I live with my family in Chaska. A lovely small town on the edge of the cities. Still very rural in some areas, but evolving into a more urban feel the higher the population gets.
The thing I loved most about moving here is the quiet and the pitch black at night. You can see the stars here, and even hear your own heart beat, sleep was suddenly very easy to come by which was a gift to me as I'd suffered from a lot of insomnia in my past. Christmas was around the corner, and the winter brought even more quiet with it as the days are shorter and the nights are longer.
I bring up how quiet it is in this neighborhood because I want you to understand something. When Operation Metro Surge hit our county, it went from quiet to thunderous. And they even had the nerve to start their bigger movements in our town during Christmas Eve.
What we experienced was a different flavor from the main twin cities of Minnesota, and it was just as horrific. We were lucky to not deal with the tear gas and smoke though, I've heard that stuff does not come out of your clothes and people in Minneapolis and St. Paul had their homes flooded with tear gas, some multiple times.
We didn't know how hard it would hit us, but we'd watched Chicago, LA, and Boston. In Minnesota, you don't wait for the storm. You prepare for it.
We had begun organizing in our little County in January of 2025, so it was a year of our communities getting closer together and bonding. Every week we would meet in some form or another and through these meetings a force was born. Fueled through zoom meetings and lessons from Chicago so we did not have to invent the wheel on becoming constitutional observers, whistles were handed out with pamphlets on how to stay alert and organized. Better yet, what to do when confronted by armed, masked people with no identification claiming to be law enforcement.
Everything started to move exponentially faster after the two men were trapped by ICE on a roof in Chanhassen, a town in Carver county. This situation lasted hours in sub zero cold temperatures and one of the men had to be taken to the hospital for care due to that cold. ICE apprehended him in the hospital after. One man had stayed up on the roof, and the people of Chanhassen crowded the area, gave him hot coffee and blankets to stay warm. When he came down, the people linked arms so ICE could not get through to arrest the man. The people of Chanhassen even organized their cars so ICE could not determine which car had him aboard. This situation shook the country, and a lovely episode of Rachel Maddow even covered it.
Just a short drive away in Chaska, we kept up the same level of care, but it came with a huge cost to our sanity and sense of peace. The cost to our mental health was something none of us had budgeted for.
A signal group was made and we all had to learn very fast how to do dispatch work and surveillance. Clumsy at first, but we found our footing through trial and error. Our exact system I want to keep vague because ICE is still here.
Christmas eve was the first big surge of ICE, then New Years Eve came the second that never stopped. An entire week felt like years as each day we were on alert 24/7.
We may not have had the tear gas or smoke, but we had a different problem: We were so spread out compared to the twin cities neighborhoods, so getting a crowd to gather was a problem.
Everyone had to be in contact any time they were out on surveillance. Driving routes, taking walks by Hispanic and Somali neighborhoods, and reporting details back of what we saw. We were more scouts. As we worked we compiled data very quickly and watched our fellow counties and dispatches for any patterns. IG and Reddit were the most helpful and we quickly made our lists of independent local reporters to check in with. Many giving daily updates on the movement of ICE agents so we could all have a heads up. Whipple (the ICE base) was under constant surveillance.
The Whipple building is very significant in this. It was named after Bishop Whipple who saved 300 Dakota Native American lives from the noose. Those 300 souls were locked up in this very same building ICE was using to lock up BIPOC people.
ICE agents had many tactics, most of them pretty lame and unimaginative. We all kept preparing for possibilities only to find they really didn't have the motivation or skill to really come up with anything besides simple, lazy coverups and bait and switches. They switched their license plates many times, covered them up or just drove without them at all. They wore masks, refused to show identification while demanding we show ours. ICE agents would stalk our cars if we were on surveillance. Their favorite thing to do was lead us to our own homes to scare us.
The longer this went on, the more tricks they tried to pull. Having a young blond woman pretend to have car trouble so they could jump out of the car to abduct who would stop. Camping out at hospitals to catch them going into their appointments. Pretending to have a broken down car in a Chik-fil-A parking lot to lure out a Hispanic worker, then abduct them when they got to the car.
Abandoned cars on the side of the road would make our stomachs drop because we knew the likelihood of that car being abandoned was due to ICE abduction. There were a LOT of abandoned vehicles.
People of color were afraid to leave their homes, afraid to go to work, afraid to let their kids go to school. Babies were born at home, injuries and illnesses going unattended. And who could blame them?! They could be shipped away to foreign lands or even murdered in cold blood. Volunteers who hadn't been tagged by ICE would deliver food and supplies quietly collected by a series of small businesses. You had to know who to talk to to help, which created a somewhat protected system. Not perfect though. Our neighborhoods were on alert 24/7, it was hard to sleep, let alone do our full time jobs.
