Editor’s note: Longtime journalist Dana Melius is a freelance reporter for The Free Press. He also participated in constitutional observer training and has documented ICE activity in St. Peter the past month.
ST. PETER — For weeks, residents of the 50-unit mobile home park on St. Peter’s south side have watched ICE agents roll in and out of that dead-end Freeman Drive. After a long week and an incident-filled Thursday, a chorus of fears and frustration deepened.
Local officials, as well as many of the residents of Marway park, have been fearful of speaking out, not wanting to bring more attention to an already volatile situation. But Thursday, things changed.
Notifications to trained constitutional observers came quickly, as early as 5:40 a.m., several said. At least three confirmed ICE agents parked on the shoulder of Highway 169, with lights off, engines running.
By 7 a.m., before St. Peter Public School buses arrived at the mobile home park, residents had heard of the growing ICE presence in the area. By bus arrival time, no school children jumped on.
“Our (Latino) families are scared; our kids are scared,” said one mother, who did not want to be identified due to safety concerns but said her family members are all U.S. citizens. “Some of our families haven’t left their homes for weeks.”
It’s been a similar story for many of the community’s people of color, even those with legal status, even for those who have been citizens for decades.
Janie Acevedo, of St. Peter, has served in several capacities as an interpreter in Le Sueur and Nicollet counties. She stressed, like many fellow Latino residents, that there’s traditionally been support for ICE agents if they’re targeting dangerous criminals. But Acevedo said ICE enforcement has gone far beyond that and is creating fear and escalating tension.
“I’m not against it (detaining dangerous criminals), I’m not,” she said. “But now they’re profiling us. I’m a U.S. citizen. I shouldn’t feel this way.”
Acevedo said she rarely leaves the house, and if she does, she doesn’t leave alone. Her grandchildren, who live with her and are all citizens, haven’t been to school for weeks. She doesn’t trust this ICE enforcement.
“I grew up on the (Texas) border and I would bump into agents all the time,” she said. “And I never, ever felt terrorized like now.”
Acevedo first came to Minnesota 33 years ago, traveled back to Texas for a time, but has resided in the state the past 14 years. Besides concerns over racial profiling, of which Latinos have faced for decades, Acevedo is dismayed over friends who don’t understand the current fear people of color are facing.
“Their true colors are showing,” she said.
While many rural communities have not been on the radar of state and national media outlets, ICE presence in St. Peter increased the weekend of Jan. 9-10. A Latino customer entering La Mexicana Market in downtown St. Peter was surrounded by ICE agents and detained, one of the first reported in the community.
That Saturday ICE agents appeared in the evening at El Agave on St. Peter’s north side. Management locked doors while customers remained inside, then walked them out individually. No one was detained that evening, but days later a 22-year-old server, who had been in the country since age 9, was stopped on her way to work and detained, according to El Agave management.
Twenty-four hours later, reports indicated she was deported to El Salvador.
Advocates, activists speak out
Nicollet County Board Commissioners Nicole Helget and Jack Kolars had seen enough. No official county position has been issued, but both decided to speak out with personal observations and opinions.
Helget, a first-term commissioner who represents residents of Marway, confronted ICE agents this week, with one social media video getting picked up by national media and the Minnesota Star Tribune. On Thursday, she was there again, visiting with an ICE agent.
“These children from Marway represent the best in America,” Helget said. “They deserve everything this great country can afford them. We cannot turn our backs on them.”
While some agents will visit cordially, like Thursday, as ICE vehicles and about a dozen agents appeared to target one mobile home, they won’t speak on the record or offer information. Helget visited while several observers kept watch, taking pictures and videos. No one was detained, and ICE moved on.
Helget said ICE patterns to Marway have been nearly daily, usually first arriving in the early morning, then showing up again in the afternoon. Tension seemed to peak Jan. 22, when a more aggressive ICE team arrived.
When asked if the agents had a judicial warrant, the answer was sharp: “We don’t need a warrant.” No one was detained and agents left.
Agents this Thursday said they held two warrants, targeting a specific individual or individuals. Finding no one at the targeted address, they moved on from Marway. Helget, like others interviewed, would have welcomed a less-aggressive enforcement effort to detain targeted individuals.
Fellow Nicollet County Commissioner Jack Kolars, who represents North Mankato, also spoke personally, noting his sentiments are his private opinions. But he, too, had enough of the ongoing ICE efforts.
“From a personal perspective — I’ve been a commissioner since January 1997 — I can’t think of a time in which the federal government brought in such a heavy presence,” Kolars said. “And it happened this month. They’re heavily armed and seem to not be well trained.”
Kolars, who’ll be 73 in March, blamed the administration for seeking retribution on a state that didn’t vote for President Trump.
“This is theater,” Kolars said. “It’s a military invasion of Minnesota … We’re in dangerous times.”
Many families who are keeping school children at home have been asking for online options during these tense times, but there are currently no such plans, according to residents who have met with St. Peter Public School officials.
It’s also becoming more dangerous for observers. Two U.S. citizens have died in ICE protests and confrontations — Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, both in Minneapolis.
On Thursday, ICE agents’ ongoing presence in St. Peter brought on the first reported confrontation with an observer. Near the corner of Jefferson and Nicollet avenues, an observer who has for weeks watched for ICE at the Marway mobile home park was stopped and surrounded by agents.
Eyewitnesses tried to intervene and later provided statements to three St. Peter police officers at the scene. The woman’s husband, who happened to just get off work, came across the incident before local police arrived and was told by agents to not intervene. Agents then drove north out of St. Peter with his wife but a supervisor instructed agents to return her to St. Peter, where Chief Matt Grochow met agents, transferred her into his squad car, and drove the woman home.
Names have been withheld due to safety concerns. St. Peter Police Department officials have not yet responded for more information or details on the incident.
Helget acknowledged some ICE agents have been “aggressive and intimidating.” And she noted that the community, and particularly the children, are being targeted and traumatized. Reports of ICE agents following school buses home are particularly troubling, both Helget and Kolars said.
They also are troubled by the potential economic fallout to local businesses and the racial profiling by ICE agents, as Latino and Somali residents have reportedly been randomly stopped, no matter their status as citizens or legal documents.
“The spiritual rot of racism in our country needs to be excised now,” Helget said.