At the Calvary Baptist Church in Minneapolis, the doors swung open and shut as locals sought refuge from the biting cold on Sunday.
The 140-year-old building sits just blocks away from where Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was shot dead by federal immigration agents during a confrontation on Saturday morning.
In the wake of the shooting, which marked the second time in less than a month that a US citizen has been killed by agents in the city, the church has become what locals describe as a haven from the unrest and uncertainty outside.
There was no service here on Sunday. Instead volunteers and church staff, such as Ann Hotz, who works at the church’s daycare centre, handed out coffee, snacks and hand warmers to those who stopped by.
Some were on their way to lay flowers at a nearby memorial for Pretti, while others visited on their way home from protests against the weeks-long federal immigration enforcement operation in the city.
“Yesterday, I fell apart,” Hotz told the BBC as she helped move cases of water outside. “Today I’m here to stand with my community and help our neighbours as they remember Alex and mourn him.”
“But I do have to say, the helpers are getting really tired,” she added. “This is exhausting, and so we need there to be a change.”
This is what America is now,” Dean Caldwell-Tautges, the church administrator, said of the actions of federal immigration agents in his hometown in recent weeks.
Caldwell-Tautges, who was handing out whistles which have been used to alert people to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, said supporting the community in this way was “the Christian thing to do”.
The city of Minneapolis now finds itself at the forefront of the national immigration debate for the second time this month. Renee Nicole Good, another Minnesota resident, was shot and killed by an ICE agent on 7 January.
Videos of both shootings quickly spread on social media. They prompted angry protests from those who want to see an end to an immigration enforcement operation that has seen thousands of agents deployed to the city’s streets.
