In May, spring flowers bloom in shades of bright blue, yellow and white for a few weeks until the weather warms into early summer. Virginia bluebells, trilliums and violets are a few of the briefly blooming flowers to be found in Minneapolis’ Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden.

The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, opened in April 1907, is the oldest public wildflower garden in the U.S. Today, it is run by the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board and spans 18 acres that about 640 plant species call home.

Susan Wilkins, the garden’s curator, said the garden is unique because, unlike most botanical gardens, the plants are curated to look like natural growth.

“They’re introduced and planted in a way to make it feel as though they were and they belong here and they belong together,” Wilkins said. “It’s so beautiful in that way, it’s very sophisticated, but very kind of subtle, too.”

The garden, which opened for its 118th season starting from April 15 to October, is named after Eloise Butler, a renowned Minneapolis botany teacher who started the garden to give people a place to learn about Minnesota’s native plants. Butler died at 81 years old while working in the garden in 1933.

The garden is guided by the legacy of Butler, Wilkins said. While nearly every plant species introduced to the garden is native to Minnesota, a few species are native to Butler’s home state of Maine and the northeastern U.S. — like the purple trillium.

Wilkins added that much of the garden’s tree cover today is thanks to Butler’s planting.

As a botanical garden, one of its core purposes is education. David Remucal, a horticulture professor at the University of Minnesota, said the garden is small but mighty in its variety of plants and educational impact, and he often takes his classes to visit the garden.

Linette Maeder, a naturalist at the garden who gives tours, said she loves how the space connects people with the natural world around them.

“A lot of times people are surprised that we have so much just right here in the city,” Maeder said. “It’s really awesome to have them be aware of the space that is for them to enjoy.”

The garden offers free flower and birding tours and up to twelve public education programs for kids and adults each week, as well as private group tours.

For visitors, the garden is a hidden gem where they can experience what Minnesota’s natural landscape has to offer and also celebrate milestones.

Devinna Hansen and Trish Fleischhacker, a pair of friends who toured the garden on Wednesday, included the garden tour as a part of Hansen’s 54th birthday celebration.

Hansen and Fleischhacker were first-time visitors to the garden but said this would certainly not be their last. The pair has lived in Northeast Minneapolis for years but had never made the trip to the garden, where they enjoyed getting to admire and learn about Minnesota’s native flowers.

“The other thing we talked about was what other things are available like this that we’re not taking advantage of?” Fleischhacker said.

On their tour, Hansen and Fleischhacker met Jill Olsen and Kathy Gustafson, another pair of friends who were celebrating Olsen’s 75th birthday. The two are long-time garden visitors who return to see how the garden changes throughout the year.

“It’s like rediscovering it when I come,” Olsen said. “It’s ever-changing.”

The garden serves another critical purpose in conserving Minnesota’s native plants for years to come.

Remucal, who is also the endangered plants curator for the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum’s plant conservation program, said conservation gardens like the Eloise Butler play an important role in protecting native plants. The movement of warming and changing climates across the U.S. could mean Minneapolis in 50 years feels like the warmer and drier Omaha of today, he said.

“It turns out that movement is faster than plants can move,” Remucal said. “No plant that is rare in the southwestern part of Minnesota will be able to stay ahead of that temperature change if it needs a nice comfortable bubble for the temperature or precipitation.”

One of those at-risk plants could be the showy lady slipper, Minnesota’s state flower and one of the garden’s growing species, Remucal said.

Wilkins said the garden’s tireless work to protect native plants and showcase them to the public is crucial to the future of plant conservation and Minnesota’s natural landscape.

“This is a space of hope and I think you go and feel that, too,” Wilkins said. “It just builds on that grounded hope, not fanciful hopes.”

Tucked into the Mill City Museum and overlooking the Mississippi River, the Mill City Farmers Market spills onto the surrounding city blocks on Second Street and Chicago Avenue.

On Saturdays, the farmers market’s variety of vendors and thousands of patrons bustle around the market, ushering in its 19th summer season under Northeast Minneapolis’ late morning sunshine.

Maya O’Brien McLeod, a manager of the farmers market, said the outdoor summer season is when the market is at its best, receiving more foot traffic with up to 10,000 visitors and 70 vendors on summer Saturdays.

“Connecting with the community, with the vendors and with our customers, with our regulars is so special,” O’Brien McLeod said. “That’s such a highlight of the job for me.”

Vendors return each year for the market’s friendly community.

Laurel Kelly, who helps run the organic tea shop Mrs. Kelly’s Tea, said the market’s visitors are what has kept the tea shop returning for 17 years.

“When I’m inside for the winter market, that feels like I’m part of a big community grocery store a little bit more. Transactions are a lot faster. I think people are less willing to sit and chat for a while,” Kelly said. “It feels like a brighter, more fun space in the summer.”

The Mill City Museum hosts a condensed, indoor version of the market with about 35 vendors from November to April, O’Brien McLeod said.

Na Yang, who helps sell produce for Mom’s Garden, said the farm is a vital part of the summer market for people who visit because it is the best time to sell their produce, which includes bean sprouts and bok choy.

