MINNEAPOLIS — Three months ago, masked ICE agents in unmarked vehicles descended on the Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration's largest and most aggressive crackdown yet of immigrants.
The agents arrested thousands of undocumented immigrants, in what the Border Patrol commander then in charge there, Gregory Bovino, called a "turn and burn" strategy. Agents also threatened journalists and activists documenting the arrests, and shot and killed two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Back then, community members, fed up with the presence of ICE agents in their city, took to street corners across the city with whistles around their necks, ready to alert their neighbors of the presence of federal immigration agents. Neighborhoods created a network of volunteers who drove migrants to work, doctors' appointments and brought people food who were too afraid to leave their homes.
Today Minneapolis looks different. The crackdown has receded, and arrests of immigrants have dropped 12%. Commander Bovino was forced to retire, and the neighborhood watches that tracked ICE SUVs are no longer as active. But the surge left a mark that enforcement statistics can't capture, including a hollowed-out local economy that immigrants and their neighbors say they are struggling to rebuild.
"We were left traumatized," said Y, a woman who asked NPR to identify her by her middle initial because she worries speaking out will affect her ongoing immigration case.
NPR talked to nine immigrants about how Operation Metro Surge upended their lives and how they're adapting today.
Together, their stories map what the crackdown left behind: shuttered restaurants, households rationing groceries, mounting debt, mental health woes, and and, for some, a serious reckoning with whether to leave the United States to return to their home countries.
The seamstress
On the evening of January 13th, Y was headed home from one of her two jobs as a seamstress.
Life was going well and the prospects were bright: she had recently bought a house, and talked to her daughter about the prospect of sending her to college.
In the blink of an eye everything changed. Y said she was surrounded by unmarked vehicles while driving home from work. This was in the height of Operation Metro Surge, when streets were empty and masked ICE agents would drive around the city in unmarked cars and make random stops in the streets.
The immigration officers, she said, arrested her despite her showing them her work permit and documentation showing she had applied for a U visa, one given to victims of specific crimes.
The Ecuadoran spent a month being shuffled around multiple detention centers in the U.S. She said before being detained, she barely had debt.
But after being released from detention with an ankle monitor while her immigration case plays out, Y said things got bad.
With no weekly paycheck, and with mounting legal fees, her debt skyrocketed.
"It was hard to come out of detention and find so much debt," Y said.
Y's 18-year-old daughter asked friends and family to borrow $7,500 to post bond for her mom. The daughter also asked for help to pay for the mortgage of the house, and to pay for utilities. Y now owes more than $13,000 to friends and family members who pooled their money.
Y recently started working again, and is looking for a second job, or even a third one.
Before detention, Y was hoping to save enough money to help send her 18-year-old daughter to college. The daughter wants to be a veterinarian.
But now she worries college may be out of reach.
"My dream was to see my daughter in college — I used to tell her, 'don't worry, I have two jobs and I will figure a way for you to graduate from the university,'" Y said. "Now we have to find scholarships. It's been hard."
The day laborers
During Operation Metro Surge, the areas where day laborers used to gather to get jobs — including the Home Depot or the empty lot on Lake Street — were completely emptied.
But months after the operation ended, migrant workers have started to return for work.
V, an Ecuadorian man who asked NPR to identify him by the initial of his first name because he's undocumented, said "everything changed" for day laborers.
He's now behind on his rent, he said. Work has been slow and his hourly wage is down.
49-year-old R, another worker, used to get hired every day for work by camping out at the Home Depot lot. She told NPR she'd get paid anywhere from $20 to $25 per hour for cleaning offices and homes.
A week ago she went back to work. These days when she gets hired, she's getting offered $15 to $17 per hour.
"It's like starting again from zero," R said. She asked NPR to use her first initial because she's undocumented.
"ICE destroyed our lives psychologically and physically," she said.
The restaurant owners in the brink of closing
The Hernandez family have owned the Mexican restaurant El Tejabal in Richfield, Minn., for nearly two decades. It is a staple in the community.
Owners Miguel Hernandez, Sr., and Rosa Zambrano said the surge in immigration agents created chaos in their restaurant: employees stopped coming, customers stopped eating in. They lost about 60% in sales.
"We won't recover because those sales are not going to come back, and we still have to pay rent, and the cost of food has increased," Zambrano said in Spanish.
The couple said they've decided to close in about two years, when their lease is up. They said they've crunched the numbers and realized there's no chance for them to fully recover.
Both Zambrano and Hernandez Sr. are 60 years old and they were hoping to save some money for their retirement. That's not possible anymore.
"We are not saving money to continue the business," Zambrano said. "We are saving to pay rent."
Daughter Dianna Hernandez, 27, works at the restaurant and during the surge she said she had to lock its doors because of the presence of ICE agents in the parking lot.
She doesn't want to see the restaurant close — but she acknowledges Operation Metro Surge changed their lives, even though she and the rest of the family are U.S. citizens.
"This is where I grew up, this is all I know and to just think and hear them say we are going to close in two to three years, and the way it's ending, I hate it for them," she said.
The family who lost it all
Many people who talked to NPR have relied on their children, their community and their savings to continue to live. But others are facing economic ruin.
"The economic, emotional, traumatic impact of everything that we went through here in Minneapolis is going to be felt for years," Myrka Zambrano, with the advocacy group Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, said.
A bill making its way through the Minnesota Legislature would create a $100 million relief program for small businesses impacted by the crackdown. But Zambrano said that's not enough, especially when so many immigrants are struggling with other issues like food security and housing.
Pablo Alcaraz and María Peñalosa, a couple that has been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, are struggling, too.
The couple have work permits and a U visa — a type of visa given to victims of specific crimes.
Their whole life they had worked towards one dream — to open a restaurant.
But now the nonstop hum of the industrial fridge inside their cluttered trailer is a reminder of what could have been.
"It's so unfair that in a few months the government has ended the work of 20 years," Peñalosa said. "They ended our dreams."
Their restaurant, Garibaldi Mexican Restaurant, went out of business as a direct result of Operation Metro Surge.
Before Operation Metro Surge, the couple said they would make about $15,000 in monthly profit, on average.
During Operation Metro Surge, sales evaporated. There were many days, he says, when they made almost nothing in profit.
Now they are living on the frozen meat and other food from the restaurant, but Alcaraz said they are likely to run out in a month.
"Once we run out of it, that's when the problems will start," he said.
Peñalosa, the wife, said she worries about her husband's mental health. He doesn't want to leave his bed, and is depressed, she said.
Alcaraz recognizes he's desperate. He said that because he had to close the restaurant and has some debt, he doesn't know whether he'll be able to open a new restaurant or another business.
"How am I going to move forward? I'm practically dead," he said, with tears in his eyes. "I need a credit line to open a restaurant, to pay rent, to reopen. I don't have it. They killed me."
This story was supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
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