In a county labeled a “sanctuary” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Nidia Zelaya knows some neighbors need to watch their steps these days.
“A lot of people are really scared of their basic routines,” said the woman from Watonwan County in southwestern Minnesota.
Zelaya volunteers with Convivencia Hispana, a St. James-based advocacy group for Watonwan’s Latino and Hispanic residents. Smithfield Food plant workers formed the group, which partners with another, Uniting Cultures, or Uniendo Culturas, on an annual multicultural fiesta and other initiatives designed to promote a sense of togetherness in an increasingly diverse county.
The work of these groups is not stopping, Zelaya said, despite some volunteers needing to scale back their involvement as a precaution against being targeted by the Trump administration. “I feel like we’ve always been the face of the Latino communities within the St. James, Madelia, Butterfield area, but with this new administration we’ve had to step back a bit from doing so much outreach just because we know the fear is in the community,” she said.
Watonwan, with a population of about 11,000, was among 20 counties in the state placed on the federal agency’s “sanctuary jurisdictions” list last week. The list has since been taken down, but not before it caused widespread puzzlement among local officials and concern about what it meant.
The Department of Homeland Security has not said why it took down the list.
Little clarity on ‘sanctuary’ label
It remains unclear how the Trump administration is defining “sanctuary.” But it has demanded that American cities and counties allow federal immigration agents access to jails and that they provide advance notice when inmates wanted on an immigration detainer are being released.
The Trump administration has also required cities to certify compliance with a federal law, known as Section1373 of the Aliens and Nationality Act. That law says states and localities can’t bar local officials from communicating with immigration authorities about the citizenship status of an individual.
What Minnesota law enforcement agencies can’t do, said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ian Bratlie, is enforce federal immigration law. The ACLU won a court case against another southwestern Minnesota county on the list, Nobles, dating to the first Trump administration. The case involved the county sheriff’s office unlawfully detaining people on behalf of ICE, resulting in financial compensation paid to the parties and a permanent injunction against improper holds for ICE.
As this case played out, Trump tried to punish “sanctuary” jurisdictions during his first term in office, but had limited success.
He directed the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs to withhold law enforcement-related grants from cities, towns, states and counties that his administration considered non-cooperative.
At that time, the targeted jurisdictions were mainly Democratic-leaning cities and towns that filed an avalanche of lawsuits. The grants that were withheld from these cities and towns helped local and state police fight drug and sex trafficking, establish programs to fight juvenile crime and drug addiction and other law enforcement programs.
According to the Office of Justice Programs, in the last five years, the state of Minnesota and its cities have received more than $250 million in these types of grants.
This time around, a political lens doesn’t provide much clarity on how the 20 Minnesota counties ended up on the list. The Greater Minnesota counties that voted against Trump in 2024 — St. Louis, Olmsted, Clay, Lake and Cook — are nowhere to be found on the list. Actually, every Greater Minnesota county listed as a “sanctuary” had a majority of voters that chose Trump.
During the president’s first term, “sanctuary” cities and towns won most of their lawsuits against Trump’s actions in federal courts across the nation.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 2nd Circuit ruled against the New York challenge to the Justice Department that had been joined by several other states and the issue appeared ready to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The legal fights ended, however, after former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and reversed Trump’s policies towards “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
The second Trump administration has sued Chicago, the state of Illinois, four cities in New Jersey and other “blue” cities over its policies. These mainly Democratic cities and states are fighting back with their own lawsuits. Minneapolis and St. Paul, for instance, which were on the “sanctuary” jurisdiction list before it was taken down, have joined a lawsuit filed by San Francisco that said Trump has overstepped his authority.
A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction in the case that orders the federal government to halt any effort to freeze funds from the Twin Cities and 15 other jurisdictions involved in the case while the lawsuit proceeds.
‘A general sense of anxiety’
The sheriffs of Watonwan and Nobles counties did not respond to emails seeking comment on their inclusion on the sanctuary list. The Department of Homeland Security removed the list after complaints from officials across the nation from other “red” jurisdictions that were on the list and from a national sheriffs’ organization.
