Reporter's Notebook: Living and reporting from Minneapolis in crisis

"Last Thursday, I sat idling in my car, waiting for a photographer colleague to finish an assignment. An SUV pulled up in front of me. A middle-aged white woman, with a no-nonsense haircut, dressed in a puffy coat and big sunglasses, opened the car door. She leaned out of the driver's seat and stared at me for a while. I realized she was trying to decide if I was an ICE officer. I took the large press badge sitting on my dashboard and raised it for her to see. She waved and got back inside her car."

"I saw my first ICE vehicle in Minneapolis at the very start of the new year. It passed in front of the car I was in with my husband, and entered an alley a few blocks from my home, the slogan Defend The Homeland written on its side. Later, the vehicles would rarely be marked. I ate arepas that night with friends at a restaurant where, a month earlier, immigration agents without a signed judicial warrant were turned away. The restaurant's owner was praised for knowing her rights as a business owner."

"Over the course of the last three weeks, I have had the experience of being a member of this community while also reporting on it, alongside local reporters: Minnesota Public Radio, Sahan Journal, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Minnesota Reformer, and others. I cover criminal justice nationally for NPR, and I live in Minneapolis. For the last year, I have been reporting occasionally on the massive immigration enforcement campaign across the country, sticking mostly to the moments it intersected clearly with my beat. Late last year, for instance, I reported a story on shuttered prisons almost all owned by private prison companies reopening as immigration detention centers across a dozen states."

A local resident encountered people scrutinizing whether they were ICE, prompting the display of a press badge. The first ICE vehicle in Minneapolis that year bore the slogan Defend The Homeland; later vehicles were often unmarked. Immigration agents without signed judicial warrants were turned away from a restaurant whose owner was praised for knowing business-owner rights. The narrator balances membership in the community with reporting alongside local outlets while covering criminal justice nationally for NPR. Reporting has included shuttered private prisons reopening as immigration detention centers, and a surge in enforcement in the city was announced in early December.

Read at www.npr.org