Officials at the Basic Needs food pantry in Cottage Grove on Thursday were still trying to determine the location of a volunteer who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Wednesday afternoon in the organization’s parking lot.

“We don’t know where he is. We don’t know how he’s doing,” said Opey Peñaloga, the organization’s executive director. “We’ve been trying to reach his family. ICE showed up Monday, came back on Tuesday and then arrested him on Wednesday. We knew that they were there, we could see them, and so we were preparing ourselves.”

The man, whom Peñaloga described as “middle-aged and Latino,” has been volunteering at Basic Needs Food Market, located at 8475 E. Point Douglas Road, several times a week since October. The volunteer, a pastor who leads a Spanish-speaking congregation, helps shoppers at Basic Needs and provides translation services for Spanish-speaking customers, Peñaloga said.

The volunteer went on a break around 1 p.m. Wednesday, and “as he was coming back in the doors, they just pulled up out of nowhere,” he said. “They asked him for his documents, and he supplied them with whatever ID he had. … Whatever it was that he did show them wasn’t enough, you know, to satisfy them. They arrested him on the spot, just at the doors of our food market.”

Peñaloga declined to share the volunteer’s name. He said he does not know his immigration status, although he does not believe he is a citizen.

The arrest, which was captured on video, shows the man being loaded in the back of a black SUV in the parking lot.

“It is deeply upsetting,” Peñaloga said. “It has had our volunteers and shoppers on edge, and we have seen a noticeable decrease in shoppers of color. People, as you know, they’re keeping themselves safe at home, which poses the next problem: If they were using our services, they already had food insecurity, and so we’re working with other organizations that are local that can help us do food drops to their homes.”

City officials troubled

Basic Needs shared the news in a statement posted on social media on Wednesday night.

“Basic Needs is deeply troubled by the arrest and detention of one of our valued volunteers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today,” the statement reads. “We stand firmly with our community during this challenging time. Our commitment to serving all members of our community remains unwavering. We believe in the dignity and worth of every individual, and we will continue to provide support and resources to those who need them. Our doors remain open, and our mission continues. We will not be deterred from serving our community with the same dedication and care that you all expect and deserve.”

The arrest shows that ICE agents are everywhere in the Twin Cities, Peñaloga said, including in the suburbs. “I think people are under this false illusion that the suburbs are safe, but there are just too many ICE agents here,” he said. “They’re just all across the Twin Cities.”

City officials in Cottage Grove said they have heard reports from residents of apparent ICE activity within city limits, but said Cottage Grove police officers “are not notified of federal operations and do not participate in federal immigration enforcement activity.”

Mayor Myron Bailey said Thursday that he was “troubled” to hear about the arrest of the volunteer.

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“While I am unaware of the details surrounding this, I want to vocalize my support for Basic Needs and the incredible work they do as an organization in our community,” Bailey said. “Our staff and I are committed to continuing our communication with Basic Needs and their doors remain open as they continue to serve this community. I am deeply grateful for all that they do.”

Washington County Board Chair Karla Bigham, who represents Cottage Grove, decried the actions of ICE.

Basic Needs “is a community organization where people go to get food,” she said. “He was a volunteer. This is completely unacceptable and egregious. These actions are not making our community safer. They will prohibit residents and citizens from getting essential services, like food, due to fear of being wrongfully detained by ICE. Our community will step up and help our neighbors because that is who we are.”

Volunteers, donations needed

The Basic Needs Food Market is stocked daily with food rescues from local grocers and the South Washington County School District and donations from the public. It is open from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays.

Many clients are seniors, and many are Hispanic, Hmong and East African, according to Peñaloga.

Basic Needs is in need of additional volunteers “to help us keep the food market open,” he said. “We have volunteers who are conflicted about coming in. Some people maybe don’t share that same level of fear, and if they’d like to volunteer, and come on in, that’s what we need.”

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The organization also is putting out a call for donations because “we’ve doubled our food orders, and we have to buy culturally specific food, especially for our East African neighbors,” said Peñaloga, who joined the organization, formerly known as Stone Soup, in 2024. “That’s much more expensive than just general food.”