Family-owned farms like Mom’s Garden, food makers, bakeries and artists make up the community of vendors the farmers market offers. This year, the market is welcoming several new vendors, such as goat cheese and honey seller Enchanted Gardens, and offering free monthly yoga classes and cooking tutorials.

The farmers market attracts local Minneapolitans and interstate visitors alike. Laura Bloch, a San Francisco resident visiting friends in Minnesota, said she enjoyed the market’s range of products.

“I love the variety of what’s here,” Bloch said. “Everything from textiles to food products to juices, all kinds of things.”

Zach Halstead, a Mill City neighbor, said he and his family go every weekend for their favorite wood-fired pizza from Northern Fires.

“The summer market is just so busy,” Halstead said. “It’s great to see everybody.”

Many vendors accept SNAP and EBT cards, O’Brien McLeod said. Visitors who spend $10 with a SNAP card can get $30 worth to spend on produce and prepared food at the farmers market.

Food vendors like Rashmi Bhattachan, who runs a Nepalese and Indian street food restaurant, Momodosa, said the summer farmers market is crucial to their business’s success.

“It’s a beautiful day outside, lots of people,” Bhattachan said. “We are so grateful for our customers to show up on day one and support us.”

The outdoor summer farmers market is twice as big as the indoor one and runs every Saturday from 8 a.m.-1 p.m., May through September. It also runs from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. in October.

O’Brien McLeod said she is excited for another year of welcoming new people, vendors and visitors to the farmers market.

“Seeing it continuing to be a really welcoming space for anyone to come and get food and hang out and just have a good time is really special,” O’Brien McLeod said.

Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) officially announced her campaign for a Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.

Craig is one of three candidates gunning for the DFL party’s 2026 senate nomination. She joins Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former Minnesota senator Melisa López Franzen in the DFL’s race for Sen. Tina Smith’s soon-to-be-vacated seat. Retired Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze and the 2024 Republican candidate for Senate, Royce White, are both running in the GOP for the seat.

Craig said she planned to run for Smith’s seat in February after Smith announced her retirement from the Senate. 

Flanagan also promptly announced her senate campaign after Smith shared her retirement plans. Her campaign officially launched on March 27.

In her campaign announcement video, Craig said she would fight back against President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and criticized Republicans for letting the Trump administration and billionaires like Elon Musk damage democracy.

“We’ve got to break through the chaos and take them head-on,” Craig said in her campaign video.

Musk, the Trump-appointed leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, closed or shrunk 11 federal agencies, fired or planned to fire more than 120,000 federal employees and canceled thousands of grants this year. 

In her time as a U.S. Representative, Craig fought for tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class. She passed a bill capping the cost of insulin at $35 for Medicare users in the House in 2023. 

Craig won her congressional seat in Minnesota’s 2nd district in 2019 after beating incumbent GOP Rep. Jason Lewis. The GOP held the seat for almost 20 years before Craig’s 2019 upset win.

Craig — who grew up in a trailer park, was raised by a single mother and fought to adopt her four children with her wife — said she knows how to fight like an underdog.

“They keep underestimating us,” Craig said in her campaign video. “And we keep winning.”

Craig will be the major centrist candidate on the DFL side of the 2026 Senate race. Craig has already been endorsed by former Rep. Dean Phillips, who attempted to primary former President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.

The DFL endorsement is expected to happen in May or June of 2026 ahead of the November elections.

“She and Earth,” an art exhibit centering sustainability and femininity, opened at the Minneapolis Club in Downtown Minneapolis on Friday. 

The exhibit, hosted by RevArt, showcases three Minneapolis-based artists, Umbreen Hasan, Suzanne Tacheny Kubach and Jodi Reeb. All three artists’ work is inspired by natural elements, and their painting practices prioritize sustainability. Their artwork will be on display at the Minneapolis Club until Aug. 8.

Tacheny Kubach, who paints with acrylics, said exhibits like “She and Earth” are essential to her art because she can see people’s reactions to her work, adding a bookend to the artistic process.

“If I just made art in my own studio, it’s like a one-sided conversation,” Tacheny Kubach said. “Having people interact with, engage with the work, being able to see how people’s eye travels through a piece of art is really important feedback.”

Hasan, a self-taught mixed-media artist, said the exhibits are a way for people to spend time taking care of themselves and celebrate original artwork. 

For Reeb, whose primary medium is painting with melted beeswax, exhibits are an invaluable way to connect with both patrons and other artists.

“It’s very nourishing,” Reeb, who is in her 29th year as an artist, said. “People become vulnerable and they’re willing to share when we’re talking about art because it’s very subjective, but also we can relate to it because we’ve all experienced some kind of art.”

The artists’ work makes its home in downtown Minneapolis, amid a city focused on encouraging — and funding — art and culture, two things essential to healing the city’s racial and economic disparities, according to Minneapolis’ 2040 plan. 

Chelsea Delaney, a guest at the exhibit opening, said the artwork is interesting because they are mixed-media pieces.

“How they interpret art and the way in which they use different types of media is really interesting and make it in such a beautiful way,” Delaney said.

