On Sunday, Feb. 15, a van with tinted windows sat in the median of an expressway 10 minutes outside Minneapolis. It idled in a Michigan left usually reserved for law enforcement personnel, one that allows for quick pull-outs and pull-overs. But unlike police cars, this van didn’t have any lights or sirens — it was white and unmarked. When Charlie Morris drove past on the expressway, headed back home to Iowa City, the van pulled out and trailed close behind.
Morris had seen vans like this on the streets of Minneapolis. He was headed home from another weekend spent in the city, delivering supplies and listening to stories from residents. He had listened to the struggles of mothers and fathers whose children had seen them thrown to the ground at the start of a school day. He had also heard the sounds of helicopters hovering overhead and walked past the burnt remains of a car ignited by a tear gas canister. And he’d seen a white van with tinted windows like the one following him rolling through Minneapolis neighborhoods.
Morris tried to shake off the van by making a last-minute right onto a rural exit. The van followed. Another turn, the van still followed. He continued looking for an escape. After five minutes, Morris pulled into the driveway of a house with an occupied porch. The van waited at the curb, motionless, for a full minute before it finally left. Morris did not leave his car.
The people on the porch did not look pleased with his company. He soon pulled away, but only felt relief once he reached the Iowa side of the border.
Three days earlier, White House border czar Tom Homan had announced that Operation Metro Surge, the almost three-month-long campaign that sent thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents to the city of Minneapolis, would end. Citing increased coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement, Homan declared the operation a success, claiming that his agents “are leaving Minnesota safer.” But Homan also said a “security force” of ICE agents would remain in the Minneapolis area for the foreseeable future.
Morris told Little Village he has no doubt he’d been followed by members of this security force. On a previous trip to deliver supplies to Minneapolis, he’d watched from his car as an unmarked white van with tinted windows patrolled the streets of a frightened Minneapolis neighborhood.
A car followed close behind the van, driven by one of the many local volunteers tracking the movement of ICE agents. The car’s driver, wielded a bullhorn, alerting residents to ICE’s presence. The driver pursued the van doggedly, tailing the ICE agents until they drove up a highway on-ramp.
On the night of Sunday, Jan. 11, four days after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Morris attended a candlelight vigil in Iowa City for the 37-year-old poet and mother of three. Like others among the more than 200 who gathered on the Pentacrest in the freezing weather for the vigil, Morris learned that Good had local ties and was married to a woman from Iowa City.
“That got me going,” he recalled. “Everything was so out of hand. We needed to show Minneapolis some Iowa City love.”
Morris, a documentarian focused on environmental issues, had experience working with mutual aid groups. In 2005, he organized a volunteer group that delivered supplies and assisted with housing for survivors of Hurricane Katrina. More recently, he had worked as a volunteer social media manager for Paracrew Humanitarian Aid, receiving and sharing images of delivered goods and refugees sent by aid personnel working in the war zones of Ukraine.
Morris drew on his experience as he began formulating a personal action plan: connect with fellow users on Instagram for recommended mutual aid groups, reach out to one, then make the trip up north with donations to help those in need.
But the crisis in Minneapolis wasn’t the result of a natural disaster or the actions of a foreign government; it was caused by the excesses and violent behavior of ICE and Border Patrol agents as they executed the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“If your husband was grabbed off the streets by ICE,” Morris said, “even though he was here legally, and you are now at home alone with your kids, what happens if you are also grabbed illegally? Who will watch your kids?”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the start of Operation Metro Surge at the beginning of December, then expanded it at the beginning of January into what the department called its largest-ever enforcement action.
Minneapolis residents responded, meeting the needs DHS and ICE created. By the second week of January, Iglesia Dios Habla Hoy, a church in south Minneapolis, had delivered more than 12,000 boxes of groceries to families shut in their homes for fear of ICE. Other churches were doing the same. Local businesses rallied in support of their neighbors. Groups of minivan-driving parents formed carpools to transport kids too afraid to ride the bus or walk to school, because ICE was staking out schools. People tracked the movement of federal agents and protested, risking being assaulted, gassed or detained by those agents.
“Everyone is doing his part here, each to his ability,” Will McGrath, a Minneapolis-based essayist and one of the minivan-driving volunteers shuttling kids to school, wrote in the New York Times on Feb. 18. “… Outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where detainees, some of them American citizens and legal residents, are being held without beds or real blankets, the grannies of the Twin Cities are serving hot chocolate to college kids in active confrontation with ICE. I know of an off-grid network of doctors offering care to immigrants, a sub rosa collective of restaurateurs organizing miniature food banks in their basements … Every day and night, in the neighborhoods most affected by ICE raids, volunteers stand on street corners and patrol the blocks, phones and whistles ready.”
