Since President Donald Trump announced Operation Metro Surge, Trump’s immigration enforcement operation, in Dec. 2025, 3,000 federal agents have been deployed in Minnesota. For the past two months, federal agents have engaged in racial profiling and employed excessive force while detaining Minnesotans, particularly Somali and Latino community members, regardless of their legal status.
President Trump’s immigration crackdown has not only directly threatened the physical safety of many immigrant communities, but also disrupted daily life.
On Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, 37-year-old Renée Macklin Good, local writer and a mother of three children, was fatally shot by an ICE agent. 17 days later, 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a Veteran’s Association nurse who had also protested the killing of Good, was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem alleged that Pretti intended to harm officers with a concealed firearm, but video footage shows Pretti holding only his cell phone at the time of the shooting.
Good and Pretti are not the only fatalities related to ICE; The Guardian confirmed that at least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, making it ICE’s deadliest year since 2004. Federal agents’ brutality towards immigrants and people of color, such as the non-fatal shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis on Jan. 14 in Minneapolis, has also received less attention from the media.
Minnesotans have responded with their own surge of protests, strikes and boycotts calling for the removal of ICE, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. Many have also expanded existing mutual aid and community defense networks and founded new ones. The Macalester community is no exception.
At 9:55 a.m. on Jan. 9, Macalester community members joined together in front of the flagpole in a statewide day of unity to grieve and honor Good’s life.
At 7 p.m. on Jan. 24, college community members gathered outside the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel in frigid temperatures for a candlelit vigil in memory of Pretti, in conjunction with neighborhoods, churches and other groups across Minnesota.
Rev. Hannah Adams Ingram, college chaplain and associate dean of institutional equity, who led attendees in song and gave brief remarks in memory of Good and Pretti at each vigil, spoke to the importance of grieving as a community.
“How do we physically take care of people?” Adams Ingram asked the Macalester community. “We take the moment, we breathe, we mourn together, and then we act. And hopefully it means we’re not acting recklessly; we’re acting with deep wisdom in community.”
Over the past few weeks, a mutual aid group sponsored by the Macalester Solidarity Collective, a consortium of several different student organizations founded through the Spring 2025 Anthropology-294 ‘Art and Activism’ class, has emerged for Macalester students, faculty and staff to request support in acquiring essentials, like groceries or access to secure transportation to and from campus. A student, who is a member of Macalester Solidarity Collective and wishes to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, shared their view of the network’s evolution.
“I know, personally, a lot of my friends are scared to leave campus and are scared to really go anywhere,” the student said. “We saw the mutual aid networks that [other people] were setting up, just in the general city, so we were like, ‘Okay, let’s try to make one of those for Macalester.’”
The student, who connects individuals requesting aid to those volunteering to help, stated that the network has more than 50 volunteers and continues to grow.
“The mutual aid network, [when] we launched that [a few] days ago… people just came rolling in,” the student said. “And I was scared, like, ‘Oh, are these gonna be [aid] requests that we don’t have the people to fill yet?’ But they were all volunteers.”
The Office of Student Affairs is also working to leverage existing campus resources to support students who are most directly impacted, according to Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Javier Gutierrez.
“If I’m hearing of students needing something that isn’t in place… [I’m] bringing it to [Vice President for Student Affairs] Kathryn [Kay Coquemont], bringing it to the leadership team, saying, ‘Students are now asking for this. This has become a barrier,’” Gutierrez said.
Vice President for Institutional Equity Alina Wong acknowledged that many faculty and staff members have similar or overlapping concerns as students. Wong pointed to Macalester’s Human Resources department for staff and the Provost’s office for faculty as resources.
Gonzalo Guzmán, assistant professor of educational studies, pointed out that shifting circumstances also mean peoples’ needs are changing. He believes that local and state governments have a responsibility to directly fund both higher education and K-12 institutions to accommodate community needs.
“I know that a lot of schools are closing out of safety reasons for possible ICE raids, which impacts a lot of Mac community members who have children in the Twin Cities public school system,” Guzmán said. “So, how can the state support those who are currently being impacted by that policy, whether it be assistance with leave [or] assisting Mac if someone has to take time off to watch their family.”
Erik Larson, professor and chair of the sociology department, expressed admiration for the existing mutual aid networks that have expanded within the Twin Cities. He pointed to The People’s Laundry, a volunteer-run mutual aid group that launders clothes for community members in need, which was formed after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“All of these things are supporting real needs, real physical needs that people have,” Larson said. “But as important is [that] it is countering the message that the federal government, or the Trump administration, or ICE or whoever we want to say, is trying to tell people — that they aren’t welcome, that they don’t belong. And that spirit of giving, of supporting, is saying ‘You are welcome. You do belong.’”
Although many mutual aid organizations are receiving increased volunteer traction and donations, many such organizations have been serving the Twin Cities’ communities for years. Similarly, organizing to support immigrant, undocumented and international communities at Macalester predates Trump’s Operation Metro Surge.
Last February, Macalester published an Immigration Response Guidance webpage, which directs community members to contact Public Safety at 651-696-6555, in the case that federal law enforcement arrives on campus.
President Suzanne Rivera reaffirmed this practice, and that community members can request a Public Safety escort to locations near or on campus for any reason, in her campus announcement sent via email to faculty and staff on Jan. 13.
Guzmán is one of the faculty who collaborated with other community members to hold informal conversations between administrators, students, faculty and staff. These conversations revolved around how issues related to immigration impact Macalester.
“Very rarely are we in a space where it’s students, faculty, staff and senior admin there,” Guzmán said. “So that also allows that very personal space for an issue to be brought up directly, and there would be someone in the room that could give an answer.”
Larson, who has also participated in these conversations, sees this collaboration as essential to informing the campus’ evolving response.
“[These conversations have] also been a way to think through principles that could guide the campus policy — not that the group is setting policy — but giving an opportunity for voice to emerge from the ground up in ways that can feed into some policy discussions that happened elsewhere,” Larson said.
Vice President for Institutional Equity Alina Wong shared that Macalester has recently increased pre-existing signage designating private areas of campus and restricted all buildings on campus, except the campus center, to keycard access only.
“Know that Macalester is a private college, and therefore our buildings are on restricted access, and that we have the right to restrict access to our academic spaces, residence halls,” Wong said.
In addition to establishing and strengthening direct support channels, many students have also engaged in rallies and other forms of visible resistance on campus.
On Friday, Jan. 23, despite campus closing due to sub-zero temperatures, Sunrise Macalester co-sponsored a teach-in, art build and rally with Central Americans for Empowerment, ICE Out @ Mac, Macalester Solidarity Collective and Mac for Palestine. Around 100 students attended the teach-in led by Sunrise Twin Cities organizers on the second floor of the campus center at 10 a.m.
Sunrise Macalester social media team member Lucy Flack ’27 recalled feeling pleasantly surprised by the turnout, and empowered by the content of the teach-in and the posters and signs she created after.
“I feel like it’s really, really important to create in a time of such destruction, especially when lives are being destroyed, families are being destroyed, people’s mental health is being destroyed, just by the fear and the fear-mongering that is around all the time,” Flack said.
Guzmán, similarly, underscored the importance of community, in this moment when personal safety is deeply impacted by the political decisions of local, state and federal governments.
“You don’t have to be directly impacted by an ICE raid or apprehension,” Guzmán said. “By the very nature of being in a community, having students, having faculty, having neighbors being impacted — you are impacted. Regardless of the Twin Cities being your hometown, it is your city… so you are part of this.”
