TALK & DO: Recovering From the Trauma of ICE Operations – What Do We Do Next? (Part 1)

With thousands of masked and armed federal forces now mostly out of Minnesota, the work of rebuilding financially begins — as does the healing. We talked with four mental health professionals who have played roles in addressing trauma before, during, and after the federal incursion, as part of our new Talk & Do series with supporting members of Minnesota Women’s Press.

Tanya Kennedy is a psychotherapist at Peace Be Still, who works at the intersection of trauma, identity, and community healing, supporting individuals and families navigating grief, displacement, anxiety, and intergenerational trauma. During Metro Surge, she says, “People were living in fear of being detained, being separated from loved ones, or simply existing in spaces that no longer felt safe.” 

Tanya Kennedy

As someone with an immigrant background, and as a survivor of civil war and political upheaval, Kennedy recognizes the patterns. “These things were very real, very triggering, re-traumatizing,” she explains. “So we walked together as a community — not just as therapists and clients.”

In February, she facilitated community healing sessions — spaces where people could gather to process what they had experienced. The emotional weight of those gatherings still lingers. “It was very sacred,” she says. “You saw community action. You understand that compassion is definitely a verb. It takes action, and it takes everyone.”

Participants arrived carrying fear, uncertainty, and exhaustion. Some were frontline organizers unsure if they would return home safely each night. Others were families navigating legal precarity. In that space, Kennedy says, people did not have to perform resilience. “We didn’t have to put on a happy face,” she says. “We could say, ‘I’m scared.’ And have everybody sit with that.”

The distinction matters. “Let’s be honest,” Kennedy adds. “People are not just stressed — we’re traumatized.”

Molly Peterson

At the statewide level, staff at NAMI Minnesota talked every week during Operation Metro Surge about what they were hearing from partners and community,” says Molly Peterson, NAMI Minnesota’s director of adult programs. During peak months of the crisis, “people were just trying to have their basic needs met. We expected they would be reaching out for resources when they were more emotionally regulated.” NAMI had increases in calls to its helpline in January and February, and in March they received the largest number of calls in more than a year.

NAMI shared information about its Somali women’s support group and Spanish-speaking family groups, and worked with the Indian Health Board and Hennepin County to offer materials for culturally specific groups. They had also been working for a year to set up a confidential support group for health workers in Hennepin County, and had worked out those logistics just as Operation Metro Surge began. “It was great to have that support group in place.”

Living Between Worlds

For many immigrant communities, trauma is not a singular event but an ongoing condition shaped by displacement, identity, and systemic barriers. “Belonging looks different,” Kennedy says. “I’m born here, but do I belong? Many people are cultural zebras — neither here nor there.” This sense of in-betweenness — of being perceived as foreign both in one’s country of origin and in the United States — can create a persistent psychological strain. “In your country of origin, you’re the American lady. In America, you’re the African lady,” she says. “So where do you belong?”

The question is not abstract. It shapes whether people seek help, trust institutions, or feel safe enough to exist openly — especially in the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge. “The overarching question,” Kennedy says, “is: ‘Am I safe?’”

Ana Mariella Rivera

Ana Mariella Rivera, owner of Ana Rivera Corp, clinical social worker and psychotherapist, sees the consequences of that uncertainty in her daily work. Serving many clients in mixed-status families, she supports individuals living under the threat of separation. “I have witnessed and accompanied many families who have experienced the trauma of a deportation,” she says. “This is not new to my work.”

What has changed, she notes, is visibility. “Perhaps there is more awareness now of the pain and trauma that many undocumented immigrant families experience,” she says. “At least now they might feel more seen.”

But visibility is uneven — and often distorted. Rivera points to the narratives circulating in media and public discourse, which shape how communities are perceived and even how young people see themselves.

“The harm that is left for our communities, but particularly young people is those negative narratives that have been shared on media about what immigrants are like,” she says. “That has created a distorted social mirror for children and teens. We know that the distorted mirror is not representative of who we are. However, we also know children and teenagers are vulnerable to absorbing and shaping their identity through those messages.”

The result is a psychological burden that extends across generations unless steps are taken to correct it. “The work that lies ahead is people shifting that social mirror,” Rivera emphasizes. “Part of what I think we need to be collectively thinking about is how providers and first responders and media outlets can share stories that truly represent our communities.

Systems That Don’t See

If trauma is pervasive, so too are the systemic barriers that complicate healing. “Lack of access is a common thread,” Rivera says — not only for clients, but for providers themselves. Many clinicians of color enter the field with a commitment to social justice, only to encounter systems that lack the infrastructure to support that mission. “What I see in my community of providers is that this moral injury often goes unnamed,” she explains. “And then it manifests in exhaustion and burnout.”

Comfort Dondo

For Comfort Dondo, executive director of Phumulani, the barriers are both structural and deeply personal. As someone who works on healing for survivors of sexual violence, domestic abuse, trafficking and torture, she works with refugees and historically marginalized women. She points to fragmentation across services — legal, housing, health — that forces survivors to navigate disconnected systems. “Survivors are usually required to retell their trauma repeatedly,” she says. “There is a lack of holistic wraparound services.”

She recalls her own experience as a survivor. “The last thing I needed was to be given one more phone number,” she says. “When someone is in their limbic brain, it literally feels like there is a bear sitting on your lap.” In such a state, information becomes overwhelming rather than helpful. “When you’re trying to find a solution and someone gives you ten more phone numbers, that is not helpful.”

