Publisher’s note: I’ve been following Thomas Lee’s writing and social posts over the past few weeks, and they stopped me in my tracks. I remembered him from our shared time in the Asian American Journalists Association and from his work at The Seattle Times, and I reached out to ask if he’d be willing to put into words what daily life in Minneapolis feels like right now. What follows is a letter he wrote for La Conner and Swinomish readers — personal, unsettling and grounded in both fear and hope.
By Thomas Lee
A few days after a Border Patrol agent and Custom and Border Protection officer killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, I finally worked up the courage to visit his memorial site. The spot was less than two blocks from my office on Nicollet Avenue, and the staff there kindly gave carnations to anyone who wanted to pay their respects to Pretti.
It was a chilly Thursday late afternoon, and I recall seeing the fog from my breath as I crossed the street. I noticed an older, white couple on the other side, the wife clutching a bouquet of flowers.
As I approached, we nodded to each other, each of us aware of our shared mission that day. After some conversation, I learned they were from a small town about 45 minutes north of the Twin Cities.
“We had to come,” the woman said, speaking with perhaps the strongest Minnesotan accent I had ever heard in my life.
“Me too,” I said.
The husband suddenly turned and looked directly into my eyes.
“How are you doing?” he said.
Well, at least that’s what I thought I heard at first. What he really said was: “How are you doing?”
I instinctively realized that he was directing his question not at some random person in Minneapolis but at a non-white U.S. citizen terrified of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“Well, not so good,” I said before taking out my passport. “I don’t leave my apartment without it now.”
“Oh my God,” the wife said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m so sorry that you have to go through this,” the husband said. “It’s not right.”
They both hugged me.
“You can’t make me cry so soon!” I joked, my eyes welling up with tears. “We haven’t even reached the memorial site yet!”
At the moment, I realized I could hold two conflicting emotions at once, both equally true: tremendous fear and tremendous hope.
Let’s start with the fear.
I was born in Boston, the son Chinese immigrants who had moved to America looking for a better life. I was frequently the only Asian American in my class, a fact my peers never let me forget.
I was the target of the usual direct racism, slurs like “gook” and “chink.” But as I grew older, the racism became more subtle and passive aggressive. Once, when I lived in St. Louis, I went to the DMV to get my state ID.
“Place of birth?” the cranky clerk asked me.
“Boston,” I replied.
She gave me a look.
“Place. Of. Birth,” she asked more deliberately, as if I didn’t understand the original question.
“BAW. STON,” I said.
At this point, I knew that I would never look “American.” People would always assume that I’m the foreigner no matter where I was born.
And I was mostly fine with that. If such people left me alone. What really terrified me was U.S. history, especially when Americans perceive an outside, hostile threat.
In 1942, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered U.S. troops to detain 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast and place them in desolate prison camps.
The number of these prisoners whom the U.S. government eventually charged with treason or espionage? Zero.
Mind you, the majority were U.S. citizens, many of whom had never set foot in Japan. It was, and remains, one of the worst violations of civil liberties in American history.
The foreign threat to America may change, but not the country’s response to it. When President Trump was re-elected in 2024, he declared illegal immigration a “national emergency” and soon ICE teams started to sweep through American cities, including the Twin Cities.
Many of my white friends didn’t understand my fear.
“You’re a U.S. citizen, aren’t you?” one person said.
Yes. But so were the Japanese Americans in 1942. Sure enough, ICE agents were arresting not just undocumented immigrants but also refugees, legal residents and, yes, some U.S. citizens.
The worst image was ICE agents breaking down a door in St. Paul and removing from the house – into the frigid Minnesota winter – an elderly Asian man, wearing nothing but shorts, Crocs and a thin blanket. The agents later determined that ChongLy “Scott” Thao was a U.S. citizen and returned him home.
No apology. No nothing.
St. Paul Mayor Kaoly Her, the first Hmong American elected to the office, later reported that ICE agents were sweeping through neighborhoods.
“Where are the Asians?” she said one agent demanded.
It was around this time I started to carry my passport. Better safe than sorry.
However, I felt the weight of the moment. My worst fear had started to come true. I now needed “documents” not to travel to another country but just to walk around my own community.
But here’s where the hope part comes in. Thousands of Minnesotans, many white people, have hit the streets protesting ICE, observing their operations, raising money, delivering groceries to people too scared to leave their homes.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti sacrificed their lives confronting federal immigration agents. My friends, both in the Twin Cities and around the country, have sent messages of support and concern for both my physical safety and mental health. Two particularly close friends in Seattle offered their place for me to get away from Minneapolis a bit.
“Friend, your nervous system needs a break,” a person wrote me on Facebook.
Pretti and Good, two white Minnesotans who had everything to lose, confronted injustice when it mattered most. And that gives me hope, even as I clutch my passport a little tighter these days.
Thomas Lee is an author and freelance journalist. He has worked for BBC News, Minnesota Star Tribune, and The Boston Globe.
