Minneapolis residents shelter immigrant children separated from parents and sought by federal agents

In the shadows of Minneapolis’s immigration crackdown, a family of ten children huddles in a safe house, their lives upended after federal agents detained their mother in early January.

The 20-year-old eldest son made the difficult decision to relocate his siblings when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents repeatedly pounded on their door late at night. His mother, a 41-year-old Indigenous Ecuadorian office cleaner named Melida Rita Wampash Tuntuam, had been detained for entering the country illegally, despite having no known criminal record beyond minor traffic offenses.

“The immigration agents were knocking on our door very late at night, and that’s when I became afraid,” said the son, speaking anonymously due to deportation concerns. “I’m afraid that I’ll be taken and my brothers and sisters will be in the hands of the government.”

The family turned to Feliza Martinez, a church friend who quickly organized volunteers to move the children to safety in south Minneapolis. The group included the family’s 5-month-old brother and six other children under 16, all suddenly without their mother.

Martinez represents a growing network of Twin Cities residents providing aid to immigrant families caught in the intensifying federal immigration crackdown. These everyday Minnesotans have been mobilized by reports of aggressive tactics by federal agents, including allegations of warrantless home entries and violent confrontations with protesters.

“I do receive calls every single day from families and they’re terrified, and we’re just trying to help them as much as we can,” said Martinez, who has taken leave from her factory job to volunteer with Christian nonprofit Source MN. “I just try to bring hope—like, ‘We’re here with you.'”

The scale of the operation is significant—the Department of Homeland Security reports more than 3,000 arrests since early December, with over 2,000 federal agents operating throughout Minneapolis-St. Paul. In response, residents have organized to monitor enforcement activities while providing direct support to affected families.

Volunteers have paid rent for families whose breadwinners fear going to work, delivered meals, and arranged emergency custody provisions for children at risk of separation from parents. Source MN has expanded its food bank services to accommodate hundreds of sheltering immigrant families.

For the Wampash Tuntuam children, their arrival at the safe house marked the beginning of an uncertain chapter. Volunteers quickly transformed the space into a temporary home, bringing bunk beds, mattresses, snacks, baby supplies, and coloring books.

While the younger children adapted, finding comfort in simple pleasures like sharing Cheetos and coloring butterflies, the older siblings remain anxious about their future. They explained that ICE agents had promised to send a social worker to check on the younger children but instead surrounded their home twice with armed, masked officers.

“That’s when we knew they hadn’t sent a social worker but agents to detain us,” recalled the 22-year-old daughter, who also requested anonymity as she and three other family members have final removal orders. The 20-year-old brother and other siblings are working toward legal status, while the two youngest children are U.S. citizens.

The experience has transformed Martinez’s political views. A three-time Trump voter who supported him for his stance on abortion and gender-affirming care, she now expresses regret after witnessing family separations firsthand.

“Being on the front line and what I have experienced and seen, I wish I would’ve never voted for him,” Martinez said. “What he’s doing, it’s not Christian. It’s not my beliefs.”

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin stated that “ICE does not separate families,” explaining that parents can choose whether to be removed with their children or place them with designated caregivers. According to McLaughlin, Wampash Tuntuam entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 through Texas and later received a final removal order after due process.

The family tells a more complex story. They claim Wampash Tuntuam had been planning to self-deport but was preparing custody documents for her infant son. The older siblings say their mother wanted to protect her children from returning to homelessness in their native Ecuadorian Amazon.

Now the 20-year-old son has quit his restaurant job to care for his younger siblings, including the infant who struggles without his mother’s breastfeeding. The younger children repeatedly ask when their mother will return, and he comforts them with gentle untruths.

“I keep telling them that she is going to come back, that she is already on her way,” he said. “They think that.”

For this family and countless others in Minneapolis, a city once viewed as a place of opportunity has become a landscape of uncertainty and fear, brightened only by the compassion of volunteers who have opened their hearts and homes in response to the crisis.