(RNS) — As she prepared to meet with a woman whose husband had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Rhonda Miska, a communications director at the Church of St. Timothy in Blaine, Minnesota, portrayed it as a public safety intervention in the crisis ICE agents have brought to her city.
“I feel like I get to be like part of the SWAT team that’s just on the ground, available,” said Miska, who as spent more than two decades in Hispanic ministry.
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She described a community afraid to leave their homes, go to work and attend school. “There is a lot of fear, there’s a lot of sadness,” said Miska. Besides the risk of being arrested, she said, the immigrants she ministers to despair at being depicted as criminals or rapists. “If people just tell you over and over that you’re terrible and treat you like you’re terrible, it kind of starts to mess with your mind,” she said.
Miska is one of many Minnesota Catholic women who are leading resistance efforts in the Twin Cities area as federal immigration agents have engaged in a large-scale operation that has left the community frightened and indignant after the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in January…