Mutual aid groups played a vital role, too.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, a network consisting of hundreds of mutual aid groups and activist organizations have refined their operations and coordinated efforts to meet the crisis caused by Operation Metro Surge. One organization, Twin Cities Pride (TCP), was recommended to Morris by a friend. He reached out and confirmed a volunteer shift with them for the following Saturday. Over the six weeks that followed, he made three more trips.
Each trip involved substantial contributions from people and businesses in the Iowa City area. When Morris sent out a first call for donations, he received 60 pounds of supplies in three hours. By the time he made his third trip to Minneapolis, he’d been able to donate over 1,000 pounds, in addition to over $2,000 in funds. After his first trip, Morris worked with businesses in Iowa City, including Brix Wine and Cheese and George’s Buffet, to set up donation drives.
TCP takes walk-ins for both donations and shopping at their building located four blocks from Minneapolis City Hall. During his volunteer shifts, Morris would take in supplies, organize them by product type, help visitors and occasionally make home deliveries. TCP also takes requests over the phone and via emails. Volunteers then collect supplies based on expressed needs and recipient details.
“One of the directors would come out with a ticket, saying something like ‘family of four: single mom, three kids at home, all under the age of 5, full stock,’” Morris recalled. “That would mean diapers, formula, toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, shampoo. We even had people requesting dog food and cat food for their pets.”
During his trips to Minneapolis, the images Morris had received from Paracrew in Ukraine remained on his mind. “The people that came in were in a state of need,” Morris remarked. “These people have the same feeling about them. They are under siege.”
Charlie Morris’ second trip to bring supplies to TCP was on Jan. 25, the same day that Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by two Border Patrol agents. Within hours, protesters had come together to celebrate Pretti’s life and memory.
Twin Cities residents resisting ICE and CBP erect barricades in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Twin Cities residents resisting ICE and CBP erect barricades in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Twin Cities residents resisting ICE and CBP erect barricades in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Demonstrators gather to protest ICE and Border Patrol’s presence in the Twin Cities, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris 
Renee Good is memorialized in posters around the Twin Cities, Jan. 24, 2026. — courtesy of Charlie Morris
“It was a pretty powerful experience being there that night,” Morris said. “The protesters had completely barricaded the ends of the streets, and they were drumming on trash cans that they had dragged out. And they were banging the drums and singing.”
As he attended a vigil that night for Alex Pretti, Morris thought about how he’d originally planned to stop by Glam Doll Donuts when he got to town. It’s a popular local donut shop that participated in the ICE Out of Minnesota general strike on Jan. 23. The first widely shared video of Pretti’s killing had been filmed through Glam Doll’s front window. The only reason Morris chose not to grab a donut at the shop that morning was because he had trouble sleeping the night before and was too tired.
“I had every intention of being there, for the whole week that was my plan. I would’ve been there and seen the whole thing happen. I’ve tried to replay what it would have been like. What would I have seen? What would I have done?”
As a documentarian, Morris is always interested in personal narratives that reveal a bigger story, such as ICE’s impact on the Minneapolis community. “I made sure to ask locals what they’ve observed, if they had had an interactions with ICE,” he said. “Everyone had stories.”
A father that came to TCP for supplies had to keep his son home from school after he witnessed ICE agents throwing parents to the ground. The owner of an Indian restaurant kept the door of his business locked during operating hours.
On subsequent visits, Morris followed through on plans to meet with healthcare workers and schoolteachers to learn about their experiences. What he found were stories of patients with disabilities being unable to receive assistance from medical centers due to budget cuts; a woman with a high-risk pregnancy forgoing appointments over fears of ICE raids; parents not having the technology for their children to learn remotely; schools losing funding over children being bumped from school rolls. Unavoidable truancy. Fines. Court involvement. DHS involvement.
“Each of these people that I talked to are doing the jobs they’re doing because they deeply care about people and community,” Morris said. “Every one of them was restraining themselves from crying when they talked to me. That happened to each one of them.”
Morris’s experiences confirmed for him the crucial discrepancy between media depictions and reality.
“There is no comparison … it’s the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional,” he said. “As soon as we see a video, we go to the next video. But when you’re talking to a person, you’re seeing body language, you’re seeing real emotion, you’re hearing someone’s voice and you’re having a deeply interpersonal interaction with somebody, the difference is the human element. They’re making sure you’re listening.”
Since his last visit, Morris no longer looks at media and news feeds coming out of Minnesota. “The visceral human-to-human experience so far outweighs anything I’ll read about.”
