“This is a movement of women here in the Twin Cities,” says middle school teacher and content creator Mandi Jung. “That is why it can’t be put down, that is why we cannot be intimidated, that is why it cannot be stopped.”
Since Operation Metro Surge, the ongoing operation by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), began in Minnesota in December 2025, the headlines out of Minneapolis and St. Paul have been violent and disturbing. Photos that look as though they’re from a war zone: masked officers with guns drawn, smoke from tear gas and other irritants on the ground. Two citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, killed by federal agents on the city’s streets. A five-year-old boy detained in his Spider-Man backpack and a floppy-eared hat.
But amid the despair and brutality, there is another important narrative: on the front lines, a community coming together to push back against ICE and support their neighbors. And it should surprise no one that much of this work is being led by women. They come from all backgrounds and walks of life—immigrant women, mothers, teachers, healers, Black and Brown women, queer and trans women, grandmothers, young girls, women of faith, women who are simply fed up—to get involved, organize, support, nurture, fight, love, protect, and contribute in whatever ways they can.
“Women play an instrumental role in every movement,” says Christine Harb, DO, a physician who’s part of a network of health care providers meeting patient needs while they shelter in place. “The vast majority of the people I work with are women and queer people. Folks are raising rent-relief funds for families, delivering groceries, giving folks rides to their appointments, driving their neighbors and colleagues to work and back, protesting, patrolling, contacting state representatives in the hopes that they will listen—the list goes on and on.”
But some may ask, why would the US Department of Homeland Security launch the current campaign, which it referred to as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out by the agency, in a Midwestern state with a smaller immigrant population than places like California or New York? DHS claims it’s to arrest “fraudsters, murderers, rapists, and gang members,” but Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and others say this surge of federal agents is “retribution” for the state’s blue politics. (Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that the surge of federal agents in Minnesota was a legitimate exercise of law enforcement power and not an attempt to coerce policy changes.)
“The enforcement is abundant and aggressive, and it feels on the ground entirely political and repressive," says Emilia Gonzáles Avalos, executive director at grassroots organization Unidos MN. "Minnesota is a test-drive for the rest of the country.”
And, it seems, the federal government underestimated how much the women of the Twin Cities were ready to mobilize when they selected Minnesota. After all, the community has not forgotten the protests of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, which helped create a template now being used to push back against ICE’s presence. On Wednesday, February 4, the Trump administration announced it will be withdrawing 700 immigration enforcement agents from the state.
In our reporting for this story, Glamour heard many stories of kindness and community support, the kind of acts needed to sustain and offer hope amid a pervasive and looming threat. That looks like grandmothers delivering hot meals to those on the frontlines. Healers in every sense of the word—acupuncturists, therapists, doctors, yoga teachers, and other professionals—offering free services to vulnerable people and those working to protect them. It’s organizing haircuts and grocery deliveries to those sheltering in place, or bringing warm clothes to the people on the ground during subzero temperatures. As Dr. Harb said, the list goes on and on.
“I was at a training a few weeks ago with teachers and parents, preparing to basically patrol and defend schools from ICE agents entering schools, and I want to say the room was 80% or 90% women,” says Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. “I see a lot of moms and a lot of young women as well acting in ways that are based in kindness to each other, and it’s very powerful to me. It’s one of the reasons why Minnesota has been able to protest in a way that invites a lot of people in.”
In some cases, having women be the face of the movement is intentional. “We have been calling our little organization here matriarchal,” says Catherine Economopoulos, an organizer with Haven Watch, which provides emergency support to people released from ICE detention centers. “Most of our organizers are women. There’s been an awareness that some of these tasks might work best with women leading the charge. So, for example, a lot of releases are coming out of this traumatizing space where men are perpetrating violence. Men are often the ones in those ICE facilities who are shackling and chaining detainees. Coming out into a crowd of women who want to help can help facilitate trust in some of the former detainees. And it can feel welcoming in a way that—by no fault of their own—I don’t know that a crowd of men would have the same impact.”
Last week Glamour spent time in Minnesota and followed women on the front lines for a glimpse into all the work that is being done, in ways both big and small. The stories below are in no way meant to be representative. In fact, knowing that this is only a sample of how women are leading the efforts highlights just how immense and vast their contributions are.
Or as independent journalist Georgia Fort puts it, “The women in Minnesota are the backbone of this community. We’re the ones who make stuff happen.”
Printing driving directions to contacts’ homes on paper, prepared to eat them if intercepted. Going by aliases. Turning off location services and using encrypted messaging apps to communicate with their underground networks. This isn’t the work of secret agents—it’s Minnesotan moms trying to deliver groceries and other basic necessities to their vulnerable neighbors. “It’d be great to just watch some movies and eat some soup like we’d normally do in January,” quips one mom, who asked to be referred to as R.A..
