Parenting in Occupied Minneapolis | Edge

Last Saturday I received an email from the Children’s Theater Company of Minnesota. They explained that they canceled the weekend shows for Go, dog. He goes! “For the safety of our patrons, staff and artists.” Earlier that morning, federal agents had killed Alex Pretty in the streets, about nine blocks from the theater doors.

The tickets were a Christmas gift for my four-year-old daughter from her grandparents. She’s never been to the theater before. In the ever-growing list of consequences caused by ICE’s violent occupation of the Twin Cities metro area, this disappointment is hardly worth mentioning. But it still makes me sad, because — as any parent can tell you — all I want for my baby is joy, and so much of the world that surrounds her now is confusion, fear, and pain.

I have two daughters. My youngest isn’t even two years old yet, and I hope he’s too young to remember anything about the armed, masked agents terrorizing Minneapolis. My eldest son, she will proudly tell you, will be five next summer. I don’t know how much she understood, but I wanted to be prepared for anything she might ask, so I turned, as generations of parents have done, to Sesame Street. Here’s their advice for ages four to five: “Children may be worried about your safety or about separation. Explain to them all the ways adults can keep themselves safe – if they are afraid about an event that happened far away, use distance to reassure them.”

This advice, while well intentioned, did not make me think about my daughter. It made me think of Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy I photographed – Spider-Man Last week, the backpack and mysterious blue bunny hat emerged as one of the most outrageous and heartbreaking images of this angry and heartbreaking time for Minnesotans. After he arrived home from preschool on January 20, ICE detained Liam alongside his father and sent them to a detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they remain at the time of this writing.

This is the question that kept me up at night: If I were his father, how would I comfort Liam? Let’s consult with Sesame Street Checklist. He has the right to fear for the safety of his family. He’s horrifyingly right about being separated from his family, including his pregnant mother. Obviously, there is nothing an adult – least of all those who care about him – can do to keep him safe.

Any parent knows that there are many ways they can protect their children. Despite your best efforts, they will get hurt: a broken bone, a pet that dies, or an initial separation. No matter how much we might like it, it is impossible, and not our real job, to protect them from the harm that will inevitably come. Our job is to give them a safe and loving place where they can become resilient enough He survives Those pains – maybe grow from them.

In Minneapolis, there are countless signs every day that the sanctity of our safe and beloved places is being torn apart. The Trump administration has not only failed to protect children; In their innocence and vulnerability, she witnessed a fault line that ICE could exploit. It is troubling to see Republicans – who call themselves protectors of children, but always in theory and never in practice – dismiss these same children as collateral damage. School bus drivers should not need it Special training About what they should do if ICE shows up at the station. Parents shouldn’t need to He explains The routine presence of masked agents wearing military uniforms and carrying weapons. Children should be able to attend youth sports without worrying about their children Proudly diverse leagues It will make them a target for ICE raids.

Nor do school teachers have to explain to their classes why so many desks are empty now – in some public schools, Up to 40 percent – Because parents are keeping their children at home for safety, or, in the worst cases, because ICE has already kidnapped and detained them. The raw power of the image has made Liam Conejo Ramos a symbol of this administration’s cruelty toward children of color, but there are more than a thousand people in his detention center. Including “many” under the age of five. A lawyer recently visited to meet with clients Describe the nightmarish setting: Baby milk mixed with spoiled water, insects in food, verbally abusive guards. While there, he met a family with twins who, after spending nearly a year in detention, had just turned five years old — 20 percent of their young lives already spent behind bars.

It shouldn’t matter, but just in case: Liam’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, and his wife traveled more than 3,000 miles from Ecuador to Minneapolis, entering the United States legally in December 2024, but ended up stuck, like so many others, in the endless process of seeking legal asylum. Although Donald Trump continues to insist that ICE targets only “the worst of the worst,” Arias has no criminal record. His case remained pending when ICE descended on their home, sweeping in Conejo Arias and Liam while Liam’s pregnant mother remained inside, urged by bystanders to keep their door locked for fear of what ICE might do if she opened it.

“Liam is a very fun kid. He’s the funniest in the family,” Conejo Arias’ brother told CNN in an interview after the boy’s photo went viral. In the detention center, Liam was lethargic and slept a lot, his father says. He asks about his family and colleagues. He asks about his bunny hat.

What I do know, looking at that photo, is that — aside from his family’s country of origin and skin color — Liam Conejo Ramos looks just like my daughters. All parents in Minnesota have had the experience of choosing a winter hat for their children; My little girl delights in her fuzzy pink bunny hat that she wears indoors and outdoors. Earlier this week, my oldest daughter’s school lifted student spirits with Superhero Day; She was dressed as Ghost-Spider, her favorite Spider-Man Superhero. It is only the racism of this administration that makes Liam Conejo Ramos a target; It is only the racism of this administration that prevents my children from being targeted as well.

My daughters have no questions yet. But they will one day. And when they do, it will be my responsibility to tell them the truth about the United States in which they grew up. And that people in power chose to be this cruel. Many millions happily supported it. That some of us tried to stop them but did not or could not. That the world they will inherit is not good enough for them. I hope their generation learns from our failure and does better.