02/13/2026
āWhen I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpersāso many caring people in this world.ā
āMister Rogers
They were going to be the helpers that Mister Rogers said to look for. In early January, Natalie Ehret brought her sons to the Henry Whipple Federal Building -- the nerve center of ICE's months-long operation in Minneapolis -- to hand out cookies and hand warmers to the protesters keeping watch across the street. She didn't know people were being released from detention there in the frigid Minnesota winter.
Then one of her sons called her over. He'd found two young women who had just been released. They were freezing with no phone, no ID, and no ride. He'd already brought them to the family's car, given them food and water, and handed them a phone to call home.
Within days, the Army veteran and mom of two sons had founded Haven Watch -- a round-the-clock volunteer operation stationed at the gate of the Whipple building. Because what her son stumbled into that afternoon wasn't an anomaly. It was happening every single day. "From his act of kindness," Natalie later told MPR News, "that's what we do every day."
Like most Minnesotans, Natalie had no idea that federal agents were simply releasing people into the dead of a Minnesota winter with nothing.
But the pattern, once she saw it, was unmistakable. And appalling.
Detainees were being turned loose from Whipple at all hours -- day and night -- almost always stripped of their phones and identification during detention. No phone call before release. No one waiting for them outside. They walked out in whatever they'd been wearing when they were grabbed. Often without a coat. Into temperatures that regularly plunged into the single digits.
One volunteer, Kim Gerdes, described the moment it clicked for her: "They released someone in front of the Whipple Building in no winter clothes. It was freezing cold. She was just out in the cold." Gerdes gave the shivering woman everything she had on her -- her gloves, everything. "That's when I realized there was this immense need."
Another time, a mother and two children, ages 2 and 6, walked out of Whipple without coats. They had been detained in a facility in Texas holding thousands of people before being returned to Minnesota and released with nothing. "These kids are traumatized," Gerdes said. "They're out in the cold. They're shaking, crying. They just went through something so horrible."
The stories of who was being swept up and dumped back outside defied belief.
Natalie estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the people she met at the gate were American citizens. Detained for nothing more than observing ICE operations. Blowing a whistle at an agent. Being the wrong color in the wrong place. Stories like these have poured out of Minneapolis for months -- citizens tackled on sidewalks, dragged from cars, detained for hours, and nearly always released without charges or explanation.
Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a Somali American born in the United States, described a masked agent sprinting at him at full speed, tackling him, and dragging him handcuffed through the snow. "I told him, 'I'm a U.S. citizen.' He didn't seem to care."
Hussen was taken to Whipple and eventually released -- told to walk the seven miles in the freezing cold back to where he'd been grabbed.
Others -- legal refugees, immigrants with valid documentation -- were pulled from cars on the way to work, showed their IDs, and still dragged to Whipple. "To say that they're not criminals is a total understatement," Natalie said. "They're business owners and kids."
Gage Garcia, a U.S. citizen, was shackled and held for hours after blowing a whistle in an agent's face. He could see immigrant detainees through one-way windows -- "crying, curled up in a ball, distraught."
Inside Whipple, the conditions were horrendous. A Star Tribune investigation -- based on interviews with 30 detainees and nearly 200 court records -- documented a facility designed for 12-hour holds that had devolved into something far worse. Cells meant for 20 crammed with 100 people. Barely any food. Bleeding and injured people denied medical care. A young Muslim woman was shackled at the ankles and locked in a bathroom with three men for 24 hours.
The operations inside were as chaotic as they were cruel. U.S. citizens detained at Whipple described agents who couldn't figure out how to open doors, wrote detainees' information on scraps of paper, and took mugshots on personal cellphones. One Navy veteran who was detained summed up the disorder: "Their operations are, just for lack of a better term, garbage."
Many people are held overnight or even multiple days in a facility with no beds, forcing people to sleep on concrete floors in freezing conditions with no blankets. Natalie described how she's had several teenagers in her car after being released "crying and shaking, telling me how cold they were."
"After some of these I just go cry in the parking lot because it's so devastating," Natalie reflects. "I just don't know how we got so lost that we can traumatize these people that are our community members."
For its part, DHS issued the same statement it always does -- that detainees receive "proper meals, medical treatment, and opportunities to communicate" -- but in a court hearing last week over its own failures to comply with release orders, a Department of Justice attorney admitted what everyone already knew: the system "sucks."