All three artists’ work draws inspiration from nature. Hasan said she connected with the exhibit’s sustainability and femininity theme. 

“Earth provides an enrichment to us, it supports and it goes through different upheavals, but it still provides guidance and support to us,” Hasan said. “A mother or any woman does the same, especially for children and their loved ones.”

Reeb said her artwork’s composition and use of sustainable painting supplies are a way to raise awareness about protecting pollinators, an environmental issue she cares deeply about. 

“I’m not really a political artist, but I find that I can use this to kind of talk about something we all care about,” Reeb said.

For Tacheny Kubach, sustainability also plays an important role in how she runs her studio. She said she filters out the acrylic paint, which contains trace amounts of plastic, with her used water cups before returning it to the water supply. 

“Trying to be sustainable in my practice is really important to me as an artist, especially because when you’re making art, you’re making a whole bunch of stuff we’re adding to the universe,” Tacheny Kubach said. “I aim to live lightly in all sorts of ways.”

Painting is a second career for both Hasan and Tacheny Kubach. 

Hasan, whose first career is in healthcare, discovered painting after taking a wrong turn down the paint aisle of a craft store. She said the art form became a method of healing after a traumatic car accident in 2016.

After losing multiple loved ones in a handful of years, Tacheny Kubach decided to pour herself into her art. She said she received attention for her work after sharing it online.

“I took it very much as a sign,” Tacheny Kubach, whose first career was in education policy, said. “If the universe was moving me into this work so easily and elegantly, I was going to give it my all.”

Hasan, who started painting without any formal training, encourages others to try art for themselves.

“When we were young, we were all painting, we lose that, we become so self-conscious we lose that because we want to be perfect in front of other people,” Hasan said. “You can just paint, it’s for your own self it’s not for anyone else.”

While Earth Day is just one day in the year, Minneapolis’s environmental justice activists say it is still worth celebrating.

The first national Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970 was introduced by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson and meant to teach Americans about the environment and eventually led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Celebrating the once-groundbreaking national holiday is now a choice for many Americans with privilege from environmental harms, Mike Harley, the executive director of the Twin Cities’ Environmental Initiative, said.

“It’s another opportunity for us to spread the word, to engage people, to help put opportunities for action in front of people and to elevate issues that sometimes slip to second-, third- or fourth-tier concerns for many Americans not living on the front lines of environmental harm,” Harley said.

The Environmental Initiative is running an Earth Day fundraiser for environmental justice organizations. 

Air pollution, poor water quality and food insecurity are among the prominent environmental injustices residents, particularly non-white residents, face in Minnesota and Minneapolis, according to the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. These issues can hurt residents’ short- and long-term health.

In Minneapolis, these areas with the worst environmental injustices are known as the two green zones, where diverse neighborhoods face some of the worst pollution in the city.

Leslee Jackson, a board member for North Minneapolis’ Green Zone, said fighting for environmental justice in her community is a lifelong commitment throughout her education and career.

“The people and their wellbeing and their health, everything is connected and without one, you can’t have the other,” Jackson, who grew up in North and South Minneapolis, said. “So, giving back to the earth as a steward on this land to educate others, I’m happy to do that in this place.”

Green Zones in North and South Minneapolis are typically lower-income, primarily non-white areas that are disproportionately hurt by environmental issues like poor air, water or soil quality.

Natalie Rademacher, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis American Indian Center, said food insecurity and air pollution are two environmental issues that Indigenous residents have historically been harmed by.

“A lot of people in boarding schools were pushed onto reservations and were cut off from a lot of these traditional foods that our ancestors ate, like wild rice and bison, walleye, things like that,” Rademacher, who is Ojibwe, said. “Being cut off from these healthy foods and our ways of life led to a lot more processed foods.”

The Center, located in the South Minneapolis Green Zone, provides opportunities for Indigenous residents to live healthier lives, Rademacher said. It has a cafe that offers healthy, traditional indigenous foods and exercise programs to the local community. 

Jackson said she wants to see more city funding go toward fighting food insecurity for Green Zone residents.

Jayda Pounds, the city’s sustainability program coordinator who works with the Green Zone boards, said the program aims to create and support specific resources and events, like free trees and watering services, to reduce the environmental harm for residents.

Pounds said that continuing education on things like how to grow food in urban areas is crucial for improving the quality of life for Minneapolis residents. 

“We know that we need to continue the education, the push for making sure that our resident voices are heard and that the work doesn’t end just because (Earth Day) is over,” Pounds said.

For University of Minnesota students, simple habits like proper recycling and turning off unused lights can build a commitment to sustainability, according to Tim Ekblad, the director of the sustainability committee for the University’s College of Science and Engineering student board.

Ekblad, a third-year student studying environmental engineering, said the sustainability committee exists to encourage students to practice sustainability year-round.

“It’s important because it shows people a different way of thinking that they most likely would not be thinking about if the committee wasn’t there,” Ekblad said.

Earth Day offers the chance to celebrate environmental justice workers and bring people together for a common cause to spark a stronger commitment to the environment, Jackson said.

