The surge of federal immigration agents has forced many families to remain inside for weeks, living in fear of roving ICE patrols snatching people off the street

José hasn’t left his house in Saint Paul for 29 days – not to shovel the snow at his driveway, not to fix up the car.

When the car needed an oil change, he video-called his wife, Sara, from inside so he could walk her through it. “I’ve only been from the bedroom to the living room,” he said. He’s afraid to even get near the front door.

Amy and her two kids have not stepped outside their apartment building in south Minneapolis in two weeks – not since Amy’s husband, Chris, was detained by immigration officers. They haven’t gone to the park, or the grocery store. They have played hide-and-seek and tag in the wide hallways of their building – but they won’t go past the lobby.

The Trump administration launched its “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities in early December – sending thousands of federal agents to arrest immigrants at bus stops, grocery stores and churches. The agents have killed two US citizens, and taken in their dragnet not only undocumented immigrants, but also refugees and others with legal statuses, tribal citizens and permanent residents.

Since then, untold numbers of people across the region have been placed under de facto house arrest. Immigrants, as well as a range of residents who fear they may be apprehended by agents due to the color of their skin or their accents, have ceased to leave the safety of their homes.

Public schools in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and surrounding areas have offered families the option of online classes. Neighbors have been delivering groceries to those who don’t dare leave their houses, and healthcare providers are arranging home visits.

“Our house is like a jail,” said Sara. “You just can’t go out.”

This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that it would withdraw about 700 federal agents from Minnesota. But that still leaves about 2,000 agents on the ground.

“Until everyone leaves, we’re going to be here,” said José.

José now spends the bulk of his days continually refreshing an ICE tracker database.

When Sara heads out to her job as a nursing assistant, he runs downstairs and barricades the door with a shoe rack. He has reminded everyone – Sara, her 17-year-old daughter, Eileen, the cousins who live a few houses down the street – that if they want to enter the house, they need to first knock three times. Then he’ll unblock the door.

And while Sara is out, José continuously texts and calls her: “Are you OK?” “When are you coming home?” “Are you on your way?”

“When she is here, I feel safe,” he said.

Sometimes, he watches soap operas, or practices his English vocabulary by watching YouTube videos. Sara tries to coax him out to the balcony, and makes him lists of chores to do while she’s at work – so he has something to do other than monitor the ICE tracker database. She tells him: “You need to calm down … They can’t get you here.” But he is unconvinced – he’s seen the videos of ICE officers breaking down doors and windows.

She tells him, “I want my husband back.” She misses her funny, emotionally open partner. They had started dating a few years ago – after he had worked up the courage to message on Facebook (simply: “Hola”) and learned that they were actually from the same city in El Salvador. They were married in September last year, and José applied for his citizenship in November.

But the whole family has been changed – they are still reeling from what happened the day that federal agents cornered them, and took Sara’s cousin Armando.

Armando, 26, had moved in with them last January, and the trio had started a small contracting business together. “The three of us, we did everything together,” Sara said.

The three of them were driving back from a job, in their pickup, when it happened. It was about 1pm, and they had been installing siding on a house – but the owner had told them to head back early, because it was too cold and windy to be working outside.

They almost made it home.

About a block away from their house, a car with flashing lights began to pursue them. “It’s over, they’re going to take me now,” said José, who was in the driver’s seat. A federal officer demanded that each of them hand over their IDs and proof of a legal status.

Sara refused at first – by law, she understood that only the car’s drivers had to hand over a license, and none of them needed to provide proof of citizenship. But the agents had guns. “So we gave it to them,” she said.

Sara, who is a US citizen, also had her passport with her – and showed it to the agents. But José, who was in the process of obtaining his citizenship, didn’t have a US passport. Nor did Armando, who is undocumented.

The agents demanded that both men get out of the car and come with them. One of the agents reached through the driver’s-side door of the car and grabbed the keys from José.

Bystander videos reviewed by the Guardian shows that by then, a crowd of neighbors had gathered around and were shouting at the agents to let the family go. Several additional vehicles with federal agents also swooped in. Eileen, who lives with her father down the block from Sara and José, heard the commotion and felt a pang of fear in her stomach. She and her cousins rushed to the window.

“And I just remember hearing my mom, just screaming and crying,” Eileen said. “There were so many cars, and the agents were just putting my mom and my family at gunpoint.”

An officer pushed José’s face down into the car’s steering wheel and yelled, “Are you coming with me?” Sara recalled.

José started gasping for air, convulsing and throwing up. His chest tensed, and his heart seized. An agent pressed his Taser into José’s ribs. A bystander – a nurse – yelled at the agents to let him go. Bystanders called 911, and some local police helped direct the ambulance navigate though the ICE vehicles and get to José.

Sara was torn – should she go with her husband, or stay to help her cousin? She pleaded with Armando, “You don’t have to go with them.” But the agents had their guns pointed at them. He said: “I don’t want to die.”

So he went with them.

