When ICE Came for My Workforce

By Anonymous

After fifteen years in business as a factory owner and operator, the terrorization of ICE upon the Twin Cities is the biggest challenge I have faced yet.

Ahead of 2026, my business was poised for its best year yet. Years of hard work, establishing operations, and building my team seemed to pay off, with a higher than ever demand. Much of 2025 was dedicated to hiring and creating a new management structure in preparation for the extra work in the new year. My team and I were thrilled.

Beyond the excitement of leading a flourishing business, I take pride in the team I have built. Many of them have been working for me for over a decade, and our working relationships have become genuine friendships. About ⅔ of my sixty-person team were not born in the United States, and upon hiring them, I gathered all the necessary employment paperwork and information. While I cannot guarantee the legitimacy of that paperwork, I can say I complied with the law and can speak to the character of my team.

Over the years working with them, I have had the opportunity to employ spouses, parents and their now adult children, and I have watched how incredibly hard they work. I’ve seen them advance in their positions and witnessed their dedicated work ethic, as they sacrificed to send money to their families back home and forge new lives for themselves, despite the evident trauma that I know lives deep within many of them. I have been embraced by the communities they formed, meeting their grandchildren and attending fiestas featuring amazing food and dancing. I have even been part of incredible traditions, such as making a dummy from stuffed sawdust and paper to burn on New Year’s to banish all misfortunes of the past year.

They have continually astounded me with the depth of their resilience, the joy they have maintained through everything, and how hard they have worked to support my business and bring it to where it was ahead of 2026.

Then Brotex happened.

Almost overnight, the occupation of the Brotex facility in Saint Paul by ICE turned our world upside down. It was reminiscent of the adversity we faced during the George Floyd uprising and the COVID-19 pandemic, but with two marked differences. This plight has not only left me feeling totally alone, but it can also be stopped by someone.

In the last two weeks, I have been flying blind, never knowing who is going to show up for work, what work we will do, what income will be coming in, nor what expenses will be incurred. My business structure relies on pod-style systems, where no one product can be completed without the collaboration of many people, and with the unpredictability of who can, or will, show up to work each day, productivity and efficiency have ground to a halt, as has output. These first few weeks we have delivered maybe half of what was planned, all at negative margins when we would normally be in the green, and I am anticipating the loss of multiple thousand dollars in January.

How can I pay my employees when no money comes in? How can I prevent my clients, many of whom have active orders I can’t fulfill or estimate completion timelines for, from going to other factories? I can only be candid about the situation with some of them, as others don’t seem like trusted allies. I am constantly juggling ideas for how to keep employees paid and safe, stay afloat and keep clients happy, and avoid losing business in the long term.

If I shut down, will my clients go to other factories? I would.
If I stay in business, how long can I sustain these colossal losses?
And beyond those two problems, what will become of my team members and their families?

Since January 1st I have been creating a matrix of all my employees, including updated emergency contacts- for fear of them being taken on a raid- addresses, phone numbers, and new columns in which I can sort them by:

1. Are they comfortable coming to work?
2. Are they comfortable getting a ride from a trusted driver?
3. Are they comfortable working night shifts?
4. Have they already been abducted?
5. Do they have a family member abducted?
6. Are they willing to live with someone else?
7. What skills do they have in our facility?

Within those columns, I am constantly shifting and re-sorting their positions as I plan the day’s work shift. My scheduling team receives new information hourly and must produce 2-3 schedules a day, whereas previous changes were reviewed perhaps once a week. This constant state of upheaval means I cannot tell my clients what will ship and when, and I have no way of knowing how long they will tolerate it before taking their business elsewhere.

On top of that, the threat of ICE remains a terrifying reality looming over us. We have seen drones in our parking lot and reportedly at my employees’ homes, no less than six times now, and can only do so much to minimize the danger. We have added alarm systems and practiced drills, assigning jobs like who will call the police, who will engage with agents, and who will video record the encounter, with others made to specifically record what they take, and worst of all, who they take.

I can only guess that the duress we are under feels like soldiers at war. Every knock at the door causes our hearts to skip a beat, and every time it’s an unfamiliar face, our bodies brace for the worst. It’s not a sustainable way of life, and yet there’s no way to know if or when it will end.

I am seriously considering plans to make small satellite manufacturing cells and even give people different cars, so their license plates are not tracked. Yet I know that, regardless of my decisions, circumstances will continue to change as this escalates, and I wonder whether any changes will ultimately be enough to prevent my business from dissolving.

As of now, the column in my matrix of who has been taken is one. The column with their family members taken is eight. I am lucky to have a community that has gathered donations to help a little bit with those families’ lost wages. I am doing what I can to help with lawyer fees, though it sometimes happens too fast for that to help; the last member was taken on Friday, January 16th, and the lawyer said it was not worth it as they were already on a plane to Texas within three hours of being taken.

I want to add that I currently know of four people who went to check in for their immigration appointment to be compliant and were immediately taken. ICE has created a system where people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, either exposing themselves while following the rules or becoming criminals to maintain their safety. I know that every person taken so far was not violent, not a criminal, and only a kindhearted, hardworking individual who just wanted a better life for themselves and their families.

This whole situation is devastating and heartbreaking, and as I struggle with my personal fears of losing my business and income, I also know I am not being targeted and will not be abducted. This safety is an undeniable gift and privilege, and I know I am lucky compared to so many of the people around me; so even as I watch years of my work crumble around me, and my livelihood wither before my eyes, I have to wonder if when I am focused on the business, am I being selfish?