And for those that were released -- many of them hungry, sick, or injured -- they were walking into a Minnesota winter where exposed skin can develop frostbite in under ten minutes. Where being released outside without a coat isn't just cruel -- it's potentially lethal.
But as they have again and again over these past few months, ordinary Minnesotans stepped up when they saw their neighbors suffering. Here, they did it again -- with Haven Watch.
Volunteers in orange vests now station themselves outside the Whipple building around the clock. They never know when someone will walk out -- but someone always does and the need has only grown. Natalie told MPR News this week that "if anything, we're seeing more people coming through."
So the volunteers wait with warm cars idling -- all day and all night. Piles of donated coats in the backseats. Burner phones charged and ready. Snacks and water on hand. When the gate opens, they cross the street, bring the person to a car, hand them a phone, and stay with them until a ride arrives or drive them home themselves.
"So many of us were sitting at home doom-scrolling, watching it on the news wanting to make a difference," said volunteer Sarah Haraldson. "This was a way to do that."
But the work is devastating. The day-to-day vigils -- hours spent waiting in their cars, never knowing when someone will walk out -- are physically taxing. And the emotional toll of meeting person after person who has been traumatized, abused, or injured by their own government is relentless.
"Most people are upset, no matter how long they were in there and why they were taken in," Haraldson said. "I have had more grown men cry in my car in the last week than anyone should see."
For Haraldson, it's personal. She has a 20-year-old son, adopted from Ethiopia as a baby, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen. "It scares me every day when he is out that they could pick him up and put him in that building based on the color of his skin and nothing else."
The message Haven Watch carries to every person who walks out of that gate is simple.
"We want people to know as they come out of that building that we love them, and they are our friends, they are neighbors, they are family, and people love them and want to support them."
The story of what Haven Watch was doing spread quickly, and with it came a wave of support that stunned even its founders.
A GoFundMe campaign launched on January 17 has raised more than $700,000 from over 9,800 donors -- and support keeps growing. What started with phone calls and car rides has grown into something much larger. Haven Watch now operates a full website and has expanded into a broader community resource: legal and immigration questions, healthcare referrals, lost wages, rental assistance for families whose breadwinners are too afraid to leave home.
Countless Minnesotans have stepped up as volunteers, embracing the group's motto: "No One Walks Alone."
The need is not going away. Even with a drawdown of 700 agents from the area, there are still over 2,000 federal agents in the Twin Cities area. This is a massive number. It is still one of the largest occupations of an American city by the federal government in history.
People are still being grabbed. Still being held. Still being released with nothing into the bitter cold.
For many of them, the first kind face they see belongs to a Haven Watch volunteer in an orange vest.
"After I've seen who comes through that gate, I just can't be at home thinking we're missing someone," Natalie reflects. "Emotionally it feels unsustainable. But that's being human. I shouldn't pick my son up from soccer and pretend I didn't just hear a story that's so painful that it changed me."
The toll is immense. But so is the resolve. "We won't stop," she says. "But we are tired."
The simple act of waiting at a gate with a warm car and a charged phone is not a small kindness. It is the thing standing between a stranger and the cold. And right now, thanks to Natalie and the volunteers of Haven Watch, no one walks out alone.
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To support the critical work of Haven Watch, you can donate to their GoFundMe campaign at https://tinyurl.com/mraxxt9v
To learn more about how to get involved as a volunteer, visit https://havenwatch.org -- or check out their current call for supplies at https://www.facebook.com/people/Haven-Watch/61586826632816/
To take action: The deadline on the new DHS funding is this Friday. Call your Senators to block any new funding for ICE at (202) 224-3121 or use the action alert at https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-budget-ice-defund/
To listen to a new interview with Haven Watch founder Natalie Ehret on MPR News, visit https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/02/10/grassroots-group-haven-watch-grows-to-support-released-detainees-from-whipple-building
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For children's books that encourage empathy and understanding of Mighty Girl immigrants of the past and present, visit our blog post, "A New Land, A New Life: 25 Mighty Girl Books About the Immigrant Experience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12855
For Mighty Girl books that teach children about the value of helping others in your community, visit our blog post: "Making an Impact: 40 Mighty Girl Books About Charity and Community Serviceā at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10983
For empathy-building book for young kids about the importance of compassion and being kind to others, visit our blog post "25 Children's Books That Teach Kids to Be Kind," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=19359
For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
For books for tweens and teens about girls living under real-life authoritarian regimes throughout history that will help them appreciate how precious democracy truly is, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426
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