In addition to the food market, Basic Needs, based in St. Paul Park, runs the Basic Needs Thrift Shop in St. Paul Park.

Peñaloga said organization staff and volunteers are committed to continuing their “important work.”

“We’re continuing to ground our work in the belief that every person deserves access to basic needs and to be treated with humanity regardless of their circumstances,” Peñaloga said. “We all have a job to do, and our job is to get food out to our neighbors in need, and we’re going to keep doing that.”

Uncle Sam wants you. And now he wants your voting data, too.

The law — and long-standing policy — say he shouldn’t get it.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed lawsuits in 23 states and the District of Columbia seeking access to detailed voter information for the purpose of building a national database. The department’s demand sets a dangerous precedent and could expose millions of Americans to fraud, abuse and other nefarious activity.

In an amicus brief filed in late December, several former DOJ voting-rights lawyers argued that the suit filed in California should be dismissed because the demand, like those filed in other states, violates federal law. As the amici note, although the federal government is entitled to certain voter information under various statutes, the Department of Justice has exceeded its authority by requesting sweeping access to all data for all voters nationwide, including “registration method, participation history, party affiliation, partial Social Security Numbers (SSNs), and driver’s license numbers,” without demonstrating a sufficient legal or factual basis.

Some critics argue that the Justice Department is collecting this data to bolster a false narrative that noncitizens are voting illegally. While preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots is a valid goal, the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act assign the responsibility for maintaining voter rolls to states, not the federal government.

One of the things I learned in my work as a national security prosecutor is the importance of keeping information “compartmented.” That means that data should be segregated so that only those with a legitimate need to know can access it. For example, classified information is compartmented into categories so that those who need access to confidential human sources in a terrorism case cannot also learn the location of nuclear weapons. Such separations are essential to operational security, ensuring that unauthorized individuals cannot access highly sensitive information. The same principle should apply to the private data of American citizens.

A comprehensive national repository of personal information poses serious dangers to the public. First, a centralized federal database would create a significant vulnerability to cyber intrusions. A single breach of a database that contains both driver’s license and Social Security numbers could enable identity theft on a massive scale. In 2015, for example, I was one of the 22 million current and former federal employees victimized in a cyberattack on the Office of Personnel Management. Hackers stole highly sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, fingerprints and answers to background-investigation questions, some of which included data pertaining to our parents, siblings and children. That information is now in the hands of identity thieves and potentially hostile foreign adversaries, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike. We voluntarily provided that information as a condition of working for the federal government. Other Americans should not be required to expose their personal data to such risk.

Second, data compiled for a laudable purpose can later be abused for a nefarious one. During World War II, Nazis in Germany used census data to round up Jewish citizens. And lest we think the U.S. is immune from such conduct, our own government relied on similar data to identify and locate Japanese Americans for internment. In the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI ran a program called COINTEL PRO — the Counterintelligence Program — using personal data to surveil Vietnam War protesters and civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr.

We should be free to speak out against our government without fear that our data will later be used to target us for retaliation. Knowing that the government maintains a comprehensive database of personal information could lead to self-censorship and chill free speech, particularly under an administration that at times appears motivated by retribution.

Third, the creation of a national database is contrary to our foundational commitment to a limited federal government. The Constitution gives states the power to decide the time, place and manner of elections. While Congress is permitted to enact laws to protect the right to vote, the executive branch should not be permitted to engage in mission creep by developing a comprehensive federal voter database without clear and specific legislative authorization.

Fourth, mistakes are inevitable. Voter rolls are dynamic documents, constantly changing as citizens reach voting age, become naturalized, die or move between states, making it likely that any federal database would be inaccurate almost immediately. Identifying and correcting errors in federal databases can be difficult, and those errors can have harmful consequences. When I served as a federal prosecutor in Detroit, I encountered instances in which people were incorrectly placed on no-fly lists. Although the lists served an important public safety function, I saw firsthand how someone could be flagged simply because they shared a name with a suspect or due to human error. According to a letter submitted by a dozen secretaries of state to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a massive federal voting database is particularly dangerous because it “is likely to misidentify eligible voters as non-citizens and to chill participation by eligible voters.”

