The New Yorker:

Liam Ramos, whose photo became a symbol of Operation Metro Surge, is one of several students in Columbia Heights who are now in federal custody.

By Jessica Winter

On Wednesday morning, well before the school run started, Mary Granlund was attempting to coax her dog outside for a brief walk in negative-two-degree weather, and her phone was already pinging with texts. “It’s, like, ‘Can someone help bring my kids to school today?’ ‘Can anybody pick my kids up from school today?’ ‘Has anyone called the police about the abandoned car?’ ” she told me.

Granlund is the chair of the school board in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, a northeastern suburb of Minneapolis. This community of about three square miles and twenty-two thousand people is, like much of the greater Minneapolis metro area, presently swarmed with agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, and has been for weeks. Many parents who used to ferry their children to and from school every day have either been captured by ICE or are sheltering in place out of fear. Empty cars in the road are a common sight: lights on, engine still running, doors flung open. Educators and parents in the district have been working as chauffeurs, delivery drivers, bodyguards, and deterrence squads.

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