The first week of January was one of the worst weeks of our collective lives. Every single soul taken off our streets had us kicking ourselves, crying, then doubling down to make sure it didn't happen again. All while doing full time jobs. We all felt it, duty, we had to protect the humans living with us. We found that neurodivergent wired minds had some of the best and most efficient systems of communication made fast, and it became easy to fall into position.
Then January 7th happened. Suddenly everything was quiet again. But not the charming quiet I missed. At 9:30 AM dispatch reported the shooting of a protester in Minneapolis. We all kept at our routes and volunteer work, but something about that weighed heavy in our stomachs. Then the videos started flooding social media. I didn't know what I was watching at first. A man was filming live on the scene. There was an SUV crashed into a tree, and ICE agents telling all to stay back, but one woman was sitting in the snow by the car in tears. The person filming said "they just shot that lady!"
I found out later that I was witnessing Rebecca Good in shock and mourning, her wife Rennee had been shot in the face while trying to peacefully drive away. A tremor was felt by all activists across the state. She could have been any one of us. I had never met her, never talked to her, but her death hit me like I'd lost a sister. I've never felt that before. Even though I didn't know her, if I were in her shoes, I would have done all the same things she did. Then Noem's Administration immediately vilified her, calling her a "domestic terrorist". A domestic terrorist. For turning her car around.
That was the day I spent making my Minnesota flag inspired "F*CK ICE" design. It was impossible not to be furious that day. Especially with all the different camera angles coming out of her murder like it was some kind of playback in a sports game.
The 9th was MLK day, and we had hoped ICE would stay quiet through the day. No. They ramped up. Now with the fear of being gunned down by ICE agents and them getting "full immunity" for it hung over our heads, but so did the absolute rage and grief of Renée mixed with the importance of the day itself. This led to a different horrific event.
One of our watchers was abducted. I will not make their name public as that is their choice to make if they want their name out in public or not. We'll call them "Sally". She was parked by the Chaska police department. The department did nothing as ICE agents broke her car window and dragged her from her car, throwing her to the ground. They zip tied her hands, her forehead bleeding. Our whole group was in a sudden uproar of guilt, anger, pain and adrenaline. Local government to state government leaders were called to try to get her back.
Luckily, 9 hours later she was returned home.
We had to change up all of our tactics after that. We stopped following them, instead we kept our distance. Scared but more determined to protect our neighborhood more than ever.
For weeks this kept up, ramping up to and even past the rate it was right before Renee. The month of January doesn't feel like it belongs in this year, it feels like it needs its own year.
Another one of ours was abducted. This time they were followed to the Chanhassen police department, and the department did nothing as they too were taken from their car. They did make it back home too.
Then there was Alex Pretti. Another morning report about another protester shot, but this one was armed. Now we worried that shoot outs were going to take place on a regular basis. But Alex Pretti was a believer in the second amendment, he was armed, but was not dangerous. Videos show him holding a phone to film the agents as they pushed two activist women around on the road. He was helping one stand up when they dogpiled him, and shot him in the back. The same rage and grief surged through Minnesota AGAIN and it was just as hot and painful as Renee's death.
The surge didn't stop there. It kept going through February and finally showed a slow down in March as agents were leaving to terrorize other cities. But those other cities had watched all of what we did, all of what Chicago and LA, and Boston had had to do to keep their neighborhoods safe.
ICE is still here today. We still have active watch groups. We still have our protests. Something else is brewing in Minnesota. A surge of new minds have come forwards in search of political leadership to grow better roots to take out the rotten system that is festering before our very eyes.
It was during this time I buckled down on applying for grants. During 2025 it was easy to get emotionally lost, wondering if I should even keep this shop afloat. But now I am certain that helping craft new roots in my own area of living is the best thing I can do — for me, for my community, and for generations to come.
The BirdHive's social mission is something I couldn't find anywhere else, so I am building it myself: a Print-on-Demand warehouse and artist platform designed from the ground up for disabled workers and creators. Accessible, sensory-friendly workspaces. Living wages. Flexible hours. Built on the belief that while disabled people need it most, everyone benefits from it.
I will not be here to see this fully bloom. But that's exactly what makes it worth building. I want it to be a new model for how people can live and work — with a decent home, enough to eat, and energy left after work to actually enjoy life. Because life is fleeting, and the freedom to live it needs to be protected. I am willing to put my life into these roots.
I am still here. Still watching. Still making things with my hands because that is how I process what my brain cannot file away neatly. Some of those designs came from this — from grief, from rage, from the absolute refusal to look away. The BirdHive didn't start as a political act, but living authentically never gets to stay apolitical for long.
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We're on this blue rock together