Given the Trump administration’s willingness to push legal boundaries, the last thing we should entrust it with is a centralized trove of our sensitive personal data.

Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law school, a former U.S. attorney and author of “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.”

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“It is time to exploit the ‘City of Yes’ zoning changes and reclaim the 2,500 acres currently dedicated to a sport that is effectively dead as an urban pastime.”

The golf course at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx, pictured here shortly after it was constructed in 2013. (Spencer T Tucker/NYC Mayor’s Office)

The New York Real Estate Board recently confirmed what every New Yorker feels: we are in a housing free-fall. With a staggering shortfall of up to 540,000 units and a vacancy rate of just 1.4 percent, the pace of new construction is glacially slow. But the solution might be hiding in plain sight, tucked away behind the chain-link fences of our city’s woefully underutilized golf courses.

It is time to exploit the “City of Yes” zoning changes and reclaim the 2,500 acres currently dedicated to a sport that is effectively dead as an urban pastime.

City Comptroller Brad Lander floated this idea at the start of his mayoral run—an idea I first proposed seven years ago in the Queens Tribune. If Mayor Zohran Mamdani is serious about his pledge to build 200,000 units of housing over the next decade, he must look at these dying municipal greenways.

The spatial inequality of New York City golf is striking. Nearly half of the city’s courses are in Queens, covering 960 acres. This includes Forest Park (508 acres), Kissena Park (237 acres), Clearview (111 acres), and Douglaston (104 acres). Staten Island and Brooklyn account for another 931 acres, while the Bronx holds 375.

Despite occupying prime real estate, these courses are largely empty. The sport’s decline is so pronounced that the Parks Department counsel’s office admits the agency no longer even tracks annual golf membership sales.

This isn’t just a local trend; it’s a national expiration. While the pandemic provided a minor “dead cat bounce” for the industry, the long-term data is grim. My 2018 investigation found that green fees had plummeted by an average of 17 percent across the city. At Staten Island’s La Tourette, revenues dropped by 33 percent. Only Silver Lake and Marine Park showed growth—they should be kept, but the rest are ripe for reimagining.

Converting golf courses isn’t radical; it’s practical. As far back as 1979, Augusta, Georgia, converted a public course into open space. Since then, municipalities from Portland, Oregon, to Windsor, Connecticut, have worked with the Trust for Public Land to turn fairways into parks.

Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Borzog is compiling a report on sites available for building housing. It’s due at the end of January. She should include this land. We need a mix of high-density housing and reimagined public space that serves the 21st-century New Yorker.

Critics will argue that parkland is sacrosanct. They are right—which is why these 2,500 acres should be opened to the entire public, not just those who can afford a set of clubs.

Transforming these spaces would also slash the city’s carbon footprint; golf courses are notorious for high water usage and pesticide runoff. By “de-accessioning” these lands through the state legislature, the mayor can create playing fields for cricket and soccer—sports that reflect the passions of the city’s immigrant-heavy neighborhoods rather than the fading hobbies of the elite.

The stakes: according to the Coalition for the Homeless, more than 350,000 New Yorkers—including families and single adults—are currently without a home, living on the streets, in shelters, or “doubled up” in precarious conditions.

There is no reason why the Kissena and Douglaston courses couldn’t be linked to create a “Central Park of Queens,” anchored by thousands of affordable housing units.

The rapid fade of golf is a gift to the city’s urban planners. It is an opportunity to solve a humanitarian crisis with the stroke of a pen. Mayor Mamdani and the City Council must seize the clubs and take the swing.

Eddie Borges writes about race and poverty in New York City.

The post Opinon: The Hole-in-One Solution for NYC’s Housing Crisis appeared first on City Limits.