In the pre-dawn darkness, Bella* wakes her daughter with a hot cup of milk and tells her to get dressed.
The nine-year-old moves quietly, pulling on a white snowsuit and fur-trimmed coat, careful not to wake her younger brother. She brushes her teeth, tugs on fluffy white snow boots and matching gloves, then slings a sparkly backpack over her shoulders.
The moon is still high when she opens the door and begins trudging through the snow toward the bus stop, talking to her mum through a smart watch.
Walking her daughter there used to be one of Bella's favourite parts of the day. Now, she watches from a distance — and it fills her with fear.
"A lot of cars go by, and I always think, if one stops, if someone takes her, how would I defend her? I'm so far away."
Her fears are not unfounded.
Minneapolis is reckoning with the ongoing presence of federal immigration agents carrying out a sweeping national operation.
The Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul in December, announcing it was necessary to fulfil its obligation to protect Americans "against invasion" from illegal immigrants.
But the impact has been deadly.
Two Americans have been killed, children have been detained, and legal immigrants with no criminal history have been pulled from their cars and their homes into SUVs with tinted windows.
Some have been transported thousands of kilometres away to detention centres.
Shut-in and suspicious
The Twin Cities stretch from dense urban centres into sprawling suburbia. In many neighbourhoods, the presence of ICE is barely visible.
Defiance of it is everywhere.
Bus stops, walls and cars are tagged with "F**k ICE". People wear jumpers embroidered with "ICE OUT". Cafes hand out whistles and small cards explaining citizens' rights to refuse entry to agents. Business windows welcome everyone — "except ICE".
The memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti are thick with candles, photos, flowers and handwritten messages, spilling out onto the street.
But racial profiling by ICE means the people most at risk do not have the luxury of mourning or demonstrating in public.
So mothers like Bella stay inside in their pyjamas, watching their children catch the school bus through fogged windows with the lights off.
While Bella's husband, Sam*, and their children are US citizens. She is not. And that distinction means she's barely left the house in weeks.
When she does, she tries to make her Latina features disappear with sunglasses and a hood.
"I am always checking who is near, or I look at people suspiciously, I feel like a criminal," she says.
But the fear that grips many people of colour in Minneapolis makes it easier to just stay inside, doors locked, curtains drawn, lights dimmed.
So many people are in hiding that some restaurants struggle to open, offering only takeaway a few days a week. School cleaning staff don't show up. One bilingual school saw attendance drop so sharply it moved entirely online.
'A paranoia like I've never known'
Bella's husband Sam* is what Vice-president JD Vance refers to as a "heritage American".
"I grew up on a sixth-generation dairy farm. My great great great great grandfather fought in the Civil War. I'm not big into ancestry … but we have records that indicate the first ancestor of ours came over on the Mayflower. We've been here since the beginning."
He says he understands the immigration system is "completely messed up" and that "to protect our borders we can't just make it easy for everybody to become a citizen".
But after two deaths and countless videos showing federal agents ignoring due process, he's staunchly opposed to the operation.
For years, he and Bella hired lawyers and filled out government forms, trying to resolve her immigration status.
"It's always a brick wall, always a brick wall. We never run into any solution other than, well, don't get caught. Good luck."
What was once a hindrance is now "a paranoia like I've never known before", he says.
"My biggest fear is something's going to happen to the kids. It's one thing if they watch their mother get detained by men with rifles, it's another thing if they come storming to the house with rifles when the kids are home.
"It's an entirely different thing if I'm not home and they take the kids with them."
Teaching a child how to survive 'insane' reality
While their son inherited Sam's fair complexion, their daughter looks like Bella.
Once, that was something to celebrate.
Now, Sam is teaching her how to hide it.
"You probably shouldn't speak Spanish in public right now," he told her recently.
"If you see men with rifles approach you and talk to you, you need to be very stern with them. Tell them you are an American, that you were born in America."
Explaining how to behave if armed men try to grab her is "insane", he says.
"A nine-year-old should not have to deal with this."
Sam says any trust in authority is likely to stop with his generation.
"My daughter's generation is going to be brought up with an extreme distrust of police, of soldiers, of the government. This is going to traumatise them."
Dad, prisoner, 'alien'
Bella's generation is not the only one that is being traumatised.
Older Americans too are being ripped from their homes and places of work, facing uncertain futures.
Ariel Jimenez, 17, remembers the moment his father returned, along with when he was taken.
"December 18, 7:52am.
"That's when I got my dad back," Ariel says. "You just don't forget."
Seven months earlier, ICE agents swept through a worksite and arrested his dad for being undocumented.
No one knew where he had been taken.
Ariel called five times. No answer. Then he used a phone locator and saw the dot land on the Whipple Building, which houses federal government offices.
"That's when I knew."
He drove there himself, hoping for answers, but was turned away.
Hours later, ICE called back. His father had been moved to a detention facility in Iowa. If Ariel wanted to speak to him, he'd have to pay.
When he finally heard his father's voice, Ariel could hear him crying.
"He kept saying sorry. Like it was his fault."
For more than six months, Ariel worked nights at a fast-food restaurant and managed his father's business to afford a lawyer and send money for phone calls.
"Every week-and-a-half, we would deposit him $30 or $50 so he could keep calling. He would call us every morning, every afternoon, and every night as well, as much as he could."
The facility had no heating. Detainees stayed warm by huddling together, using clothing as blankets. They weren't allowed outside.
"They were in the cell day and night."
In December, a one-line email arrived from the Department of Homeland Security:
"The alien has been released".
Because Iowa's facilities were filling up, Ariel says his father had been moved a week earlier to Nebraska. Ariel drove nine hours to collect him from a petrol station where agents left him.
His father is home now — but not free.
Released on bond while awaiting an immigration hearing, the fear has calcified. He refuses to leave the house.
Ariel checks on his parents constantly.
"I don't feel safe, I fear that they (ICE) could peek in the house or they could locate our phones, you don't know what they're capable of."
When he drives, his eyes flick between mirrors.
"Anything can happen anywhere at this point."
A familiar reckoning
Protest runs deep in Minneapolis.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the city was forced to confront power, policing and accountability. Many residents say that fear — the kind that settles into the body — has returned.
Last week, President Trump's border czar Tom Homan announced 700 federal agents would be leaving the state of Minnesota "effective immediately", but roughly 2,000 remain and few, if anyone, in Minneapolis, knows what that means for their city.
Residents, school staff, and politicians have told the ABC nothing has changed for them since the White House took a step back from its hardline rhetoric and began to admit that, perhaps, some ICE agents had made mistakes.
Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette says the city has been provided very little clarity.
"We don't actually know who's leaving and who's staying, and when that many agents remain, the fear remains too."
The constant fight-or-flight is exhausting.
"Because of the tactics that are being used, and the citizens and visitors just have so much fear and so much trauma. You're waking up thinking about it, you're going to sleep thinking about it."
Barnette carries his passport everywhere. Like many people who are not white, he worries about masked federal officers without identifiable badges.
"When you can't identify who someone is, you can't hold them accountable."
He calls Minneapolis a microcosm of a broader drift toward authoritarianism.
"If we don't act now, we might not be able to stop it from taking root."
When ICE eventually leaves, he says, the headlines will move on, and the city will be left with the damage.
"Since 2020, we have worked really hard to build up community trust [in police] by being transparent, by being accountable. This surge of federal agents is eroding that trust.
"This is unprecedented for us. I just don't know at the end of the day how long and how much recovery we're going to [need], with the trauma that our communities have experienced and the economic impact long term.
"I just don't know."
* The source's name has been changed for their protection
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