Millions of Americans are skipping meals to pay their healthcare bills, according to a new survey. Forced to choose between hunger or healthcare. Meanwhile, the U.S. is spending over $1 billion a day on an illegal, open-ended war in Iran that has plunged the global economy into deep uncertainty.
As Trump bleeds money abroad, he is quietly pursuing devastating cuts to life-saving assistance at home. Months after signing the largest food stamp cuts in U.S. history — $187 billion over the next decade — his administration is now moving to eliminate a rule that has been in place for decades. Currently, if you’re already enrolled in one government aid program, you can automatically qualify for food stamps — cutting red tape and making it easier for working families, elderly Americans, and people with disabilities to get help. Trump wants to end that, to save $11 billion over 10 years while spending $11 billion in six days of war — potentially stripping food assistance from 6 million Americans who need it most.
I met Franklin while filming with his family in Minneapolis, where they were already living with the stress of ICE. The day before his stepdaughter self-deported to Ecuador with her three young children, he was taken from his job — despite having an active asylum case and legal work permit.
He was flown to El Paso within hours, unable to call a lawyer. Nearly a week later, a habeas corpus petition brought him home — but not back to normal. While the family is so incredibly grateful to be reunited again, the truth is they lost so much during Operation Metro Surge. The family lost precious time, income, and most of all, a sense of safety and peace of mind.
It wasn’t until @joixlee briefly left Minneapolis that she could contextualise the intensity of what life had become. “I couldn’t seem to stop checking my rearview mirror for suspicious vehicles, scanning roads for masked men, and hearing whistles everywhere,” she writes.
And while it was announced on 12th February that ‘Operation Metro Surge – the immigration enforcement crackdown that has rocked Minneapolis for the last two months – has ended, the reaction of many community members was not relief, but caution.
“An occupation does not end when an authority declares it over,” writes Joi. “It ends when the conditions that produced it are dismantled: when presence is no longer ambient, when power is accountable, and when daily life no longer reorganises itself around fear.
By that measure, many residents say, nothing essential has changed.”
/articles/act/an-occupation-doesnt-end-just-because-they-say-it-does/
Amidst continuing reports of ICE activity, many residents linger on the edge between hope for a bit of peace — and fear that this is simply another tactic by the Trump administration.
Community patrollers, organizers and even a lawyer I have spoken to say that while the strategy of immigration agents have seemed to change (targeting more suburbs, being more undercover, using more female agents and agents of color to escape attention, etc), the numbers of abductions have not yet seemed to drop off.
Yet something consistently shared by the people I’ve spoken to is — that no matter what, the legacy of Operation Metro Surge will be long lasting. The trauma, the distrust, the pain will take years to heal.
**correction — slide 2 should say “Operation Metro Surge.”
Every year on February 14, the Native American community in Minneapolis march in remembrance of all those relative who have been murdered or gone missing in the state of Minnesota. ��Indigenous people go missing or are killed at disproportion rates in the state – in 2025, nearly 10% of homicides were Indigenous peoples, who only make up 1% of the state population. This is also a conservative estimate, with many individuals going unreported.
Many families still waiting for news or justice years, if not decades, later.
They walk to make sure their fight to protect their loved ones continue.
Yesterday, a few thousand showed up in solidarity, starting at the Minneapolis American Indian center, and marching around Little Earth community.
Much thanks to Tali for sharing her thoughts 🙏
People in the Twin Cities have lived under CONSTANT fear and agitation over the last two months – unsure of when and where the next casualty of ICE would be. News that Operation Surge is a welcome relief, but most people have repeated this phrase to me: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Jamael Lundy (excuse the typo in the video 😭) was just down the road when he heard reports that there might be yet another ICE related death on Feb 11.
A high-speed chase by federal agents caused a three-car wreckage right outside of Nina’s cafe in St. Paul, leaving confusion and fear in its wake. As a man was wheeled away into an ambulance with a sheet over his head, it left many people fearing the worst: another person had been killed.
While thankfully, it was quickly found out that no one had died, the anxiety, trauma, fear, damage was irreversible.
Jamael Lundy is a St. Paul resident who is also running for Senate seat – and was one of the handful of people targeted and arrested for attending an anti-ICE protest at a church last month.