“It is an important day,” Jackson said. “But every day is Earth Day when you do this work.”

Sexual violence prevention and advocacy organizations are honoring Sexual Assault Awareness Month at the campus, city and state levels.

Allison Pauna, a direct care provider for sexual violence survivors at the Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis, said honoring Sexual Assault Awareness Month gets people to talk about sexual violence more and reduce its uncomfortable stigma.

“When we’re out in the community tabling, there will be a lot of people who kind of laugh and walk by,” Pauna said. “I know that’s out of being uncomfortable, but it’s important that we have these conversations and so that people know what it is.”

Sexual violence can include acts like revenge porn and grooming, Pauna added.

April was officially designated Sexual Assault Awareness Month in the U.S. in 2001, but sexual violence prevention activists were celebrating the month with events and programs decades before it was nationally recognized, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

Nicole Matthews, CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, said the coalition works as a supportive resource for other sexual assault advocates in the state, particularly those serving tribal communities.

“We can bring people together to reduce isolation, to support each other, to create a network where they can share resources, where they can be a sounding board for each other and they can learn from each other,” Matthews said. “That’s really critical.”

More than half of Native American women living in Minnesota experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, the highest rate of any racial group, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota reported in 2024. 

The coalition is hosting a conference for sexual violence advocates April 22 to 24 in Bloomington, Matthews said. The conference includes professional workshops, a pow-wow to honor sexual assault survivors and a self-care night for advocates to relax and support one another.

Sexual violence on campus

Advocates say that sexual violence on college campuses remains a present issue. More than 38% of all University of Minnesota female students reported experiencing sexual assault in their lifetime and about 15% of male students said the same, according to the University’s 2024 College Student Health Survey.

Chloe Vraney, the associate director for the University’s sexual violence center the Aurora Center, said academic advocacy services are the Aurora Center’s most-used resource by students.

“That is really monumental because we see how retention is impacted after violence happens,” Vraney said. “Students often drop out or people often leave their jobs because it’s really hard to continue showing up in the same way that you did before trauma happened.”

The Aurora Center’s academic advocacy resource is free, confidential and provides counseling for students struggling to focus or show up to class after a traumatic sexual experience, Vraney said. Aurora Center advocates can also help students get excused absences while they heal from a sexually violent experience.

Pauna said it’s important to not to ask “why” after a friend, roommate or loved one experiences sexual violence. 

“As a support person, it’s not our job to try and investigate and find out specifically what happened,” Pauna said. “Our job is to support them and believe them and just be there for them and ask them what is the best way I can support you and that might change.”

Throughout April, the Sexual Violence Center is giving out teal lightbulbs for residences and lighting several buildings and bridges in Sexual Assault Awareness Month’s official color, Pauna said.  The organization is also hosting a Take Back the Night event to conclude the month on April 30 at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. 

For students who know someone who has experienced sexual violence, Vraney said they should make a plan to follow up with a friend or roommate to check in after they’ve experienced sexual violence. The Aurora Center is hosting three events throughout April to honor Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Deconstructing stigma

For almost every Native American woman who experienced one act of sexual violence in the U.S., their perpetrator was non-Native, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota found. Most people who experience sexual violence experience it from someone in their same racial group, Matthews said.

Matthews said that, because tribal country legal jurisdiction does not usually extend beyond Native land, prosecution of non-Native perpetrators can be difficult. She added that a system that allows perpetrators a better chance to get away with sexual violence must be reexamined to prevent sexual violence against Native women.

“We have to look at you know the responses to our Native victims and what those responses have been,” Matthews said. “And do we have systems that encourage and support you know victims through that process because we know that many people don’t even report.”

Pauna said changing the stigma about sexual violence beyond its awareness month starts with understanding that it is never the survivor’s fault.

“It’s important people realize that if they do experience sexual violence, they did absolutely nothing wrong,” Pauna said. “It is not their fault, it is the person, the perpetrator, who did that, that is their fault.”

As overdose deaths in Minnesota decline, Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota install free emergency naloxone.

Overdose deaths dropped by about 24% in the U.S. in 2024, a decline nearly mirrored in Minnesota, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from March 2.

Opioid-involved overdose deaths increased from 2020 to 2022 by more than 50% in Minnesota. Five years into the state’s opioid epidemic, the decline could mean response efforts, such as free emergency naloxone injections and nasal sprays, are helping combat overdose deaths. 

Naloxone is a fast-acting drug that can help reverse the effects of an overdose.

Robert Levy, a doctor at Broadway Family Medicine who specializes in both addiction and family medicine, said the uncertainty and loneliness of the pandemic caused an increase in opioid addiction and overdoses.

“We were just really lonely and afraid and uncertain, and the people that have substance use disorder don’t have the tools or their brain isn’t set up to find other ways to cope with that other than use drugs,” Levy said. “That’s where their brain has been wired, and that’s their main coping mechanism, and so that’s what they did.”

The Minneapolis Health Department installed a vending machine that dispenses free Narcan nasal spray, a brand of naloxone, to combat overdose deaths. Overdose deaths increased by 22% between 2022 and 2023 in Minneapolis, according to Health Department data.