R.A. isn’t part of any formal group or organization. She and her fellow neighborhood mothers have created something of an underground network of women helping vulnerable people in the Minneapolis community through word of mouth, dividing their time between two worlds. One moment R.A. says it feels like she’s “in the Upside Down.” The next she’s doing typical mom stuff—dropping a kid off at a friend’s house, handing another a La Croix. She tries to keep life as normal as possible for her children, but there’s no escaping the pervasive and omnipresent shadow of ICE. The same day Renee Good was killed, for example, federal agents were at her kid’s school. Her child’s classmates now discuss what to do if ICE knocks on their door.
“ICE is in every crack and crevice of life here,” she says. “You cannot protect your kids from what is going on. They have to know about it, and then you have to give them some kind of framework to keep moving and have a sense of safety, even if it’s a little false. It has felt pervasive.
“And then also, it has felt completely beautiful the way everybody has stepped up. These two things in equal amounts. No one’s telling anybody what to do. They’re just doing it and continuing to do it, and they’re doing it together and checking in on one another. It’s devastating and beautiful.”
On Friday, January 30, independent journalist Georgia Fort made headlines when she livestreamed her own arrest by federal agents. She’d been one of several journalists, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who covered a protest at a church in St. Paul where the pastor is also an ICE official. When Glamour spoke to her less than 48 hours after her release, she described the previous week in the Twin Cities as “a bad nightmare that got worse.”
“As a journalist, I was there to document,” she says. “The footage that I captured is public. It speaks for itself. I’m supposed to be covered under the First Amendment. To be arrested for doing my job, to have agents come to my home and terrify my three children, is something that’s going to take our family a long time to recover from.
“To see the continued attack on members of the press is unconscionable,” she continues. “The lack of accountability for the violation of our constitutional rights is something I think every American in this country should be concerned about.”
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Fort’s lawyer said in a statement that the journalist will be “vigorously defending herself against these charges.”
Because for Fort and other journalists on the ground in Minnesota, documenting the truth of what’s been happening is critical. They’ll continue tirelessly reporting on it all—from the tear gas making Minneapolis feel like a war zone to the immense outpouring of love and generosity among its residents.
“The community is showing up for each other,” Fort says. “There’s been a few protests that have escalated, but there have been dozens that have been peaceful. Twenty thousand people all the way up to 100,000 people have come out in below-zero weather. Minnesotans are tough, and we love our neighbors. That’s what I’m seeing when I’m coming out and talking to community members who are outside on the ground. They’re showing up because they love their neighbors. They don’t agree with what’s happening, and they want to see something done about it.”
“Since Operation Metro Surge has hit the Twin Cities, I see probably 50% of my students,” says Mandi Jung, a middle school science teacher for a Spanish immersion program in St. Paul. “There are kids who just have never come back after winter break. There are kids who you see one day, and then they’re gone. You hear through the grapevine that their parents were taken, or sister is missing, and we assume they’ve been scooped up by ICE.”
Now Jung and the team of women she works with spend their prep periods calling those families to check in. Sometimes she’s the first person outside their family they’ve talked to all week, she says. In between coaching Knowledge Bowl and making lesson plans, she delivers groceries to people sheltering in place and attends vigils. Last week she and her colleagues organized a rummage sale to help raise money for students’ rent. In red T-shirts that said, “Teach. Lead. Inspire. Hope. Advocate. Agitate. Organize,” they cheered as they hit $10,000. That’s enough to help five students.
The work of educators has always extended beyond the classroom, of course, but this has become the new normal for teachers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. “I always get told on the internet, ‘Just do your job,’” Jung says. “I’m trying to do my job. I’m trying to teach them human biology right now, and it’s all this other stuff that is impacting their education.
“My students are amazing,” she continues. “If you spent any time with any of them, you would be just as excited about the world as I am. I am so excited for the people who are going to take the reins. They’re compassionate, logical, amazing people, and it’s such a privilege to work with them every day.”
“When people are scared or uncertain, familiar places matter,” says Angie Lee, the owner of Moona Moono, a neighborhood café and shop in the Uptown neighborhood. In the past few weeks, as ICE’s presence looms over the city, she’s stayed focused on creating a community space where people can feel safe and connected. Things like craft nights and book clubs, as well as hosting a food drive with Moona Moono regular and organizer Kirstie Kimball. Their drive received over 30,000 pounds of food and hygiene products in just 72 hours.
“We didn’t set out to ‘get involved’ in a big way,” says Lee. “It came from paying attention to what our neighbors were experiencing and asking how we could help. What fuels me is seeing how small actions compound: one person dropping off diapers, another organizing a pickup, someone else staying late to sort donations. It’s a reminder that none of this is carried alone.”