He shares what it means to live within a collective trauma. Thank you so much for sharing @jlundy03 and for being out showing up for your community 🙏
While news the following day broke that Operation Metro Surge is coming to an end, the impacts of this will be far lasting.
This was an incredibly difficult story to document. To witness lives turning inside out, families being torn apart.
I met Estefanía in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, shortly before she self-deported to Ecuador due to deep fear of the ongoing ICE raids. Her husband had been detained and deported 6 months prior, leaving her to raise three young children alone. She was terrified that if she was snatched, her kids might be left without any parents.
Despite what she had to endure by getting to the US — walking on foot for 2.5 months with three young children, facing dangers, hunger and more — she made the heartbreaking decision to leave her mother and younger sisters behind to take her children back to an uncertain Ecuador.
Now that she’s there, she often wonders whether she made the right choice. She’s struggling to put a roof over her kids heads, she can’t yet afford to send them to school.
The decision she had to make was one that a mother shouldn’t have to face.
I’m really grateful for the deep care of @ajplus ’s Senior Producer @thirteen__23 in putting this together, and Kat Hayes for EPing this.
We had endless conversations with Estefanía and her family about safety as well as with the editorial team before publishing this.
Her story is one of many, and I hope this sheds a bit more light on the impossible decisions that many people are confronting in the face of the immigration crackdown.
If you want to support her in rebuilding her life in Ecuador, you can find her gofundme linked in my bio or in the comments. You can also search on GFM “housing and schooling for Estefanía’s kids after self deporting”
As state violence continues to sweep through communities in the US, we are reminded time and time again of the power and need for community organising. In today’s article journalist and photographer @joixlee speaks to Native organisers at @powwowgroundscoffee to find out how the cafe has transformed into a central hub of resistance, mutual aid, and community defence.
Joi writes: “As a daughter of immigrants and a journalist, I came to Minneapolis to cover what feels like the unravelling of an empire – and to document the growing violations against constitutional rights and our right to free speech.
When I arrived to Minneapolis, I began searching for mutual aid hubs and places where different communities were coming together to meet this crisis. I was immediately pointed towards Pow Wow Grounds, known not only for its community space for Native Americans, but for the larger southside Minneapolis.
Pow Wow Grounds is not a command centre, nor a symbol crafted for attention. It is something quieter and more powerful: a living expression of Indigenous sovereignty, care, and refusal. A reminder that long before federal agents arrived – and long after they leave – Native people have survived by relying on one another.
And as I see different faces of the Minnesotan community continue bustling in and out of the cafe, I know that those teachings have taken deep root in the city. That neighbours do indeed, protect neighbours. That we do indeed, keep us safe.
As organisers often say here: this isn’t just about the present moment. It’s about the next seven generations. And inside Pow Wow Grounds, those generations are already being protected.”
Photography by @joixlee
/articles/act/no-one-is-illegal-on-stolen-land/
There’s a reason why Minnesotans are calling ICE the gestapo. Despite being within their rights to legally observe and document the activities of ICE, residents are being stalked, followed, arrested at gunpoint, and intimidated by ICE. One resident shared with me her log of different ICE encounters and attempts to intimidate her neighborhood — but she claimed that her story isn’t “noteworthy” because she hadn’t been assaulted like so many other observers that she knows. That’s the extent to the normalization of intimidation tactics that we are seeing.
Yet another way Minnesotans are taking power into their own hands to monitor against unwanted ICE activity in their neighborhoods. This checkpoint was demolished shortly after I filmed yesterday by local police — but it is one of several that have been popping up in south side Minneapolis over the last few days.
Out of 115 days of ‘ceasefire,’ Gaza only had 17 days without Israeli attacks, according to Al Jazeera English.
From October 10, 2025 to January 31, 2026, Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement at least 1,450 times – through airs strikes, direct shootings and artillery. Over 500 civilians have been killed, and at least 1,443 Palestinians injured.
Meanwhile, the US has just approved $6.6bn in sales of attack helicopters and assault vehicles to Israel – which have been used by IOF in its genocide against Palestinians.
Today in Minneapolis, members of the Native community came together and held a jingle dress dance ceremony at both Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s memorial site.
@miwsac