Jason Schildman, a public health specialist for the city’s opioid response team, said the vending machine was created to be accessible to anyone.

“We’ve made it pretty much no barrier, meaning anyone and everyone can come up, press a couple numbers on the front and get a free box of Narcan,” Schildman said.

The vending machine outside of the Minneapolis Fire Department’s Station 21 holds 150 boxes of Narcan at a time, Schildman said. Since it was installed in July, the vending machine has dispensed more than 1,400 free Narcan boxes.

Tony Zaccardi, another public health specialist for the city’s response team, said there was an intense need for public health intervention at the city level after the pandemic. 

“It created a lot of addiction issues and added on to the opioid addiction that was seen since the pandemic,” Zaccardi, who is in addiction recovery, said.

While less than 1% of University students report using opiates, according to the University’s 2024 College Student Health Survey, free emergency Narcan boxes became available on the University’s campus in March.

Michelle Trumpy, public health director at Boynton Health, said installing emergency naloxone boxes on campus helps the community beyond students.

“We know that the more naloxone that we have in the community, the better chances we have of saving someone from an overdose,” Trumpy said.

Free emergency naloxone kits are available at five campus locations between the East Bank, West Bank and St. Paul campuses.

Opioid-related overdose death data for Minneapolis in 2024 is not yet available, but Schildman said he is optimistic that the city’s opioid response efforts are helping reduce overdose deaths.

The city is planning to install a second naloxone vending machine, but the best location for it is not yet determined, Schildman said.

Levy said the stigma around addiction is complex because opioid use is hard to recognize, and those struggling can get stuck in a vicious cycle of invisibility.

“So that gives you the sense that, when you are suffering, you look around, and it looks like no one else is because everybody else looks normal,” Levy said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s just me. I’m somehow screwed up.’”

Levy added that this shame can make it difficult for people to seek and accept recovery help.

Trumpy said having naloxone on campus can reduce the stigma around opioid addiction because it makes emergency help readily accessible for anyone.

Zaccardi said he is optimistic about the city’s changing attitude toward addiction, which focuses more on lived experience than in previous years. 

“I was hired on because they did a feature on me for my one year anniversary of sobriety,” Zaccardi said. “We’re trying to help. We’re trying to come at it like, ‘There’s a person here and how do we show the humanity in that.’”

As President Donald Trump’s administration has opened up college campuses for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, questions about how international students and students who recently immigrated to the U.S. will be impacted have grown.

To answer those questions, the Minnesota Daily spoke with Nadia Anguiano, a University of Minnesota Law School professor and director of the University’s Federal Immigration Litigation Clinic, about what students should know about ICE enforcement on and near college campuses.

The Minnesota Daily: What reason is ICE giving for detaining international students on college campuses?

Nadia Anguiano: “What we’ve seen at Tufts and Columbia in particular, the cases that I think have been well publicized, so Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung, the stated reason that the Department of Homeland Security has given is actually a pretty obscure ground of the deportability that has actually, based on publicly available data, only been used about 15 times in its 35-year history before the case of Mr. Khalil.”

This ground of removal essentially states that it applies to non-citizens whose presence or activities in the United States, the secretary of state has reasonable grounds to believe, would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences on the United States. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has essentially said, or at least the implication if not a precise statement, is that the non-citizen’s pro-Palestinian activism has created a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus and that that’s detrimental to the United States’ foreign policy objectives with Israel.”

• Anguiano is referring to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act about foreign policy. Rubio and other Trump administration officials have referenced a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act and implied that protesters like Khalil were detained or deported for creating a hostile environment for Jewish students. 
• On March 7, Trump’s administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced they would cut $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University over antisemitism “inaction.” Columbia later agreed to demands to punish pro-Palestinian student protesters.

Anguiano: “One thing important to highlight here is that I mentioned the Department of Homeland Security has very rarely used (the provision). This is not fully confirmed, but based on available information, before Columbia student Mr. Khalil’s detention, I don’t think it had been used against a lawful permanent resident, which is one more secure status than just a visa.”

• Khalil is a lawful permanent resident who moved to the U.S. in 2022 and received his graduate degree from Columbia. He is married to Noor Abdalla, an American citizen, who is eight months pregnant with her and Khalil’s first child.

Anguiano: “The implications of using this, we’ll call it ‘the foreign policy removal grounds,’ are pretty severe. If you think about how it can be used, it’s by no means limited to non-citizens who engage in pro-Palestinian speech. For example, students who have a view about the presence of Ukrainians who are critical of Russia or economists skeptical of the tariffs in Canada, Mexico and China could all suddenly be considered as adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests and subject to deportation based on this ground.”

• Trump announced a tariff policy with all U.S. trade partners — including Canada, Mexico and China — on Wednesday. The policy included a 10% tariff on all imports.

Anguiano: “This ground of removability actually says it should not apply to cases involving speech. 

Congress said if you’re gonna apply this deportation ground to people’s beliefs and speech, there needs to be pretty egregious conduct in a heightened showing of why this is adverse to the United States (foreign policy) versus, conduct that’s more clear for the Secretary to say this is adverse to the interests of the United States.

