JokersUpdates.com: News Stand - "now all these years later, I find myself wondering if I still have a home here in Minnesota, in America, in the world of the people who get to decide who is valuable and who is not, who belongs and

and who does not, who lives and who dies."

Letter From Minnesota: “If They Take Me and Leave the Children...”
Kao Kalia Yang on Preparing For the Worst in the Face of ICE’s Occupation

Today is Tuesday, January 27th, 2026. I got gas for the first time this year by myself. The gas station was mostly empty. I drove into the station, heart thudding in my chest. I did everything as fast as I could. The few people around, the dark-haired man putting air into the tires into his truck, the white woman who came into the station behind me, each of us quietly doing our business as fast as we can in the cold. I dared to venture out because ICE murdered Alex Pretti this Saturday—just as ICE showed up on our block and went to the house of one of my Karen neighbors, and because I know that Greg Bovino is leaving and Tom Homan is coming, and this is a period of transition, a little break from the escalating pressures pushing us down.

On Sunday, my white husband and I, a Hmong woman, talked to our three children: what happens if Mommy gets detained? If the children are with me and they are taken with me, then we try to stay together as long as we can, hold tight, don’t cry. If they take me and leave the children (as they left the other children on the east side of St. Paul when they took the parents away), then if the oldest of the children has her Gizmo watch and if it is able to make a call, she should call her father (my husband is a teacher and when he is in school, reception is not guaranteed), and if that doesn’t work, she should call one of her aunties, the one who answers her phone the most. If the Gizmo watch doesn’t work, if they are not home, they should go to the nearest gas station or an adult with a whistle and ask to use a phone. They should call the police. At the police station, they should tell the police that one of their aunties is a judge and give the police her name, and if that doesn’t work, then the children should give the names of their white grandparents and tell the police officers that the couple live in the senior co-op close to the lake. The children are scared. My ten-year-old sons put on brave faces. One looks only at his feet. The other has sucked in his lips so that his mouth is a line of folded flesh. The welling of liquid in my eyes fall from my twelve-year-old daughter’s. I tell the kids, “It’s not your job to save mommy or to protect her. I want you three to stay together and be safe. I’m the adult here. I’m a US citizen. I’ve no criminal record. I am… afraid, too.”

I am afraid because I am a naturalized US citizen. I came here at the age of six. I came as a refugee child whose whole world was a refugee camp right up until leaving for America. At forty-five, I am still the size of a child. Easy to shove, to push, to take. In my community and around me, I see ICE taking other naturalized citizens…

One, a grandfather, without a shirt or pants, just a pair of shorts and slippers, a man who has done nothing wrong. The snow white on the ground. The house, small, typical of the Hmong east side houses I’m surrounded by. The neighbors gathering, shouting, whistling, screaming for help… help that is a message of love but like all love powerless to prevent the hurt from happening. A grandchild’s blanket thrown over his bare shoulders to keep the cuffed hands hidden, the Minnesota cold from biting into shoulders that have been pushed down by too many hands, too much force. Two agents on either side.

https://lithub.com/letter-from-minnesota-if-they-take-me-and-leave-the-children/