From protest signs to posters in shop windows to apparel, artists across St. Paul and the greater Twin Cities are responding to the federal immigration enforcement crackdown with a surge of creativity.

In the days after immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, live painter Noval Noir created a large-scale portrait of Good at the site.

“Art is a way to heal, and energy attracts other people, so that was my light to give back to the community,” Noir told local radio personality Sheletta Brundidge on her radio show in mid-January. “Art speaks language that words can’t. When you’re giving someone a visual, you get to change a narrative.”

And artwork that responds to and reflects social movements can be a tangible community-building force itself, artists say.

“Through grassroots organizing, we’ve always seen that art is a means of resistance,” said Chenda Hing, a digital organizer for Minnesota 8, a St. Paul-based advocacy group that works within the Southeast Asian community. “For me, as someone who really values storytelling as a way for people to understand and be moved, storytelling through visual art can really resonate and poke and prod at some feelings — and actually generate power within the people,” Hing said.

Hing and four other artists created T-shirt designs for MN8’s Deportation Defense & Relief Fundraiser, launched as the organization has seen a more-than-600 percent spike in its caseload as federal agents have targeted Southeast Asian immigrants, especially in St. Paul, Hing said.

Hing’s design depicts a yeak, a giant-like figure in Cambodian folklore, keeping a family safe from an ICE vehicle, along with the text “We Protect Each Other.” The design, Hing said, intentionally inverts the traditional characterization of the yeak as an antagonistic or even demonic force.

“I’m doing a retelling of it where it’s a misunderstood giant that is actually protecting our community members from the real evil, which is ICE,” Hing said. “My point on this in this piece was thinking about the criminalization narrative of immigrants. Trump is labeling immigrants that he’s detaining as the ‘worst of the worst’ and people who are totally harassing and disrupting this community, when, in my drawing, I wanted to portray that that is not our narrative at all.”

Across the Twin Cities, other artists, like muralist Audrey Carver and printmaker Sean Lim, have hosted pop-up events to disseminate artwork and raise money for community organizations. At a bring-your-own-shirt printing event Carver hosted at Wandering Leaf Brewing in Highland Park in mid-January, she printed more than 300 shirts and raised over $5,000, she announced on Instagram.

During upcoming community printing events Feb. 5 and 6, a design by St. Paul Indigenous artist Marlena Myles reading “ICE Out of Mni Sóta Makóče / No One is Illegal on Stolen Land” will be available to print on a shirt or tote bag you bring. The event runs 2 to 6:30 p.m. both days at the Minneapolis American Indian Center; 1530 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis.

Liz Derby, who runs the studio Little Dipper Art, has created a suite of “ICE out” posters inspired by local landmarks and wintertime imagery that are available at a quickly growing list of dozens of Twin Cities shops including, in St. Paul, Wildflyer Coffee, Next Chapter Booksellers, I Like You Too, Center for Lost Objects and SK Coffee.

Others still are releasing designs free online. Minneapolis design studio Burlesque of North America created a design riffing off the ubiquitous red-and-white snow emergency sign, a twist that’s earned national media coverage. The studio itself has printed more than 5,000 copies to donate and has uploaded free PDFs to its website.

Countless other artists — including snow sculptors at the World Snow Sculpting Championship in downtown Stillwater and the Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition at the Vulcan Snow Park at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds — are also using their skills to highlight and push back against what they see as unjustifiably violent immigration enforcement actions such as the shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“It’s been inspiring to see all of these different illustrators and artists and designers putting the same sentiment out there, the same kind of general feel, but in vastly different ways,” said Alxndr Jones, a St. Paul-based artist. “Some more intense, some more lighthearted, some more loving, some more angry. It just speaks so much to the creative community that there is in the Twin Cities.”

Jones’s own art is known for his distinctive gestural style he described as inspired by jazz album covers, punk rock aesthetics and the American traditional style of tattoo art. He, too, is offering some designs for free download on his website and selling prints to raise money for nonprofits.

One print, riffing off the Morton Salt mascot, depicts a person in a yellow coat dropping salt behind them and holding a sign reading “Abolish ICE” or, in another version, replacing the first word with a common expletive. In another design collection, a diving loon holds a banner reading, variously, “Protect Our Community” or “We Fight Together.”

“After the murder of Renee Good, I couldn’t pick up a pencil without drawing something that was anti-ICE, was protest,” Jones said. “We’re in a world where it feels like there’s so much we need to do, but at the same time, it’s like, what can I do? I don’t know what to do, but I do know how to draw and how to make an image that might resonate with somebody.”

The power of art to drive fundraising efforts, empower protesters to action, share cultural stories and connect with like-minded neighbors cannot be overstated, Hing said. But also? It can just be nice to look at. And that counts for a lot, too.

“When crisis hits, when we are feeling at our most down, art is really a source of joy for us all that we can really connect with,” Hing said. “Art is just so beautiful, and our people really deserve beautiful things at this moment.”

