Local Indigenous leaders are urging their community members to be vigilant amid reports of increased ICE activity, and even arrests of Native people.
Ruth Buffalo, CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, is sounding the alarm over what she describes as aggressive targeting of Indigenous community members.
Buffalo says in some cases, tribal indentifications are being dismissed as valid identification by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, leaving her organization to host "know your rights" trainings for the community, in case they're detained.
"People who speak English who have been wrongfully detained get out quicker simply because they can speak English," Buffalo explained.
She says their organization will continue to keep their doors open and remains committed to providing essential care to the community.
There have been reports of federal agents detaining members of the Red Lake Nation and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota.
Buffalo says this aggressive profiling put's the state's most vulnerable at risk.
"How lawless ICE is behaving right now, it calls the question of our existing predators who are targeting our unsheltered, or Black and Brown communities for human and sex trafficking, drug trafficking," says Buffalo. "You know, are they going unchecked as well? And are more vulnerable people getting picked up under the guise of saying like, they're ICE, but they're not ICE? How do we know that?"
She says in the mean time, tribal attorneys are working to track down missing members who may have been detained.