Meat packing plants are major employers in both counties, drawing workers from the area’s Latino or Hispanic communities. This makes them particularly vulnerable to raids, Zelaya said. Federal agents raided a Swift meat-processing plant in Worthington, Nobles County’s biggest city, in 2006, arresting 239 workers.
Other than both being on the “sanctuary” list, Watonwan and Nobles counties are comparable demographically, having the two highest percentages of Hispanic or Latino residents in Minnesota. About 31% of Watonwan residents and 35% of Nobles residents have those backgrounds, according to Census data, compared with 7% for the state as a whole.
Yet large percentages of Hispanic or Latino residents don’t explain all the inclusions on the list. Lincoln County in southwestern Minnesota was there and 97% of its residents are white or Latinos who identify as white.
Don’t look for any geographical cohesion on the list, either. Pipestone and Nobles counties made the list, while the county they box in on the southwest corner of the state, Rock County, didn’t. The federal agency would furthermore have an observer believe that someone in Jackson County on the Iowa border, not deemed a “sanctuary,” could set off in any direction east, west or north and find themselves in a neighboring county supposedly offering more safety from federal immigration enforcement.
In Bratlie’s estimation, the list is an “arbitrary and stupid” attempt to distract people from the administration’s problems. “They’re trying to make the term ‘sanctuary’ mean something and trying to change the narrative from their failed policies,” he said.
From an atmospheric standpoint, he added, putting counties on a sanctuary watch list is a way to instill fear and terror in immigrant communities. The ACLU was already aware of reports of Minnesotans being racially profiled by ICE, and the federal government’s immigration actions around the country have not been limited to undocumented people.
In Watonwan County, Zelaya knows of people who have permanent residency status but are afraid to visit their home countries for fear of not being let back into the U.S. Zelaya, 32, was born in the U.S., the product of a family that escaped civil war in El Salvador.
Convivencia Hispana’s continued work during these tense political times includes organizing a legal clinic on delegation of parental authority (DOPA) forms. A DOPA would give permission for someone to make decisions about a child’s care if a legal guardian gets detained. One important role of community advocacy groups right now is to make sure people know their rights in the event of a raid, Zelaya said.
Uniting Cultures works with Convivencia Hispana to get information out about resources. Pat Branstad, a retired teacher in St. James who helped found Uniting Cultures in 2017, said the messages coming from the federal government can make it more difficult to get locals the right information. You overcome it as best as you can by working with partners to find out what your community members need, Branstad said. “We needed to talk to the people who could be impacted and find out from them what they need,” she said.
Nobles County, particularly its biggest city, Worthington, has groups doing similar advocacy work. Along with its high Hispanic or Latino population, Worthington’s percentage of Black, Asian and American Indian residents is higher than statewide averages.
Leah Gossum, a college art instructor in Worthington, was born in Croatia to Middle Eastern parents. Her family later settled in Youngstown, Ohio. As a teacher in Worthington for the last 12 years, she’s worked with a student population that reflects the diversity of the city. Gossum feels like there’s a general sense of anxiety around the community that advocates are working through. “The sentiment is, people are definitely feeling nervous about many things, but don’t want to be quiet either.”
A Nicollet County group, the St. Peter Good Neighbor Diversity Council, has no plans to be quiet, either. Co-founder Bill Nelsen said his group is proud of its name. “We are still committed to our mission, which is to make St. Peter a very welcoming community for people from all different backgrounds,” he said.
Nelsen, who said his name is of Danish origin, is a retired Lutheran pastor whose activism dates back to the Civil Rights Movement. If anything, the council’s board and advisory team — including Somali, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous and African American residents — wants to expand on its multicultural initiatives, he said.
“We have not slowed down, and I would say in reaction to what’s been happening nationally, we see our work as even more important,” he said.
Washington, D.C., correspondent Ana Radelat contributed to this report.
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