ICE is stating these reasons for detention and canceling visas, but doing so in very procedurally irregular ways. What I mean by that is, for example, the Minnesota student, his lawsuit alleges that he was detained while the system still showed his visa to be valid. He was detained and it wasn’t until several hours later that his visa showed as being officially revoked. Generally, it’s the other way around where your visa is revoked and then detainment or arrest might come later. 

Another thing that’s highly irregular and really problematic is that generally when students’ visas are revoked, they have an opportunity to try to get their visas reinstated or voluntarily depart from the United States. It’s unheard of, at least in the case of the Minnesota student who, it’s public knowledge and in his lawsuit, was arrested allegedly on the grounds of a DUI. We don’t see that as immigration advocates. Getting arrested by ICE based on a DUI is completely unheard of, at least in prior times. These students are not getting an opportunity to voluntarily depart or try to fight the revocation of their visas and that’s procedurally irregular and very unusual.”

Daily: What should students know about ICE on college campuses?

Anguiano: “It’s important to understand the change and why this is happening prior to the Trump administration coming into power this year. There used to be a long standing memorandum called the Sensitive Locations Memo that provided that ICE would not do enforcement action on places that it called sensitive locations. Those were schools, churches and houses. It recognized the sensitivity of those locations as places of safety where people should be allowed to congregate without fear. President Trump rescinded that memo and basically put everything on the table, saying ICE will conduct enforcement anywhere it essentially wants to. Now, that means that unfortunately, campuses are on the table in terms of ICE doing enforcement there.”

Daily: What happens after a student is detained by ICE and what protections do they have?

Anguiano: “What will generally happen is ICE will transport them usually to a local ICE office or what we call a temporary holding facility for processing. ICE will fingerprint them, photograph them, ask them several questions and confiscate their property. At that point, they determine whether to officially institute what are called removal proceedings.”

• ICE removal proceedings start with a “Notice to Appear,” which is a court document that explains why a non-citizen should be removed from the U.S., according to the National Immigration Law Center. 
• At some point in this process, ICE will move the detainee to a permanent detention facility or jail, Anguiano said. The University of Minnesota student detained on March 27 is being held at the Sherburne County Jail.
• Students detained by ICE have the right to due process of law, counsel at no expense to the government, to remain silent and to receive calls and visits from a lawyer wherever they are being held. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, detainees have a right to ask for a bond, which is the right to ask to pay to be released from detention while fighting a case. 

Anguiano: “You can ask ICE for a bond directly. ICE does have the ability to set the bond amount, but if ICE declines to set bond for you, you have the right to ask an immigration judge to give you a bond. In that case, it’s an immigration judge who determines whether or not to grant you bond and what the bond amount is. Generally, under the statute to get bond, a non-citizen has to show that they are not a danger and they are not likely to flee or have abscond and not show up to their removal proceedings.”

Daily: For students worried about being targeted by ICE, how can they stay safe?

Anguiano: “The first thing I want to do is acknowledge how stressful and fear-inducing this is. I feel really strongly, just being upset, that our students are being put in the situation of having to fear potential enforcement. I do think it’s important for students to understand that even within the system, they have rights and they have community advocates who want to stand up for them who are wanting to support them and their families. I hope that that is at least a small measure for students to maintain their power and their strength and knowledge that they have these rights.” 

• Anguiano advises students to carry color copies of their current immigration documents and make sure they have trusted friends and family who know what to do should they be detained by ICE. 
• The University’s International Student and Scholar Services Office (ISSS) offers free counseling services to help students understand their rights.

Daily: What are some things friends and family should know if someone is detained?

Anguiano: “Know if you don’t hear from a loved one who might be in that situation for a while, you should have a protocol in place with that person to act quickly. For example, the loved one might know to call the ISSS office if they are concerned that something might have happened to the student. Knowing the contact information and phone numbers of advocacy organizations like the ACLU. I don’t use this word, but ‘A’ stands for ‘alien.’ If you know somebody’s A Number, there’s a public website where you can enter it and it will tell you where they are detained.”

• A person’s status can be found in ICE’s online detainee locator system with their A Number, full name and country of nationality.

Daily: What responsibility does Minneapolis have in ICE operations?

Anguiano: “Minneapolis, like everybody else in the United States, is bound by judicial orders. So if a judge, not ICE, issues a warrant for the arrest of someone or a judicial subpoena, then the city of Minneapolis, like everyone else, is bound to comply with that under our system of rule of law. Beyond that, the city of Minneapolis or the University is playing no role and have no duty to assist ICE in their enforcement actions. 

I’m pleased that the city of Minneapolis has taken a strong stance, saying, ‘You, ICE, are responsible for enforcing immigration laws. We are not going to cooperate with you.’ That doesn’t mean obstruct, but (not) cooperate simply means ‘I’m not going to help you.’ Without it, that then would put Minneapolis officers, the city of Minneapolis and also the University police in a place where there will be a breakdown of trust with the community if our community starts to understand MPD and UMPD as agents of ICE and an enforcement arm of ICE.”