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I can’t watch blood on a screen anymore. My body turns away before my mind can catch up. What unsettles me just as deeply is the anti-immigrant mood on the ground. Most people I know have a story: a warning, a close call, a neighbor who didn’t come home. So I reach for safer distractions — who’s headed to the Super Bowl, what I’ll make for dinner — anything loud enough to drown out what is unfolding in my hometown. But the noise can’t mask the truth: Fear is spreading through refugee and immigrant communities, and something essential has shifted beneath our feet.

My family immigrated to the United States in 1976 and resettled in Minnesota shortly after. I grew up here. I went to school here, becoming the first in my family to attend college. I built my life here. For nearly three decades, I worked in the nonprofit sector, securing public and private resources for families who live without buffers — people for whom long-term planning is a luxury and survival is a daily calculation. I know firsthand what it means to arrive in a new country: to learn a difficult language, navigate unfamiliar systems, find work, feed a family and try to feel safe in neighborhoods shaped by disinvestment. My empathy for immigrants and refugees is not abstract. It comes from my own experience and years spent working alongside the very communities now filling national headlines.

Right now, I carry two reactions at once. One is the response of the educated, once-secure citizen. I followed the rules. I paid taxes, bought a home, voted, volunteered and participated fully in civic life. I was raised to believe — almost as a civic article of faith — that all people are created equal, and I organized my life around that assumption. During the first term of this same president, I protested in downtown Minneapolis when immigrants were first targeted. I believed my status mattered. I was naturalized. I could vote. I could protest openly. On paper, I was no different from anyone else. Equal under the law, if perhaps burdened with a funny name.

This time feels different. Confidence has given way to caution — an instinct deeper than any civics lesson. I scan rooms now. I choose my words carefully. I notice exits. Not because I’ve done anything wrong, but because refugees like my family learn across generations that security is conditional and belonging can be revoked when fear becomes politically useful. Recently, my father insisted that I carry my passport or naturalization papers at all times. His advice wasn’t paranoia. It was history speaking, passed down through lived trauma rather than textbooks.

The United States withdrew from Southeast Asia in 1973, a year after my birth, leaving behind the Hmong people who had fought alongside American forces in Laos and rescued downed U.S. pilots. What followed was systematic persecution: villages destroyed, families hunted through jungles, mountains, and rivers. There was no government protection, no appeal, no safety net. Policy turned into abandonment, enforced through violence. That memory never disappears. It waits.

Today, many immigrants in Minnesota feel that same pressure returning in the dead of winter — a sense of being watched, made vulnerable, and subjected to ICE intimidation in everyday spaces. That fear is especially jarring in a state shaped by large Somali, Hmong and Latino communities whose labor, culture, and presence are woven into Minnesota’s economic and civic life. This is a place built not only by resettlement agencies or public programs, but by daily acts of belonging: neighbors working side by side, raising families, and looking out for one another. It is the same Minnesota that celebrated Suni Lee, the daughter of Hmong refugees, standing atop the Olympic podium, wrapped in gold and embraced as unmistakably American.

That shared ethic is why the recent ICE shootings have cut so deeply. When Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed on our streets, Minnesotans did not see an abstract political debate. They saw neighbors harmed in their own communities. South Minneapolis, still carrying the memory of George Floyd, recognized the pattern immediately. These were not faceless agitators. They were people standing up for one another because something here had gone profoundly wrong in a state long defined by mutual responsibility — where safety and dignity are believed to belong to everyone.

Across the world, people already understand what many Americans are being forced to relearn: Protest carries risk, and power resists scrutiny. When fear is deliberately amplified, violence often follows. Americans, including those who lead, are not exempt from human nature simply because we live behind borders or inside institutions we assume will hold. History is crowded with lessons from tyrants who unleashed violence not out of necessity, but because they could. Rights are fragile. Norms erode quickly — sometimes within a single generation. National exceptionalism makes it easy to believe these things happen elsewhere, to other people, until they do not.

And yet something else is happening too.

Despite the fear and disruption brought by ICE’s enforcement surge, the tide is turning. Minnesota is showing its true character. The quiet ethic often called Minnesota Nice is outshining the intimidation meant to silence dissent. The protests filling our streets — chants, whistles, vigils, all-night gatherings — have been unmistakably human. Poets and writers. ICU nurses and teachers. Small-business owners and neighbors. Our elected leaders are standing up as well, demanding accountability and pushing back against the normalization of fear. As an immigrant walking among these crowds, I have never felt set apart because of my race, my accent, or my story. Here, people see you first as a neighbor, a worker, a human being.

In this moment of national moral reckoning, Minnesota has reminded the country — and me — of its values. The name “Mní Sóta” comes from the Dakota, the original people of this land. It speaks of water and reflection, of place and continuity. We are all, in different ways, immigrants here. What matters now is not who deployed fear, but whether we refuse to look away from it — whether we choose to name it, confront it, and protect one another in spite of it. Minnesota is doing that, openly and together.

