MINNEAPOLIS — Neighbors United, set up by Somali small-business owners that now includes Latino, Hmong and African American vendors, held a press conference at the state Capitol in St. Paul April 28. The group turned in petitions signed by 1,000 vendors and their supporters to Gov. Tim Walz demanding compensation for losses they suffered during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s recent Operation Metro Surge targeting area immigrants.
The monthslong operation resulted in assaults, arrests and deportations of immigrant working people here. Frightened by the attacks and admonitions from middle-class radicals that they should stay at home, many did, and stopped coming out to shop.
Even when large, union-led protests in January finally led the White House to pull many of the ICE agents from the Twin Cities, the small-business owners had been devastated.
The Neighbors United delegation’s petition demands direct relief from the state to make up for losses to their livelihoods, as well as a halt to resulting eviction proceedings both on where they live and on their shops.
The governor has proposed a relief bill, but it would cover only business owners that make at least $200,000 a year, far more than vendors with kiosks at the Somali community Karmel Mall, Plaza Mexico and Hmong Village take in.
Kia Lor, who sells tea, herbs and other items at a kiosk in Hmong Village, told the Militant that her son, Xue, was arrested by ICE last December. His computer repair booth was next to her kiosk. He is still in detention, threatened with deportation to Laos, a country he left as an infant and where he has no relatives.
After the Vietnam War, she and other Hmong women whose fathers and husbands had fought with U.S. forces, fled retaliation from Pathet Lao soldiers. She swam across the Mekong River at age 14 with baby Xue on her back, ending up in a Thai refugee camp, then relocated to Minnesota in 1980. She is now a U.S. citizen.
Khadijo Warsame, a leader of Neighbors United, closed out the press conference saying, “Neighbors United will keep fighting.”