• The University sent an email to students and faculty on March 28 that said campus departments and the UMPD do not enforce federal immigration laws nor inquire about immigration status.

Daily: What can the University do to fight ICE orders? What does the University’s statement of non-involvement mean for students?

Anguiano: “What the University can do is be very diligent in training its staff, its departments to understand the difference between a judicial warrant, a judicial subpoena, and an ICE warrant and an ICE subpoena. Those can sometimes look similar to the untrained eye. As I said before, the University, like other entities, are bound to comply with judicial orders, but they do not have to comply with ICE administrative warrants. So, really having a united voice and training University employees to understand that difference can also be protective of students. For example, where we’re sitting here in the University, is considered a private area. ICE would need a judicial warrant to enter here. They could not enter without that, even with an ICE administrative warrant.”

• Judicial warrants are signed by a judge or magistrate. ICE warrants are signed by immigration or ICE agents or an immigration judge. ICE warrants are not legally binding and thus, a person can refuse an ICE warrant to enter or search a home, but they can not refuse a judicial warrant.

Daily: What does the legal future of ICE and college students look like? 

Anguiano: “The University of Minnesota graduate student, Mr. Doğukan Günaydın, who was detained and sued (ICE and Trump) on Sunday. He is the individual being held in Sherburne County Jail. Now that case is before the federal district court in Minnesota and unless Mr. Günaydın is released before the case makes its way, I would expect the court to rule on that case in the coming weeks, if not sooner. The same thing is happening with the cases at Columbia and Tufts University, and so it’s hard to give a precise timeline, but I do think this has the potential to make it up to higher courts in a short period of time. We’re talking about an order of weeks, not months or years.” 

Daily: How might the courts rule in these cases?

Anguiano: “What I can share is that in the cases that are in the public, in Columbia, the Minnesota court hasn’t ruled yet to my understanding, but the courts involved for the Columbia student and the Tufts student have issued strongly worded orders preventing ICE from transferring the individuals out of state. So from that sense, they have been really, I think, appropriately and correctly protective of the due process rights of the students. What will be really interesting in this case is how the courts rule about the constitutionality of that ‘ground of removal,’ the foreign policy ground, that is involved here.” 

• Anguiano referenced the unconstitutional vagueness doctrine with foreign policy grounds, which means a law is unconstitutional when it does not clearly define what a violation of it looks like.

Anguiano: “I, as an advocate, feel strongly that the courts should invalidate this provision, but TBD.”

Daily: What would you stress to students concerned about ICE on campus? 

Anguiano: “I believe in the rule of law and I believe in understanding your rights and really taking ownership and control of that. Have an important phone number memorized. I will admit to you that my emergency contact is my best friend, my sister. I don’t know her number by heart and I should. So have important phone numbers memorized. Understand your rights and, for people who are non-citizens, carry immigration documents with them.”

Amy and Madison Woods Jackson built their home in Minneapolis’ Prospect Park neighborhood in 1908 with their three daughters. In return, the neighborhood met the family with racist protests and discrimination, with some neighbors saying no kids would play with the Jackson’s daughters.

Unphased by the discrimination, the family remained in Prospect Park and built the neighborhood’s first and only playground in their yard. Neighborhood kids quickly joined the Jackson’s three daughters, Marvel, Helen and Zelma, to play. 

The Jackson family raised college graduates, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Harlem Renaissance author and a civil rights activist.

Today, the Jackson family’s story of determination, strength and prowess lives on as an anchor for community building and education in Prospect Park.

The neighborhood Prospect Park Association (PPA) started the Jackson Project in 2019 while researching the history of racial housing discrimination in Minneapolis, according to Jerry Stein, the project’s co-chair. 

Stein, a lifelong Prospect Park resident, said the project’s goals are twofold — to retell the Jackson family’s story and honor their inspiring story through community building.

“We retell the story, we get inspired by the story from the past,” Stein said. “We honor them as they deserve, and we also grow and learn and take and challenge ourselves in unexpected ways.”

Sharon Peters, the daughter of Helen Jackson, said she is proud of her grandparents’ self-made success and ability to make a legacy in a place where they were originally unwanted.

“My grandparents, the strength to set off and conduct their lives, the fact that they both ended up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that they ended up there as African Americans at the beginning of the early 20th century, it’s quite amazing,” Peters said. “They were both very intelligent people. I’m very proud, even though I didn’t know them.”

The University of Minnesota’s Good Neighbor Fund awarded the Jackson Project $9,500 in 2025 to hold community events on May 4 and 8, where Prospect Park neighbors will learn more about the Jackson family’s legacy. In 2023, the Fund granted the Jackson Project money to renovate a playground named after the family.

The Jackson family’s legacy extends to Prospect Park’s local classrooms.

Kiah Young-Burns, a first-grade teacher at Prospect Park’s Pratt Elementary School, started incorporating the Jackson family into her curriculum in 2021. She said bringing the family’s story into her classroom was initially a personal history passion project.

