Letter to the Lilly (Saturday January 17, 2026)
Note: In accordance with norms typical of editorials in the United States, this letter is included its original format with some exceptions for minor grammatical and spelling corrections.
Good Saturday morning to you all, my family outside of Minnesota,
As I sit down to write to you, my dog runs out to greet the neighbor shoveling my other neighbors' walk. Snow has fallen last night, and I slept fairly well, and the coffee tastes good, and I have all of you, whom I am thinking about, and all the love you showered on us this last week.
Because this is also happening at this moment: masked and heavily armed men roaming our streets, gas stations, schools, smashing windows and pulling people out of cars whose only crime was crossing up to 7 countries on foot in search of work. Many of my neighbors, immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador have not left their homes in 5 weeks, since this campaign of terror began. Some of those homes are two-bedroom apartments, housing up to eight people. Some of those people are newborns, or school age kids who their parents are keeping home as our city has offered online learning to keep them safe.
Eight blocks from where I sit flowers and candles accumulate on the roadside for a neighbor very much like me who was murdered for trying to be a witness. Dozens of parents stand guard outside of our elementary, middle and high schools each school day to protect students, staff and parents. No Spanish speaking patients are coming to my clinic, where 60% of the patients are immigrant and Spanish speaking. My Somali coworker carries her passport to come to work each day.
The business district, only 5 blocks from me, is empty, the stores shuttered, everyone is afraid to go to work and to shop there. My neighbor of 20 years was taken off the street on his way to work 8 blocks from here at a tortilla factory 10 days ago, and his family and lawyer still cannot locate him. I am having increasing virtual visits with my patients who are having constant panic attacks while stuck at home. This is a fraction of what we are witnessing, but I wanted to share with you because very little will make its way into the news. And, so that you can prepare where you live, should this reality come to you next.
So now the beauty: there are dozens and dozens of neighborhood-based efforts to accompany and witness and help folks. We call it mutual aid, because in turn, our immigrant neighbors are offering us a way to preserve our humanity, show up, and meet each other, so that whenever this all ends, we are more connected, more compassionate, more awake to the realities of each other's lives. One family who came over here to do their laundry told me it was the first time in the three years they have lived here that they have ever been in the house of someone “from here.” That is changing, and that is good. Every day in every neighborhood, dozens of neighbors volunteer to drive our more vulnerable neighbors to work to decrease their risk of capture, or bring them food, or shuttle their kids to school, or visit them to look at a rash or examine their sick child... Or post bond for their loved one or neighbor who was abducted without cause.
Yesterday I went down to our federal building to do that. The hallway to the bond office was swarming with cocky flack jacketed and masked ICE agents, cavalierly joking about tear gas and their day. I met a man there, an immigrant from Liberia, who had driven 8 hours to try to pay the bond of his partner, herself a correctional officer for the state, who was taken on her way to work 6 weeks ago. We were both told that despite what the website said, bond could not be paid in person. We then spent the next 6 hours together at my house trying to figure out the online system and get the bond paid. It took us 8 hours to figure it out together. When we called the line for help, there was an option to press a button “if you want to report someone you think is here illegally.” We had his partner on the phone often with us during the day, checking in from her detention facility. (Most folks do not get to do this.) At the end of the day, we were both tired, but grateful for each other, and the solidarity to get through this really frustrating process to pay for the temporary freedom of folks we cared about.
Today there will be a group of roaming solidarity singers in the streets from 2-3, a silk-screening pop up to raise bond money for folks where you can silk screen shirts saying “migration makes MN Beautiful” and “ICE OUT” (the latter with a picture of a loon spreading its wings.) Rides to work, food delivered, and sidewalks shoveled. There will be gestures small and big of love and care and solidarity.
Thank you for yours: Your texts with heart emojis, your checking in, your rallying your friends to donate to our mutual aid projects, your own donations. Everyone here is pretty exhausted, me included, and so it is hard to respond with much more to each message than a true thanks, and that the situation is horrific here. I wanted to give you more of an idea of the day to day and send love.
If you know of anyone who still wants to help our neighborhood solidarity efforts, they can go to this website: https://www.standwithminnesota.com. The Bancroft school is the elementary school in my neighborhood, and the Calvary food shelf is the place I volunteer and deliver food from. But truly, donate to any of these causes (you will also see their individual petitions from families, and please consider those as well). Please continue to spread the word to your friends, your church, and your workmates. The needs are truly endless. I will try to write next Saturday. Know that your love means so much to us, gives us heart, buoys us when we wake up and can’t believe this is still going on. Thanks, Angels of the Get Through.
XO
