out to deliver them to families in Burnsville. At about 2 p.m., Abel noticed a black Ford Escape following them. He told his sons he probably should pull over. When he did, immigration agents stood on each side of the car and asked for Abel’s documents. As the agents blew into their cupped hands for warmth, their questions evolved into allegations that he had missed an immigration court hearing. Within seven minutes, another car swerved in front of Abel’s. Two more agents approached his door.
“If you don’t step out, we’re going to break the window,” a masked agent said.
When Abel left the driver’s seat, they arrested him.
After Abel’s arrest, Diego and his two older brothers began to worry that their mother would be next. They helped her go into hiding with family friends. Hours later, Diego received an update on his dad. Even though Abel had recently been approved for a green card, he remained in detention — in Texas.
During his weeks at a detention center in El Paso, Abel would ask the guards what was happening and why he had been detained.
“They give us little information,” the guards would respond. “What they tell us, we tell you all.”
Abel watched Univision and played Uno for hours with other detainees. Some were in similar positions, with pending green cards. Abel could call his family, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak to his 10-year-old son until he knew he would be released.
“I’ll be back home Thursday or Friday,” he finally told the boy on the phone.
On Jan. 29, after sunset, Diego and his oldest brother waited for their dad outside the Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul. At 9:42 p.m., they saw someone emerge wearing a red Chicago Bulls varsity jacket — the one their dad had been wearing when he was, as Diego says, “captured.” In Diego’s video from that night, after hugging his sons, Abel expresses disbelief that he spent two weeks in immigration detention.
“They didn’t tell me anything,” he kept saying.
Abel’s return home didn’t reunite the family. His wife remained in hiding. His sons coordinated groceries and other day-to-day needs, allowing Abel to lie low, and a neighbor walked the 10-year-old to his school bus each day.
Diego worried about his younger brother and tried to preserve a semblance of normalcy. He arranged playdates for the boy, and after he got home from his shifts at North Face, they would play Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch (during which the boy would insist that picking Shy Guy as his avatar did not mean he was a shy guy). The brothers followed the NBA season and debated odds for the June draft, rattling off AJ Dybantsa’s and Cooper Flagg’s points-per-game averages.
On Feb. 8, about a week after Abel returned home, the family finally sat down together in the living room again to watch the Super Bowl. Diego’s girlfriend came over. Coco, the family’s husky, ambled between the kitchen and the front door when he wasn’t eying the guacamole on the coffee table. On the sectional sofa, Abel’s wife sat wrapped in a blanket, resting her head on Abel’s shoulder.
The door was locked, and outside, the temperature lingered in the mid-20s. The house was warm, though. The boy wanted the Seahawks to win.