Another barrier lies in data — or the lack of it. “African immigrant and refugee communities are often not disaggregated in data,” Dondo explains. “It is usually just ‘Black women.’” But within that category lies immense diversity: African American, Afro-Latina, Afro-Caribbean, first-generation immigrants, refugees, and more. Without accurate data, needs go unrecognized and underfunded. “If you’re not counted,” she says, “you remain invisible.”

Community as Infrastructure

Dondo points out that in Minnesota there are two of the largest African immigrant community members in the U.S. — from Monrovia, Liberia, and Mogadishu, Somalia. Both communities have experienced civil war. Minnesota is also home to groups smaller in numbers, many of whom also have gone through civil war, in countries like the Congo, South Sudan,Togo, Sierra Leone. Some of them speak French. Mutual aid has not always reached these communities.

“Some of the work we’ve been doing at Phumulani — beyond working with survivors — has been as a bridge for our community members who are traditionally very invisible,” Dondo says.

“I’ve been focusing on what’s within my locus of control,” she continued. “In March, we heard from 49 families needing rental support to prevent eviction. For a very small, culturally specific organization, that is a large number in just one month. We have at least four healing circles for survivors of trauma, and a women’s retreat coming up. This week we heard from a Nigerian nurses association.”

In the face of these challenges, community becomes a critical form of infrastructure. At Phumulani, that means more than direct services. The organization acts as a convener — connecting families with resources, facilitating partnerships, and creating spaces for healing. “We’ve been creating collaborative partnerships with organizations that have resources for rental support and immigration lawyers,” Dondo says. “We’re focusing on solutions.”

That might include responding in real time to urgent needs — like deportation cases requiring immediate legal support. “When you get a call from a community member who says a young man is being deported back to a country where there was a civil war,” Dondo says, “you have to have a solution immediately.”

It also means accompanying women to immigration court. “There is a dire need for legal support for survivors, particularly those navigating immigration systems. It has been incredibly heavy to witness the criminalization of survivors of domestic violence. At the moment, I am supporting three women in active proceedings. Being in those courtrooms has been deeply triggering — many survivors are often too afraid to even show up. We are working closely with partners like Advocates for Human Rights to ensure these women receive the support they deserve, but the gaps remain significant.”

For Kennedy, embedding services directly within communities is essential. “It’s about investing in culturally competent and responsive care,” she says. “Not a one-size-fits-all therapy.” That means working with cultural liaisons — imams, pastors, elders — who can help establish trust. It also means rethinking where care happens. “These solutions need to be directly in the communities,” she says. “Not somewhere we drive to.”

The Limits of Individualism

Across interviews, a shared critique emerges: the limitations of an individualistic approach to healing, both within and without the profession itself. “We are such an individualistic culture,” Rivera says. “Everybody has great ideas, everybody wants to lead — but it’s going to take a shift to truly collaborate.” That shift requires confronting competition for funding, navigating cultural differences, and relinquishing control. “It’s not comfortable,” Rivera admits. “But it’s necessary.”

Kennedy echoes this sentiment through a proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Collaboration, she argues, expands both reach and sustainability. “With collaboration, our scope is wide and varied,” she says. “So one group doesn’t feel like, ‘this is just for these people.’”

At its core, the conversation Minnesotans need to have is not only about services or systems, but about how healing itself is understood. “The solution is not to fix our communities,” Dondo says. “We are not broken.” Instead, she calls for investment, trust, and recognition of community knowledge. “Communities have power to define what safety and wellness looks like for themselves.” 

That includes integrating cultural and ancestral practices into mental health care — a point Rivera also emphasizes. “Our communities have survived struggle,” she says. “The ways in which they have survived stem from cultural wisdom.”

Healing, in this framework, is not imposed from outside systems but cultivated from within communities. It is relational, collective, and deeply tied to identity.

A Collective Future

Six years after the murder of George Floyd, a few months after a political assassination and a mass shooting of schoolchildren, and in the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge, Minnesota stands at a crossroads. The crises facing its communities are not new — but they are more visible, more urgent, and more interconnected than ever.

Reflecting on all that Minnesotans have experienced in the last few years, Peterson says, “There hasn’t been an opportunity to collectively come together and talk about healing. It’s incredibly disappointing — and unjust.”

Yet within that injustice lies possibility. “There’s opportunity in the chaos,” Dondo reflects. “Mainstream organizations are seeing the need.”

“The takeaway I want us to walk away with,” Kennedy says, “is that mental health is not just about coping. It’s about justice, safety, and dignity.”

Rivera adds: “Having all of you in this room, having this conversation, is helpful. Holding this space to bring us together and try to create solutions, to collectively put our heads together — I think that’s what we need more of.”

Next Steps

As this first conversation reveals, the path forward will require more than crisis response. It will demand sustained investment, cross-sector collaboration, and a willingness to truly listen to those most affected. In Minnesota, the work of healing is already underway — in community circles, in therapy rooms, in quiet acts of mutual aid. But for that work to endure, it must be supported by systems that value not only efficiency or scale, but humanity. Because, as these healing leaders remind us, healing is not just about surviving. It is about dignity. It is about belonging. And ultimately, it is about justice.

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