Jill's Journal: The ICE invasion in my hometown

Last Friday afternoon, I picked up my phone, clicked on the Facebook app, and a live video appeared before my eyes.

There it was. Main Street of my hometown. I recognized the businesses. Jake’s Pizza on the end, which decades ago was one of the town’s three grocery stores, Super Valu. And next door, which once housed the JC Penney store, where our family often shopped for clothing and other goods, is now a Hispanic-owned grocery store. And parked right outside the store were three, idling black vehicles. 

ICE was in St. James, Minn.

I watched the live video, and in that moment, it stopped being a headline. It stopped being something happening “somewhere else.” For months, immigration raids have been stories on the evening news – images flashing across a television screen before I turn the channel and go on with my day. They didn’t touch me. They didn’t touch the people or places I know.

Until they did.

St. James is where my roots are. It’s the kind of town that shapes who you are, whether you stay or move on. I grew up there at a time when the Hispanic population was smaller, but still very much part of the community. Over the four-plus decades since I graduated from high school, that population has grown. The town has changed – as most all towns do.

And yes, change can be hard. 

But what I felt watching that video wasn’t discomfort with change. It was fear.

Minnesota is where I was born. It’s home. And right now, it feels like it’s in an uproar – bordering on chaos. The tension between the Trump Administration and Governor Tim Walz is loud and oh so public, but the people truly paying the price aren’t the politicians. It’s the families. The workers. The neighbors. The people who wake up every morning just trying to do what so many of us take for granted: earn a paycheck, keep a roof overhead, send their kids to school, maybe even college someday.

Those are not radical dreams. They’re everyday American dreams.

What’s happening now feels heavy. Watching ICE activity spill into small towns like St. James makes it impossible to pretend this is only an urban issue or a border issue or a political issue. It’s a human issue. It’s about real people – many of whom have lived here for years, even decades – suddenly wondering if today is the day everything they’ve built could disappear.

I have to admit something that surprised me: I’m scared.

Not just scared for the people directly impacted, but scared for what this moment says about our country. About who we’re becoming. About how easily fear turns into force, and how quickly neighbors can be reduced to targets.

This doesn’t feel like leadership. It feels like a form of “bullying.”

And bullying doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us stronger. It only leaves wounds – visible and invisible – that linger long after the agents leave town.

I don’t claim to have answers to the immigration debate. I know it’s complex. I know borders matter and laws matter. But I also know compassion matters. Humanity matters. And unity matters.

Right now, I wish we could pause. Take a breath. Stop yelling. Stop posturing. Stop turning people into political chess pieces. I wish we could work together – truly together – as a United States. Not red versus blue. Not “us” versus “them.” Just people trying to live, work, and belong.

When ICE came to St. James, it shattered the illusion that this couldn’t happen here. It reminded me that no community is untouched anymore. And once you see that you can’t un-see it.

All I can hope and pray is that we remember who we are, who we claim to be, and who we still have the power to become.