A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Many immigrants have been scared to go to work in Minnesota, where the White House has sent a surge of federal agents. Hundreds of immigrants are now at risk of being evicted as rent comes due. NPR's Sergio Martínez-Beltrán reports on community efforts to help.
SERGIO MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN, BYLINE: Guatemala national C has not gone to his construction job since December, when the immigration surge started in Minnesota.
C: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: C lives in Minneapolis. He says it's been hard. He asked NPR to identify him only by his first initial because he fears deportation. The fear of deportation is also the reason why C has been out of work. More than 3,000 federal agents have been on the ground, and those agents detained C's son in January while the son was at work. C just learned his son's been deported. Now C has run out of money. A few weeks ago, he realized he was not going to have enough to make February's rent.
C: (Speaking Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: "I asked myself, where am I going to go?" C remembers. "Where am I going to end up?" He shared his concerns to some people he knew, and they connected him to a community group offering to pay his rent. A few of these groups have emerged in recent weeks in Minneapolis. Anna Stamborski (ph) leads one of them.
ANNA STAMBORSKI: My Signal is just popping off with people being like, yo, you have help from rent? We need help for rent. Can someone get help for rent?
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Stamborski has a day job at a nonprofit, and she's a Christian chaplain. Her mutual aid group has helped C and more than 185 others with rent or housing assistance this month. In this hypervigilant environment, doing that takes different forms, including bringing cash to the homes of immigrants in hiding.
STAMBORSKI: And they still, like, would not come to the door because they were freaked out.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Stamborski acknowledges this is not just financially unsustainable. It's overall unsustainable, full stop.
STAMBORSKI: People have already lost out on two months of rent pay. So that's nice. And yet there are economic implications in this that are far-reaching, and that people are going to have to be creative and honestly just trusting their neighbor.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: It's a trust that goes both ways. The donors are trusting that they are giving money to people who are genuinely in need, and the recipients are trusting that the people distributing this money won't call ICE on them. Stamborski and others, including educators and the city councils of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, are pushing for a statewide eviction moratorium. That's something Governor Walz has not issued, and his office has not provided a response as to whether it intends to do so. That's frustrating for Alexandria Gomez (ph).
ALEXANDRIA GOMEZ: Which is also really upsetting because a lot of people are really hurting, not only people who are immigrants, people who are facing deportation from ICE. But also, regular people who are helping these families need help as well.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: Gomez also leads a rent relief effort. Since the ICE surge, there have been a couple of days of general strikes. And many businesses have closed amid the surge, losing employees and customers. In the last few weeks, Gomez's group has raised more than $300,000, helping 170 families. She says it's up to grassroots fundraisers to keep people housed and fed.
GOMEZ: What we've been saying is that community is what's keeping each other safe. Without each other, there really would be no support system, there would be no rent assistance, there would be no food delivery. None of this would exist without just community supporting community.
MARTÍNEZ-BELTRÁN: And this community effort, she says, is another way to fight the federal government's immigration crackdown in their state.
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, NPR News, Minneapolis.
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