The proliferation of ICE raids in American cities is as polarizing as the administration behind it, hailed by one side as the necessary corrective to President Biden’s immigration policies and by the other as the beginnings of Gestapo-level fascism.

I lived in Minneapolis, where tensions are now highest, from 2002 to 2005 and was friends with many Somali immigrants. The news coming out of The Cities, both from journalists and friends, has been excruciating to follow. There is a helplessness many of us feel on the other side of our smartphones, distant from the crossroads of East 34th Street and Portland Avenue yet near to the bewilderment and grief that Renee Nicole Good was shot there by an ICE agent and immediately labeled a domestic terrorist by the Trump administration. [ . . . ]  [read more]