“We were teaching a curriculum that does not, in my opinion, do justice to histories that include racism and discrimination,” Young-Burns said.

Following a Minneapolis Public Schools initiative to bring primary texts into the classroom, Young-Burns wrote her own primary text — a history of the Jackson family. She used local history as a lens through which her students learned about their neighborhood and broader historical topics like housing discrimination.

Other Pratt teachers began incorporating Young-Burns’ curriculum into their classrooms in 2023. Now, she said the Jackson family’s story is an essential part of how Pratt teaches history.

“Each year, kids will learn more and more in-depth about the family, but also use this as a structure to learn about how local history is national history,” Young-Burns said. “And how the history of racial justice and social justice is so connected to our lives now and today.”

Pratt teachers and PPA members worked parallel to one another in incorporating the Jackson family’s story into the fabric of their neighborhood community. They joined forces in 2023 to renovate and rename the Pratt School playground after the Jackson family. 

Cathy Fitch, the president of Pratt’s Parent Teacher Organization and a Pratt parent, said a partnership between Pratt parents, educators and the PPA was inevitable.

“It just seems like a really natural partnership of the folks in the neighborhood who are invested in the school, but also in the relationship they’ve built with the Jackson family and bringing that awareness to the students,” Fitch said. “It seems like you couldn’t do it any other way.”

This school year and next, Pratt students will create an individual history project about any topic related to the Jackson family’s story, Young-Burns said, such as redlining or the Harlem Renaissance.

Peters said she has stayed connected with the Prospect Park and Pratt communities because it gives her the opportunity to connect with a family history she had previously only heard about.

“To have the playground named for the family, that alone would be very meaningful,” Peters said. “But to have this family story be part of what the Pratt School produces is phenomenal and we’re really most gratified.”

Peters said she will be visiting Pratt again this May to celebrate the students’ history projects.

Young-Burns said using local history to teach national stories of injustice makes learning history more personal for students because they can relate what they learn to the Jackson family and their own home and classroom.  

“My hope is that it becomes a part of our identity as a school,” Young-Burns said. “That we think of ourselves as people who carry this history on and who learn from it.”

Minneapolis’ Cultural Districts Arts Fund returns for its second year to award artists and cultural centers grant money to begin and grow their work.

Ben Johnson, the director of Minneapolis’ Arts and Cultural Affairs Department, said the grant program was one of the department’s first initiatives to invest in the artistic and cultural centers across the city.

“We take the stance that artists and cultural spaces are the first responders in their community, they’re the frontline workers in their community, they know best how to program and heal their community,” Johnson said. “They are and they have always been culturally rich, but resource-starved.”

The grant awarded $690,000 to artists and cultural centers in Minneapolis’s seven cultural districts in 2024, Johnson said. This year, the city is adding $10,000 to the fund, rounding out the total to about $100,000 for each of the city’s seven cultural districts.

The Arts and Cultural Affairs Department is accepting 2025 applications until April 15 for festivals and cultural spaces, and pop-up art projects.

Norway House, a modern Norwegian art and cultural center on Franklin Avenue, was one of the 2024 grant recipients. Heather Vick, a fundraising coordinator for Norway House who oversaw the center’s grant application, said Norway House wanted to showcase its role as a place for making memories.

“It was really important to them to bring people in to see the space and for people to learn that this is a place that they could gather with friends and family,” Vick said.

Vick said the application process was tedious, but city staff were enthusiastic and communicative with applicants.

Grant recipients ranged from individual artists, community cultural centers, and art and culture festival programs, with grant awards ranging from $5,000 to $16,700, according to Meena Mangalvedhekar, program manager for the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department.

Nonprofit after-school program 826 MSP, which teaches kids, many of whom are Somalian and East African, how to lead and express themselves through writing, received a $5,000 grant. 

Executive director of 826 MSP Jamal Adam said the program is meant to help kids develop as individuals through writing.

“We do a unique work in that we focus on writing, but as an artistic expression and academic development for the students we work with,” Adam said. “We try in everything we do to center the voices of the youth we serve.”

 Derek Davidson, 826 MSP’s program director, said they decided to apply for the grant because the program does the exact work the city was looking to fund.

“The need for the work we do, it’s always bigger than our resource system,” Davidson said.

“Every time we find out about support out there, we try to get it because there area lot more students that we could work with if we had the resources to build our capacity.”

Norway House won a $5,000 grant, Vick said, which the center used to hold a free gingerbread-making event and will be reapplying for a Cultural Districts Art Fund grant this year.

“That was the main thing, (that) we could have the community in for some really wonderful times and they wouldn’t have to pay a thing,” Vick said.

Based in the Seward neighborhood, 826 MSP used their $5,000 grant to publish a collection of kids’ work in its yearly zine and bring in local artists to teach the kids, Davidson said.

Johnson said the grants offer a huge return on investment because, by funding Minneapolis’s existing artistic and cultural life, the grants encourage the city to grow and prosper.

“As opposed to having no resources that kill that spark of those things, we’re trying to lean in and make sure that people who are interested in transforming their community through the lens of arts and culture are supported,” Johnson said.