A bystander drove Sara to the hospital, where José was shackled to a bed with three federal agents standing guard in his room. Sara said that she and a lawyer weren’t permitted to see him, and that she repeatedly tried in vain to get updates on his condition. .

An advocacy group and local officials tried to intervene. Eventually, the three immigration agents in José’s room agreed to leave, and a doctor said that he could go home. He hasn’t left his house since then.

Meanwhile, Armando had been taken to a detention center in Saint Paul, and within hours was transferred to the Camp East Montana detention center in El Paso, Texas.

Sara now spends her mornings and evenings speaking with lawyers, looking for a way to secure Armando’s release. “And every day, I cry for him,” she said. “It’s like a part of my heart is gone.”

Everything in her home is a daily reminder of his absence. It hurts to make just two coffees in the morning, instead of three, she said. The bag of cookies and cakes Armando had bought just before his detention sits, uneaten, in the pantry. (The Chiky cookies – which taste like the color pink as much as they taste like strawberry – are his favorite.) The family’s contracting business is now defunct.

Eileen, meanwhile, is still trying to understand what she saw. She has flashbacks to the moment she heard her mother screaming, and she felt powerless. “The ICE agents, they have all the control. And it’s like, you have to sit there and realize that you can’t do anything about it,” Eileen said. “I’m truly scared.”

Even Mingo, the family’s tuxedo cat, has been acting strange. The morning before Armando was taken, Mingo had clambered into his room and started meowing and screeching. When the three of them tried to head out to work, Mingo pounced at their feet and tried to block the front door. “At the time I thought it was so strange,” Sara said, but now she feels as if Mingo was trying to tell them something. These days, Mingo skulks around Armando’s room, scratching at the door, as if he’s looking for his friend.

Across town, in south Minneapolis, Amy and her family don’t know when they will be able to leave their houses. “Us migrants don’t have safety here,” she said. She and her children haven’t left the house since her husband, Chris, was arrested more than two weeks ago.

The couple, both 33, had fled extortion and harassment in Ecuador – arriving in the US in June 2021 with their then infant daughter. Immigration officers who interviewed the family at the border had placed Chris in the government’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (Isap) – requiring that he wear an ankle monitor and regularly check in in person. They had moved to Minnesota, enrolled their daughter in school and had another child – a baby boy – who is now two years old. Chris found a job as a cook at a sushi restaurant.

On 22 January, Chris reported to a mandated check-in at a local immigration office. “They told me, ’Come to the office, bring your passport and we’ll remove your ankle monitor,’” he said. A few hours later, he was flown, in shackles, to a detention center in El Paso. He was never informed why he was being detained.

“We had always worried this would happen,” Amy said.

He was detained for a week while Amy and their lawyer tried, desperately, to secure his release. Chris was only allowed one brief phone call every few days. He used his first one to tell Amy: “No, don’t go out. Don’t go to work because they are arresting a lot of people.”

Chris’s friends, Chloé and Heather, brought the family food and supplies. Amy’s friend in the building occasionally came to visit them – just to keep them company and lift their spirits. She had just started a job nearby but heeded her husband’s request and stopped going.

The kids struggled. Amy tried to entertain them by making up games. Sometimes, one of them would put on a blindfold and search for the others in the house. They’d watch movies, play with Legos.

But they knew something was wrong. Both began to refuse food. The baby kept asking for his dad. And his older sister understood a bit more – she knew her father had been taken. “She has seen the news,” Amy said. “She said it is because of the president, or maybe because we are Latinos.”

In detention, Chris was in a section with 72 other men, he said. The conditions were grim: the tap for drinking water was broken. The food rations were meager. The roof had holes in it, allowing water to drip on to some of the bunk beds.

Immigration officers came by and offered a deal – if he accepted a “voluntary departure” to Ecuador, he would receive $2,600. Chris didn’t consider signing it, even for a moment. His asylum case was still pending – a judge was scheduled to hear it soon. “And I have my family, my children,” he said. “It is inhumane to separate children from parents.”

Amy was terrified as well. “We left our country due to a very difficult situation,” she said. “Now we don’t feel safe, neither here nor there.”

Eventually, the couple’s lawyer was able to secure Chris’s release. He was eating lunch when a guard told him to pack his things.

He left Texas on a Thursday, at around noon. By the time he reached Saint Paul it was 12.30am on Friday. Chris didn’t want to call his wife and risk that she, too, would be arrested. So he called his friend Chloé, who rushed over to pick him up from the ICE processing center.

He cried when he finally saw Amy, at the front door.

The children were asleep, and he didn’t want to wake them. So he quietly went into their room and he prayed for them. “I was thanking God that I am back home with my children,” he said.

The next morning, when he heard his daughter stirring awake in her room, he leapt up from the sofa, scooped her in his arms and placed her on his lap. He gently stroked her hair, and held his palms over her tiny arms, bracing his knuckles as if he wanted to squeeze her hard.

“For now, I know if we stay here, at home we can be safe,” he said.