Meg Anderson

Over the last five days, NPR reporters, myself included, we've seen ICE officers using tear gas, flashbangs, and pepper balls to disperse crowds.

But the community here, you know, it's responding in quieter ways, too.

Well, say more about that, if you would.

How so?

Yeah, so if you drive around the Twin Cities, you'll see parents and other community members standing guard outside of schools and daycares with whistles around their necks.

Residents are collecting food donations and giving rides to people who are afraid to leave the house.

And people are afraid to leave their homes.

I spoke to one woman, an asylum seeker with two young U.S.

citizen children.

She has to only be identified by her first initial A because she's afraid she'll be deported if she's identified.

She has not left her home in several weeks.

She said she feels like she can't see a future, a stable tomorrow for herself or her family.

And these fears, being afraid to leave the house, they're not unfounded.

NPR reporters have witnessed immigration officers stopping and even detaining people of color seemingly at random on the street.

I should note that just yesterday, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the administration, accusing it of racial profiling against Latino and Somali people here.

Yeah.

So first, the president has threatened to use that law many times before and hasn't.

Still, in a post on Truth Social, he said he would invoke the act if state officials don't, quote, stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE.

That law is more than 200 years old.

It's controversial.