Valeng Cha, Maplewood, has spent 30 years securing public and private funding for health, human services, youth development, and higher education initiatives. His work has focused on strengthening organizations serving low-income and immigrant communities. He currently owns a small business, TimberBuilds LLC, in Maplewood.

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Today is Sunday, Feb. 8, the 39th day of 2026. There are 326 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 8, 1949, Roman Catholic Cardinal József Mindszenty was sentenced to life in prison for his opposition to the fascist and later communist Hungarian governments; released during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he sought asylum at the U.S. Embassy when the Soviet Union invaded, living there for 15 years. Mindszenty left Hungary in 1971 and died in exile in Vienna in 1975.

Also on this date:

In 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she was implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

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In 1693, a charter was granted for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in the Virginia Colony.

In 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Navy at Port Arthur (now Dalian, China), marking the start of the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1910, the Boy Scouts of America organization was incorporated by William D. Boyce, who drew inspiration from the British Boy Scout movement.

In 1924, the first U.S. execution using lethal gas took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City as Chinese immigrant Gee Jon was put to death for a murder conviction.

In 1936, the first NFL draft was held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.

In 1960, work began on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located on Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles.

In 1968, three Black students were killed and 28 wounded as state troopers opened fire on demonstrators at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg in the aftermath of protests over a whites-only bowling alley. The event would become known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

In 1971, NASDAQ, the world’s first electronic stock exchange, held its first trading day.

In 1993, an Iranian airliner with 132 people on board collided with an air force jet after takeoff from Tehran and exploded, leaving no survivors.

In 2013, a massive two-day snowstorm began dumping up to 3 feet (1 meter) of snow around the U.S. Northeast, causing widespread power outages and leavening several people dead. The storm struck some areas with hurricane-force winds and coastal flooding.

In 2020, a soldier angry about a land dispute went on a 16-hour shooting rampage in Thailand, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens. Police and military personnel hunted the gunman overnight and shot him dead.

Today’s birthdays:

Composer-conductor John Williams is 94.
Broadcast journalist Ted Koppel is 86.
Actor Nick Nolte is 85.
Comedian Robert Klein is 84.
Actor-rock musician Creed Bratton is 83.
Actor Mary Steenburgen is 73.
Author John Grisham is 71.
Hockey Hall of Famer Dino Ciccarelli is 66.
Rock singer Vince Neil (Mötley Crüe) is 65.
Basketball Hall of Famer Alonzo Mourning is 56.
Actor Seth Green is 52.
Actor William Jackson Harper is 46.
Actor-comedian Cecily Strong is 42.
Hip-hop artist Anderson Paak is 40.
Professional surfer Bethany Hamilton is 36.
Actor Kathryn Newton is 29.

In his 20 years in the business, Eric Church has never failed to surprise. He’s a savvy guy unafraid to take risks and challenge his audience, which aren’t exactly typical traits for Nashville.

Still, much of the capacity crowd at Church’s Saturday night concert at St. Paul’s Grand Casino Arena was not prepared for the inventive, majestic and thrilling show the 48-year-old from North Carolina delivered.

After more than 20 minutes of selections from Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here” played over the loudspeakers, Church emerged from the darkness with “Hands of Time,” the opening track of his latest album “Evangeline vs. the Machine.” And Church wasn’t alone. Horn and string sections sat at either end of the stage with eight backup singers on risers between them. With Church’s own band in tow, that meant two dozen musicians on stage.

“Evangeline vs. the Machine,” Church’s eighth album, is unlike anything else in his catalog and leans heavily into dramatic prog rock and brooding symphonic pop with Church dabbling in falsetto vocals. Ain’t nobody else in mainstream country making anything that sounds like this.

Clearly Church is proud of the record — which includes seven original songs and, of all things, a cover of Tom Waits’ “Clap Hands” — as he performed it in full. Playing 40 minutes of perhaps unfamiliar material before getting to the hits sounds challenging and, to be sure, some of the more lubricated audience members sat in stunned silence.

But Church and company delivered such an impressive and immersive wall of sound, it was tough not to embrace what he was doing. The towering “Darkest Hour” soared thanks to powerful vocals from his longtime band member Joanna Cotten. “Evangeline” came across like a late-’60s/early-’70s Rolling Stones ballad, which Church seemed to acknowledge with his occasional dips into Mick Jagger-esque squeals.

The most conventional and weakest track on the record, the rollicking “Rocket’s White Lincoln” still packed a punch thanks to the deft interplay between the horns, strings and Church’s band. Again, no one else in the genre is doing anything like this.

After the last notes of “Clap Hands,” Church rolled out crowd-pleasing hit after crowd-pleasing hit and some of his extra players stuck around to help bring new life to the likes of “Desperate Man,” “Sinners Like Me,” “Mr. Misunderstood,” “Springsteen” and “Stick That in Your Country Song.” He turned his 2010 breakthrough hit “Smoke a Little Smoke” into a medley with a take on “Proud Mary” that saw Cotten stepping into Tina Turner territory.

It was such an unusual and exciting show, one can’t help but wonder where Church goes from here. It’ll be difficult to top this one.

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