Of course, Moona Moono isn’t the only local business getting involved: Across the Twin Cities, business are posting “ICE Out” signs on storefronts, closing out of solidarity during citywide protests, using their space as donation centers, or in some cases even literally chasing ICE agents out the door.
“A lot of leadership looks like logistics, hospitality, and emotional labor, and it’s been incredibly powerful to watch the entire community turn those skills into real, material support for the community,” says Lee. “I hope that folks recognize that bravery comes in many forms, and that caring deeply can be an act of protest. Communities that choose solidarity—not isolation—are stronger, especially in times of crisis.”
“Overwhelmed by the amount of listings here?” asks Stand With Minnesota, an online directory of organizations and groups providing mutual aid, emergency funding, legal support, and other actions on the ground fighting against the current ICE surge and offering care to those harmed by it. And indeed, it is overwhelming—but also encouraging. Because for every listing included, that means there are countless people giving time, energy, and their own personal safety to help others.
One of them is Carolina Ortiz, associate executive director of the nonprofit COPAL (Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina). Lately every day is different for Ortiz. It turns out that the resistance requires filling out paperwork, holding policy meetings, and leading constitutional observer trainings on top of protests and other actions. COPAL is part of the Immigrant Defense Network, a coalition of more than 100 groups and organizations that runs a hotline which sees roughly 400 to 500 calls a day, with everything from ICE sightings to emergency requests for food or other basic needs.
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For Ortiz and the majority of organizers, this work comes at a great risk. “We’re assuming the responsibility of what it means to lead in this moment and taking the risk, and we have the courage to do that because we know what’s at stake,” says Gonzáles Avalos. “Women will save democracy. I am absolutely 100% sure of that.”
Ortiz says she started organizing when she was nine after her brother was deported. “I’ve lived and been exposed and really doing the work since a very young age,” she says. Ortiz tells Glamour she received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 and has her green card, but she says she’s still had ICE agents show up to her home. She says she hasn’t been back home in over two weeks, and her team has a procedure in place in case she is detained. “It’s not like we’re breaking any sort of law. If anything, we’re following our Constitution when it comes to the trainings, when it comes to being prepared. But unfortunately that’s not how it’s being portrayed, and it’s putting us in danger.”
Still, these organizers, observers, and activists will continue their work. “I am afraid, I am scared, but at the same time I can’t let that fear overtake,” Ortiz says. “If something were to happen to me, I’d rather be responding with community. I’d rather be uplifting who I am and what I’m doing. I would probably be on the news as a terrorist, or a communist, or a radical person. I’m not. I’m just trying to be with community, to keep myself safe, to make sure we know our rights, and to make sure that we are able to get beyond the point of having thousands and thousands of families scared to leave their home. So we just have to push forward.”
“We are like this living, breathing notion of the Good Samaritan,” says JaNaé Bates Imari, a Methodist minister who serves as the co-executive director for faith-based organizations Isaiah and Faith in Minnesota. “We can’t be the ones that walk past. We can’t be the ones that turn an eye. We can’t be the ones that say, ‘Well, they’re not coming for me.’ Not just in the sense that they might eventually come for you, which is a real thing, but also, what does that do to the soul of the collective—the we—if we just allow this kind of horror to happen?”
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Living out the notion of “Practice what you preach” quite literally, clergy and other faith leaders in Minnesota have been working overtime to meet the needs of their congregants, the people of Minneapolis, and the world at large. Some days this work might involve traveling to Washington, DC to talk to senators or coordinating actions around the city like the Day of Truth and Freedom on January 23, which saw hundreds of businesses close, tens of thousands of people brave the subzero temperatures to protest, and around 100 clergy and faith leaders arrested for trespassing at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport and failure to comply with a peace officer. Other clergy arrange haircuts and grocery deliveries to help meet people’s basic needs. And whenever there’s a crisis in the community—such as the day Alex Pretti was killed—there’s always a group of faith leaders hitting the streets to offer a calming presence and care.
“Church on Sundays has been packed,” says Rev. Jen Crow, the senior minister at a Universalist church in Minneapolis. “People are really needing some sustenance to get through these times. Lots of singing has been helping us a lot to keep ourselves grounded. We’re singing more than ever.”
“As long as I got breath in my body, I'm going to keep doing this good work and hopefully helping others to see the way in which Minnesota has become a bit of a sermon for the country right now,” says Rev. Imari. “I don’t imagine this is going to just end. We’re going to have to fight it out in the most biblical and beautiful ways.”
Additional reporting by Erin Trieb.
