At 5 a.m. most mornings, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement watch group fires up its Signal chat for another day of tracking arrests and raids in south Minneapolis.
A homemade checkpoint made of blue recycling bins is already in place near Powderhorn Park. Residents check license plates and flag vehicles they don't recognize or think might carry ICE agents. Those vehicles are the ones that normally blow right past the volunteers waving at them to slow down, said Andrew Fahlstrom, 44, one of the organizers.
At school drop-off, parents and neighbors arm themselves with whistles, ready to blow if they see immigration officials. Later, they'll drop groceries off for neighbors afraid to leave their homes and take others to doctor's appointments.
This is the neighborhood where Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.
It's been the target of some of the heaviest immigration enforcement actions in the past six weeks and, like many of Minneapolis' communities, home to a coalition of residents who decided they needed to stand up for their neighbors when ICE arrived.
