From Prince to The Replacements, Minneapolis music has always reflected the moment. The moment now is urgent, as immigrant communities live in fear amid a sweeping federal crackdown that has led to massive deportations and the killings of two innocent people. One musician stepping into the moment is Tony Ortiz, best known for a one-hit wonder in the 80’s. His new song, “Americans,” calls for unity and acceptance of diversity. Yet despite being a U.S. citizen, Ortiz now carries his passport, just in case he’s stopped by immigration agents.

What kind of person steps forward when everyone else is afraid to be seen? In Minneapolis, Jason Arce has turned his family’s towing company into a quiet lifeline for immigrant families, offering free tows for cars left abandoned after ICE agents pull drivers from their vehicles on snowy Minnesota roads. At a time when immigration crackdowns have shaken the city and sparked investigations and protests, Arce has publicly put his business, and his name, behind helping neighbors who suddenly lose everything in a moment.

Kids in Minnesota are disappearing from the places they once showed up every day: first school, and now youth sports. Teams are feeling the impact of the immigration crackdown as some families keep their children home, worried about the risk of detention. Bob Cruz, who leads the West Side Boosters, has taken on new responsibilities to help keep his community safe. Determined to keep youth sports running, he’s also grappling with the frustration of seeing how the crackdown is affecting children and families across his tight-knit neighborhood of St. Paul. To learn more about the West Side Boosters and to donate, visit https://www.westsideboosters.com/

For every peaceful protest and silent vigil in Minnesota, I uncovered a quieter, tactical operation helping immigrants too afraid to leave their homes. I walk through rooms once filled with youth programs, now transformed into a discreet logistics hub stacked with diapers, formula, food, and essentials — while volunteers coordinate coded deliveries, laundry pick-ups, and even a network of doulas and midwives for women too fearful to seek hospital care. In this episode, Janet Gracia, President and CEO of Neighborhood House, pulls back the curtain on this expanding underground effort and shares the heartbreaking story of a nursing mother detained and sent to Texas, leaving her husband to care for four young children alone. To learn more about Neighborhood House and to find ways to donate, visit https://neighborhoodhousemn.org/

Where was God on the day two innocent people were killed by the government? What does faith require when fear spreads and indifference takes hold? And how do we move from grief and rage toward hope and love? In this episode, I sit down with Father Jim Cassidy, a longtime friend and Minneapolis priest who has spent decades walking toward pain rather than away from it. Together, we wrestle with moral courage and the troubling indifference to the terror facing immigrants in Minnesota.

The images sparked outrage far beyond Minnesota: a five-year-old boy in a blue bunny hat detained and sent to a Texas ICE facility along with his father. In Columbia Heights, just north of Minneapolis, that moment put an entire community on edge. I felt the strain when I arrived at a local elementary school during recess and met a Somali father waiting to pick up his own five-year-old daughter, a man whose nationality has too often been politicized, stereotyped, and dehumanized, and who offered a perspective on indifference I had yet to consider.

In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, ice fishing feels as Minnesotan as hotdish in a church basement; steady, familiar, almost sacred. During my “Six Days Inside Minnesota,” I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who weren’t protesting or donating, who just seemed to be living their lives while the immigration crackdown unfolded. So I laced up my boots and walked a half mile onto a frozen lake to talk with ice fishermen, wondering if their quiet was peace, perspective, or something closer to indifference. What I found out on the ice wasn’t so simple.

After 32 years of attaining his American Dream, raising two kids, and building a successful business in Minnesota, Luis isn’t being deported, he’s choosing to leave the U.S. What worries him the most is the impact the government crackdown on immigrants is having on his 9 year old son, afraid to leave the house or attend school, and who's growing up with hate in his head and fear in his heart.

We're invited into another Minnesota home, this time we meet a Mexican immigrant father terrorized by the immigration crackdown, and who hasn’t left his house in more than a month. He's built a work life through grocery, hotel, and construction jobs, has paid his taxes, and has no criminal record. Now lives behind covered windows, determined to stay for his teenage daughter while praying the country he once saw as promise will return.

Lifelong activist Peggy Carlson is one of 1,200 singing activists marching through the snowy streets of Minneapolis, calling on ICE to leave Minnesota. At 74, Peggy reflects on decades of marching for justice and is frustrated and tired that her work is not done. Peggy believes the price of empathy, like the price of ignorance, both carry consequences. She is bolstered by seeing Minnesotans standing united in their protection of immigrants, believing that real change in communities of color will only happen when white communities step up, like they are today.